Mountain bikers will soon have a new place to test their off-road skills in Lake Norman State Park.
The latest addition to the 13-mile Itusi trail will add seven miles of new trail. About a dozen volunteers gathered at the park just off Wildlife Road on Saturday to lend their skills and manual labor to help create the path.
"Mountain biking is a huge sport in the United States; it's bigger than golf, and it's a great way to keep fit," said Tom Mathews, past president of the Tarheel Trailblazers. The local bike club is helping sponsor the trail, along with First Flight Bicycles.
"In this sport, you have to give to get, and no one is going to build these trails for us, so we have to do it ourselves with the state's approval," Mathews added. "There's a great crew here at the park and Casey Rhinehardt has been instrumental to provide the amenities we need to do this."
Bob Karriker, an avid biker and a subcontractor for Trail Dynamics, a firm that professionally designs trails just like the Itusi, laid out the plans for the path earlier last year.
"I spent about 110 hours, pretty much all summer, working on this layout," he said. "We've done about 90 feet an hour so far, as an average, so I'm pretty proud of what we've accomplished."
With the use of a Bobcat and other machinery, volunteers have hacked out roots and moved rocks to make a new three-mile stretch of trail as smooth as possible.
Karriker made several grade reversals with the Bobcat, spaced about 50 feet apart, to encourage water to dump off the trail so erosion doesn't erase their hard work.
"It's been much easier with the equipment. We built Itusi across the bridge by hand, and then Monbo with machinery and it was sped up considerably," Mathews said. "We were very fortunate that grants allowed us (to afford) three pieces of equipment, including the bulldozers and excavaters."
Both Karriker and Mathews have had extensive trail building training, and have been involved since the very beginning on the pathways throughout the park.
"I've been to four trail schools with the International Mountain Bike Association, and we're taught about grade reversals, layout, construction and preserving the forest by minimally impacting it with our path," Mathews said. "When we build a trail, both Bob and I like to look and walk through it, and guide the riders past what we think is beautiful, like the laurel here or certain rock formations."
On March 7, a big volunteer push by the Dirt Divas, a women's mountain biking club, will assist in completing the trail.
Phase IV A of the trail will likely be finished and ready for inspection and signage by the end of March.
Phase IV B will begin next year and will add an additional four to five miles across the fire road. When all phases of the trail are totally complete, it will be an impressive 30-mile stretch.
"Bob has mapped out a plan of attack, but we're just taking it one step at a time," Mathews said.
To find out how to help build the new bike trail, visit www.tarheeltrailblazers.com. For news on the next volunteer weekend, visit www.dirtdivas.net.
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