Find out who the land owner is and approach them first. Explain what you’d like to do, that you’d like their permission and that you’ll build the trail to known specifications. If and only if they agree, get something in…

It’s highly likely that you will. For your own piece of mind each person building the trail should have third party liabilty insurance. This protects them if they injure another trail builder or if a member of the public is…

It is very difficult to answer this question because the cost of a trail depends on so many factors. Such factors include: the type of soil, the degree of side-slope, the source of labour, the amount of armouring that may…

Waterbars usually consist of logs or rocks placed at an angle across the trail. Their intention is to catch water flowing down the trail and to dump off to one side. Unfortunately, they are more likely to dump a cyclist…

It’s a maintenance-free trail structure that allows water to flow off of the trail whilst at the same time not being visible to riders. It consists of a shallow depression 6-8 feet long oriented along the trail. Beyond this is…

Full bench construction is the name given to the technique of digging a trail into the hillside that it crosses. The trail should be dug down to mineral soil which is much stronger than the organic top soil. The soil…

Outsloped trail is the term given to a trail where the surface slopes slightly away from the hill that the trail is on. Ideally trails should be built across a hill or slope. The idea is to outslope the trail…

The target outslope should be between 3-5%. Without a digital spirit level this can be difficult to measure accurately. However, if you aim for a flat trail it’s likely that you’ll actually get an outsloped trail of about the right…

There are certain basic hand tools that you will need. Picks, shovels and mattocks are easily available. More specialist tools include pulaskis and Mcloeds. If you are building in a rocky area or are building a trail feature rock work…

Yes! Our own web shop offers several trailbuilding books, including one that’s free of charge (in PDF form) to IMBA-UK members. For more info, please see our Trailbuilding Manuals page.