Trail Building at Bechtel

This past Saturday was the annual trail building day at Bechtel Park where the team helps to maintain the trail system at World Cup levels, at least by Waterloo standards.

Generally, the tasks entail spreading wood chips on the trails. There were a lot of wood chips to be spread this year and in the picture, Martha and Katie are hard at work spreading out some of the many wood chips.


Coach Rhodes is also seen spreading some wood chips, however this was one of the rare moments he was in one place long enough for a paparazzi to snap his photo, as he was constantly running around helping to organize the entire endeavor.


Another project that was undertaking was of the drainage nature, as Derek, Glenn and Ryan were tasked with trying to prevent a reoccurance of the Ice Crisis of 2010. That is prevent water from going over the trail instead of under it, on the bottom corner of the figure eight loop. Many a Waterloo skier was almost lost on this corner last year while doing intervals, and so action was desperately needed.
So they stuck three engineering students on the task, gave them shovels and said fix it. Surprisingly enough, the three actually knew that a shovel was not just for leaning on and went to work. The end goal is a valley which will help to direct the water in the culvert and additionally prevent dirt and debris from clogging in the culvert. Only time will tell if it is a success, or if the civil engineering student in the group should look for a new career path.