Words & Video | Damian Stones Photos | Sven Martin
Earlier this year I was lucky enough to be a trail builder on a new Grade 5 trail called "Butters". This project came up at a good time as due to fall-out from Covid-19 as I wasn't guiding as much as I normally would.
This short film "Butters - Skip the gym & go digging" documents the crew building this trail, located in the top of the South Island, Nelson, New Zealand. Building this trail was a little bit of a game of two halves, the top half involved 4W4 driving to the top of Fringed Hill every day and then riding down to the worksite, working for the day and then at the end of the day riding off the site down Te Ara Koa trail. The bottom half of the trail was a lot steeper and somewhat more difficult terrain to build in. The way that we got on-site was to ride up from the Brook Valley up the Coppermine trail to the picnic table, not a bad start for the day. Lucky for us, the winter was not as cold as usual and we only had a few frosty days riding up to the trail. Our little ritual to start the day off was to have a coffee in the sun before heading down to the build site.
Over the last few years I have built the odd pump track but haven't been involved in the trail building scene for a number of years. It was great to get back and work on such a significant and satisfying project.
Finally, it was a real privilege to work alongside such experienced trail builders - Easy Trail Building Services, Ian Phillipps, Martin Strelka, Kurt Lancaster, Digby Shaw and Niklas Louis Hueber.
This trail has been named and built-in memory of Bernard “Butters” Simmonds and was co-funded by Santa Cruz Bicycles - Pay Dirt Fund and Nelson City Council. Special thanks goes to Nelson Mountain Bike Club and Ngati Koata Trust.
Trailforks https://www.trailforks.com/trails/butters/
