Heather and I helped out with some trail work at the Idaho Velodrome & Cycling Park and it was actually lots of fun. It was nice to do some manual labor for a change (cycling doesn’t count). Dave Beck is the man who organizes these volunteer efforts and when Heather and I first showed up there were only a few of us. But we were shortly joined by a group of Boy Scouts and then more people showed up as work progressed.

The main task for today was putting up a few sections of fence. That involved drilling holes for the posts and then setting up the log fence and tamping in the dirt around them. I worked with Dennis and Mark using the gas-powered auger. I had never used an auger so I was a little intimidated at first. Basically it’s like a huge drill that takes two people to handle. It wasn’t too hard to handle initially, but after a few holes your hands and shoulders get tired. So we switched on and off who was “driving” the thing. I was amazed at how easy that auger went into the soil…at least for the first set of holes. But on the last section we had a few problem holes that took a bit more work. Even so, I was told it was nothing compared to the holes they dug last week; those took a lot more work. They were hitting all sorts of rocks and hardpack layers.

Heather was helping with setting up the fences and tamping in the dirt. By the time all the holes were drilled there were plenty of volunteers so the actual fence building went really fast. With less people would have taken much longer. At the end, Dave explained the different areas of the park. It was amazing to see how much progress had been done. The pump track is completed and two of the three “mini” downhill lines are completely done. The four-cross course is getting close and now with these fences in, the trail system that intertwines with the new Ridge to River Trail System is almost complete. Heather and I watched one of the kids go down one of the downhill runs and it looked like so much fun that we’re probably going to come out and try it ourselves!