With the Canada Summer Games only a month away, sports teams from all over Canada are trickling into the Niagara region.
On Monday, the Ontario team took a practice run on the Games’ mountain bike course, which the Niagara Trail Maintenance Association (NTMA) has been preparing for the last two years.
“Canada Summer Games went into a contract with Niagara Trail Maintenance for the volunteers to build this course,” says NTMA volunteer Dawn Cant Elliott, in an interview with ThoroldToday. “It is a top notch national level course.”
NTMA is a group of mountain bikers that have been taking care of the trails in the Niagara Region for the past few years.
“Over the years we have all worked on keeping up on the trails that we ride,” Elliott says. “We saw that there was a need in the community to have some organization to this. It is private land, people are doing something on land that they don’t own. Now when a tree falls down we have a process in place that we can go to the landowner.”
The Canada Summer Games course runs parallel to the 12 Mile Creek. More than 60 volunteers spent time preparing the area.
“We have picked up truckloads of garbage that have been dumped,” says Elliott. “We’ve picked up beer bottles and wood and nails, just everything to clean up the area.”
When working on a trail the group follows specific guidelines.
“One of the things that we follow is IMBA, International Mountain Biking Association,” Elliott says. “IMBA has set out guidelines on how to build trails, how to make them sustainable so we use all the guideline when we are doing trail work. We don’t cut down trees. We will deal with trees that have already fell and use pieces of the tree that are down.”
So what makes a good mountain bike trail? According to Elliott, the secret is in the twists and the turns.
“It has to be something that you’re going to peddle so you might have a quick little corner and then need to peddle up a little hill,” Elliott says. “We have created 13 features which could be little bridges, there’s one called the gang plank that you actually can roll or fly off of it, we have a tabletop, some little logs that you have to bump over.”
Elliott is proud of the course and says it just highlights what a beautiful region the Niagara Peninsula is.
“You kind of get the bug once you get out there and you see how beautiful it is,” she says. “It doesn’t matter if you’re out mountain biking or you’re hiking it. To think that we have this amazing trail network right in our city. You can have a horrible day at work and you get out there and you get that fresh air and you get in those trails, it’s just so beautiful. You get hooked on it.”
Even after the Games are over, the course will continue to be a boon for the region
“We are working with all partners to keep it an area that can be ridden,” Elliott says. “The features will be maintained, the garbage will be picked up. The legacy of the course has been built and we’re dedicated and made that promise that we’ll be around to continue to work on it.”
