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del.icio.us Digg It!  new Bicycle races are coming your way By Danit Nitzan Some 50 people spent a few days in mid-September at an intensive course on how to build biking trails, held at Kibbutz Kfar Menachem in the Judean plains. Even though thousands of off-road cyclists engage in their hobby every weekend, and many of them do so during the week, too, the riding conditions are far from satisfactory. The routes used by the bikers are usually also frequented by jeeps and other vehicles, or they are hiking trails - which creates a conflict between the various users. So far, the nature and landscape preservation authorities and the planning authorities have built hardly any special off-road trails for cyclists. The Israel Bike Trail Project has only now entered the detailed planning stage, and bikers' attempts to blaze their own trails have often ended unsuccessfully and sometimes even damaged the environment. Since it is impossible to deny the existence of off-road cyclists, the Israel Bicycle Association (IBA) organized an intensive course on building trails. The course was led by the field's leading expert, Pete Webber, an American and professional mountain biker from Boulder, Colorado, who has designed bike trails on behalf of the International Mountain Biking Association in the United States and in other countries, too. Advertisement Bike trails are commonly known as "singles," because they constitute narrow trails just wide enough for a single bicycle bearing one rider. Bikers ride in a single file and blend in with nature and the topography surrounding them. The designers of these trails use materials found in the area where the trails are located and try to adapt the route to the natural lie of the land, using various methods so it will remain serviceable with a minimum of maintenance. The designers also survey the area and its natural surroundings to prevent any harm to them. For now, such design is only theoretical in Israel, as hardly any officially- and properly-planned bike trails have been built. About half the participants in the course were employees of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) and the Israel Nature and Parks Authority (INPA), including foresters and area managers whose responsibilities include a range of cycling activities they would like to promote, without harming the rest of the activities happening all around. The other half of the course's participants were bikers from across the country, who feel it is important to promote the construction of trails in their region, and representatives of private companies that have an interest in bike trails for commercial reasons. Webber taught the course's participants how to design a trail, how to plan the route, which degrees of incline are right and which are wrong (a gradient exceeding 10 percent). They spoke extensively about water drainage, so the trail will not be destroyed by the rains and will not become too muddy, and how to create technical obstacles, such as bends and slopes that will both blend with the topography and be safe for the cyclists. Webber also offered advice on marking the trails uniformly and involving local biking clubs in the planning and building process, to ensure that the local authorities have an easier job and the bikers feel a greater commitment. At present the active bike trails in Israel are marked differently in each region, based on the whims of whoever was in charge of building them. Eyal Hershtik, the director of amateur biking activities at the IBA and one of the initiators of the course, says the gathering of people involved in planning and building, along with cyclists and people responsible for coordinating biking activities established good connections and shortened processes that would have been difficult to accomplish using normal bureaucratic channels. "I saw bikers, JNF and INPA personnel sitting together and discussing projects," says Hershtik. "In no other context would all these people have convened so easily for the same purpose." Hershtik relates that two weeks after the course was held he toured Keshet Forest, near the Golani Junction, "and I already saw JNF employees working on the bike trail, including the very planner who had attended the course. He had come to the site to correct its design and make a few changes. After his intervention the trail looks more natural, it is more comfortable to ride and blends better with the forest." The end of the course was marked by a "bikers build" activity, in which bikers actually blazed trails and put into practice what they had learned, in the Haruvit Forest adjacent to Kfar Menachem. Dozens of volunteers were divided into teams, each headed by a biker who had participated in the course. They all went into the forest and - using rakes, hoes and pickaxes - cleared bike trails based on a precise work plan drawn up during the course. One of the participants in the course was Ariel Rothson, 38, a computer enthusiast and dedicated mountain biker from Moshav Tzafririm in the Ella Valley. "Ever since I began mountain biking seriously, I have been looking for pleasant places to ride, where I can feel in tune with nature," he says. "The jeep trails run alongside the forests, not through them, as the singles are supposed to do. Singles are also more challenging. Since this field is relatively new and insufficiently developed [in Israel], there is a shortage of such trails." In the past, in an effort to overcome this shortage, Rothson used to work with a group that improvised trails here and there. "We created a few trails in several places in the Carmel region, and this practice is pretty common in Ben Shemen, but there are places in which we blazed trails and the authorities closed them off. Also, not everything we did was good and lived to tell the tale." Rothson took three days off work to attend the course. "I love this sport," he admits, "and after I tried approaching the nature and planning authorities about opening trails and found no one who would listen, I figured this joint course would promote the whole issue. I hope to open trails in the Ella Valley, which is visited by tourists and cyclists alike, and build a trail around the whole valley that will attract hikers and bikers to guest houses, businesses, restaurants and into the small communities themselves. I am not alone in this [dream] and I hope that both tourism and biking in my area will improve after I start to implement what I have learned. If only I will be able to interest enough cyclists and local bodies in this goal." Bookmark to del.icio.us The killing files A binder in a German office holds details of the systematic mass murder of Jews. Save the children One third of recent sexual assault complaints emerged from Haredi communities.

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