Higley Trail Day

Higley Trail Day is an annual event where we meet up with local community members to clean up, improve or (in this case) create new trails at our main winter training site, Higley Flow State Park.

The team and some community volunteers gather before heading out to the trails

This year was cold and rainy, which is pretty standard. Despite the dreary weather, everyone seemed to get pretty fired up about our project this year; creating a whole new trail off one of the higher loops. Earlier in the week Ethan had gone through with one of the forestry managers and cut down several trees to help set up the work. With the area being on protected State Forest land, we aren't able to use machines like chainsaws or tractors without special permits, so we were lucky enough to get in touch with the appropriate parties beforehand to get a few of the bigger trees cleared. 

Those restrictions mean a lot of work by hand, which is not too different from more traditional forms of ski training practiced by the World Champions of the 1930s, 40s and 50s. Many of the first modern Scandinavian racers were loggers and woodsmen, and it was long believed that such was the ideal profession for ski racers. 

Meng gets in touch with his inner Sixten Jernberg 

Our new trail was probably only 500 meters in length, but it took us about 3 hours to transform that stretch of forest into the buffed-out trail in these photos. It starts from the top of the Higley Ridge trail and begins with a wide and gradual downhill:

Erin and Taren clear some undergrowth on the initial downhill straightaway (some of the guys team are at the top/entrance to the trail)

The trail then narrows into a quick and technical S-turn (left, right, left) that should challenge even the most hardened of experts:

Looking downhill into the S-turn

We were able to pretty much clear everything on the trail aside from some low growth and some larger stumps (the Clarkson team will come in and take that up someday soon). Here's a few more photos and a video tour:

Climbing and cutting some larger branches. I'm thinking of entering the International Lumberjack Challenge events in the near future

This group of guys spent the about an entire hour working this massive stump out of the earth

Here's a quick video I made, walking through the trail as steadily as I could and then speeding it up later...not recommended for those with motion sickness: