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[RC] Trail Master Class Report - Kristen A Fisher

I have been meaning to pull this email together for a couple weeks now, but you know how time gets away from you. Well, now seems like an appropriate time, especially in light of John Teeter's pointed question, "What is the cost of the Trails Masters Program and who benefits?"

2 friends and I decided to go ahead and sign up for the Trail Master class when I saw Jerry's announcement of it. Although it was a 12 hour drive from TX, we figured it would be worth it. One friend is another endurance rider, one is a friend who comes to rides and crews and generally enjoys herself. All of us enjoy being on the trails, whether competing or not. In particular, there were 3 things that motivated me: 1] the desire to give back to the sport in some way, as it's truly the volunteers that make AERC work; 2] I have recently moved to a more rural town, and there was an open position on my new city's Trails Committee, and I wanted some qualifications to be appointed to it; and 3] in the next few years, there will be a 4 lane highway put in through part of our favorite and most easily accessible training trail.

The class was taught by Mike Riter of Trail Design Specialists, LLC www.traildesign.com, a terrific teacher and wonderful guy, who has worked on trail development and maintenance at some of the most prominent trails all over the world. It focused on classroom study in the morning and field work in the afternoons, using what you learned that morning. Day 1 covered Trail Design, Day 2 was Trail Construction, Day 3 was Trail Maintenance, and Day 4 was putting it all together in practice. Did we learn, and did the techniques work? On Day 3 we went to a trail in the LBL forest, and worked on some sections of trail. Toward the end of the day it started to rain, and it poured rain off and on all night. We went back the next day to finish the class up, and checked our work from the previous day. The parts of the trail we had worked on were ready to send 50 horses down them. Across the spray painted line that showed where our work stopped was 2"-3" or more of sticky boggy slippery MESS.

I don't know how much it cost AERC for our 3 spots in the class, but here is where the benefit is going so far [less than one month since the class].
1] I have been contacted to join the city trails committee, which plans trails throughout the city as well as linkages with other cities.
2] We are joining a volunteer trail maintenance organization this weekend to start building relationships to maintain/update that "favorite" trail
3] We are working with the Army Corps of Engineers to re-route a dangerous part of that trail, thus opening up at least 5 more miles of trail that are now closed
4] We would like to work on marking a different trail system to make it more safe and usable and in the re-marking, use our trail design concepts to improve the trail itself
5] We are considering trying to start an airport trails patrol program at DFW similar to the one in use at Houston Intercontinental


I would highly recommend the class as for us it was a terrific learning experience, but more importantly as a the catalyst to proactively creating and preserving our local equestrian trails. Thanks Jerry & Mike [& Diane!]

Kristen Fisher, Corinth, TX
AERC # M32770




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