Four hours and nineteen minutes. That's how long it took the Test of Metal to sell out this year. Less time, as race director Cliff Miller points out, than most people take to complete the race. Twenty hours after the sell out - one day after the registration went on line - there were more than 300 people on the waiting list. In 24 hours, 1100 cyclists were willing to register for a race that doesn't take place for another six months.
Big news? Well, big enough to convince Jim MacIlvain, editor of California-based Mountain Bike Action magazine (circulation 650,000) to come cover the weekend's festivities for the magazine.
The quick sell-out is evidence of the incredible organization behind the race. Miller, the Test Pilots, and the hundreds of volunteers are what make the race so successful, but people wouldn't want to keep coming back if it weren't for the course that a group of pioneering volunteers hacked the trails through the forests 12 or 15 years ago.
In some ways, the Test of Metal and the 撸奶社区mountain bike community are victims of their own success. By making 撸奶社区into one of Canada's premier mountain bike destinations, the stress on the trail system has increased exponentially. Within weeks, the hundreds of riders from out of town and their friends and family will begin training on the TOM course. Thousands more will be arriving throughout the summer just to ride the more than 200 kilometers of mostly volunteer-built trails.
The trail system is also under enormous pressure from development and competing uses. This past year, SORCA (撸奶社区Off-Road Cycling Association) and the municipality arrived at a protocol to have developers pay for trails lost through their developments. SORCA executive members also found themselves negotiating, along with the municipality, to save the Powerhouse Plunge from logging. And, council voted in favour of SORCA's request that the municipality ask the provincial government to create a Crown Lands Master Plan for the valley.
And that's only mountain biking scene. There is another whole system of valley trails built and maintained by the STS (撸奶社区Trail Society). There are usage issues with horse and dirt-bikers and hikers. And list goes on.
According to TOM organizers, the mountain bike festival alone generates more than $2.5 million for the community and SORCA's recently completed mountain bike plan suggests as much as $7.5 million more are brought into the community directly through mountain biking. This resource - and it's as real a resource as deep sea ports and wind generators-is at risk.
This year, SORCA and STS are requesting that council hire someone to coordinate our trail assets. The job is too important and too complex to leave in the hands of a group of volunteers.
In every budget process, council has many difficult and competing interests to weigh. Hiring a trails person may seem frivolos, a treat for a small special interest group, but the evidence clearly doesn't support that position. Squamish's trails deserve some attention.
