IMBA Canada BC Rep Blog

June 17-22 marked my trip to Park City Utah to attend IMBA’s World Summit and of course do some riding. It was great to see some old friends again and meet some new ones as well as work with the great people at IMBA.

As in the past, the Summit days started off with a plenary session for all delegates with a few guest speakers. I must say the quality of theses sessions were the best I’ve seen and very motivating and inspiring. Then the day continued with break out sessions for the remainder of the morning then lunch and more break outs in the afternoon wrapping up around 4 pm for the guided rides.

Checkout out this view and that can only mean some really sweet downhill is in store, woo hoo!

Now considering Park City’s elevation starts at @ 6800 ft (2,072 m) the air is already thin for us west coasters who live at sea level, then we had to climb to get to the good stuff. The trails were hard pack buff dirt in most cases with the odd rock thrown in, not west coast technical but fast and flowy. Daytime temperatures were in the 30 C/86 F range but very dry however, nights cooled off nicely to 8 C/46 F.

 

 

 

 

Did I mention, the trails were dry and dusty, I look like “Zebra Man”!

 

 

 

 

 

 

The last day was the big 20-25 mile (32-42 k) ride on some of the IMBA Epic trails around Park City ending off with lunch and Polygamy Porter by local Wasatch Brewery, Why have just one!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The area is filled with over 300 miles of trail, some old school contour trails. Lots of sage brush and I’m sure the odd rattler to keep you on trail.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Park City, site of the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olympics ski jumping does have lift access but, with trails like this and Whistler in my back yard, why bother. My armour stayed neatly tucked away in my kit bag.

In June, Parks Canada Agency Chief Executive Officer Alan Latourelle announced that Parks Canada signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) agreement with IMBA Canada. This MOU will enable the agency to benefit from the expertise of IMBA Canada in the field of multiple-use trail planning, development and management. “Parks Canada aims to facilitate stimulating, sustainable and educational trail experiences, and as such, shares common values with IMBA Canada,” said Mr. Latourelle. “I’m confident that the agreement announced today will help pursue and expand the successful relationship between our two organizations in order to offer exceptional experiences to Canadians.”

imba_parks_canada_mou.pdf

June 02/08 was the fourth meeting of the Trails Strategy Committee in Richmond, BC. We spent the day going through the draft of the recommendations of the TSC to government. Some slight and a few major changes were noted as we expect to see the final sometime in the summer. The next steps will be government and public review this fall. There will likely be regional meetings for the public to attend so as soon as I have some dates I’ll post them.