Greg Mazu is the self-described “Chief Dreamer” behind Backslope Tools, a company that designs and sells tools for trail building and forest maintenance. He’s also the founder of Singletrack Trails, a trail building company that recently finished its last project after 20 years in the business.
- When did you build your first trail?
- How did you get into professional trail building?
- What motivated you to start Tools for Trails, and later Backslope tools?
- Where are Backslope tools manufactured?
- If you could only have one tool to use for building a trail, what would it be?
- Some riders say they prefer natural trails to machine-built ones. Do you have a preference for riding machine- or hand-built trails? Can a machine-built trail be built to feel like a natural or hand-built trail, or vice versa?
- Singletrack trails was involved in some iconic projects over the years in places like 18 Road and Lunch Loops in Fruita, Black Mountain in North Carolina, Palisade Plunge in Colorado, and Handcut Hollow in Bentonville. Which trail building projects are you most proud of?
- What are some favorite trails you weren’t involved in building?
- What are some of the challenges the trail building industry is facing in meeting increased demand for trails?
- Have we reached a peak in terms of trail quality, or is there room for further growth and improvement? What are some of the latest, or upcoming innovations riders can look forward to?
See the tools we talked about at backslopetools.com and follow @gregmazu on Instagram.
Transcript
Jeff Barber:
Hey, everybody, welcome to the Singletracks Podcast. My name is Jeff, and today my guest is Greg Mazu. Greg is the self-described chief dreamer behind Backslope Tools, a company that designs and sells tools for trail building and forest maintenance. He’s also the founder of Singletrack Trails, a trail building company that recently finished its last project after 20 years in the business. Thanks for joining me, Greg.
Greg Mazu:
Thanks for having me.
Jeff Barber:
So, tell us, when did you build your first trail?
Greg Mazu:
My first trail, other than showing up for volunteer days, my first trail was at Lory State Park here in Fort Collins, Colorado. Back in 2003, Howard Trail was the first one that I got to design and build from start to finish. There’s a lot of switchbacks on that one, a lot of people still swear at me about that one.
Jeff Barber:
Did you get to name it? Howard Trail, where does that name come from?
Greg Mazu:
The Howards were the family that homesteaded on what was the state park originally many years ago. I did come up with the name simply just because I knew the history of that. At a state park, every trail name has to have some sort of link to the property, so it was an easy name to do.
Jeff Barber:
Yeah, interesting. It sounds like you volunteered before building your first trail. I mean, had you ever built trails unofficially or backyard stuff?
Greg Mazu:
Not really. After university I moved from the Midwest out to Seattle and then made my way to Colorado. And in Seattle and in Colorado, I connected with folks who were into volunteering as trail builders. And so I joined. My girlfriend here in Fort Collins got me to go to a couple of days, and so I enjoyed it a lot. I was in my early 20s with some dead end jobs, ended up getting some education, learning how to be a better crew leader and all that stuff, and ended up weaseling my way into a job with the state parks as a seasonal.
And then shortly after that realized that the pot of money that they had to pay me with actually paid me more as a contractor than a state employee. So I woke up one day and realized I was my own boss and was able to start going out and farming myself out for other jobs.
Jeff Barber:
Interesting. I mean, did you have any experience with, I don’t know, operating equipment or any kind of manual labor before that?
Greg Mazu:
I mean, no. I learned all of this stuff on the go. I learned hopping in and working as a seasonal employee. There’s not much training from state parks down to that staff. So I learned by continuing to go to work with other trail builders and with other trail building volunteer days. Again, when you think about it, 20 years ago, this industry itself of trail building was technically really only 20 years old at that point. We were all still trying to figure out how to do it at the time.
Jeff Barber:
Yeah, interesting. You’ve started a website, a company called Tools for Trails, and then later Backslope Tools, I think, which you make your own tools for trail building. So what was the motivation behind that? Did this come out of your trail building company and your work at Singletrack Trails?
Greg Mazu:
Yeah. Tools for Trails was founded in 2012 on a long drive back from I believe that was from… We were driving back from New Mexico. I started that with a partner, Scott Linnenburger, and we were driving back from either the IMBA Summit in Santa Fe in 2011, which… When I say that out loud. So we were driving back from Santa Fe at the IMBA Summit and just like, there’s got to be a place that specifically tailors sales towards trail building.
And still at the time and still there’s multiple websites that they sell trail building tools, but they also have a catalog full of a whole bunch of other stuff. A couple of those have been absorbed and have disappeared into other larger websites at this point. But we were driving back and was like, there needs to be a place where trail builders can go and buy tools that were vetted by other folks already so you know they’re good quality.
And also he and I had an idea of how to… We wanted to take Tools for Trails and use it as marketing for his planning company, Kaylin Enterprises, and for me, my build company, Singletrack Trails. We did a little bit of that to begin with. And also as a growing trail building company, it was a great way to have access to all the proper tools at more of a discount than I was able to get from other people.
So that helped me out. Scott left the company a few years later and I’ve kept it going. And then in 2019 I was at the Outdoor Retailer Show hanging out with some old bike industry friends lamenting about the lack of margins in existing trail building tools and the lack of innovation. When I lived in Seattle, I worked in the bike industry briefly. And so the solution was, what’s the problem here?
Let’s just take your ideas and manufacture those and you get to sell them and control the supply chain, control the margins, and bring a product to market that nobody else is. Because when you actually think about it, a Pulaski, a McLeod, a dirt rake, a shovel, these are all tools that have been in their current form with lack of innovation since they were really created. There’s not much innovation has happened to a McLeod since McLeod created the McLeod back in the early 1900s.
Jeff Barber:
Wow! Well, yeah, let’s talk about the McLeod. I mean, amateur trail builder here, that’s probably my favorite tool. It’s super versatile. What was that originally made for? You said it was made in the early 1900s?
Greg Mazu:
Yeah, so the Pulaski and the McLeod were both created to help fight forest fires. Again, a couple guys were doing an activity just like US trail builders and they were using tools that were not made for the activity that they were working on. So both of them created those tools to help fight forest fires and help the Forest Service adhere to their 48-hour policy of all fires must be out in 48 hours. For a McLeod, it has the flat add side and it’s got the teeth on the other side.
So it’s made for raking the duff and then getting the duff out of the way with the rake side and then raking down to mineral soil with the ads side. And for trail builders and specifically for volunteer trail builders, the worst thing is at the end of the day when you’re trying to squeeze everything back into your trailer after the volunteer day and there’s no good way to store a McLeod. And I had seen some people who had cut out the center tooth a little bit to make it more stackable.
So we simply just took that to the manufacturing end of things and spread out that center tooth. So our tools are stackable and we make sure that it’s a good fit. And so we don’t use epoxy between the handle and the steel interface, the collar of the head so that if you break a handle, because tools do break. One of the questions that I get at trade shows and across the country is like, do your tools break? And I was like, I give you 100% guarantee that somebody’s going to break this tool.
Jeff Barber:
Right. It means you’re using it hard.
Greg Mazu:
You’re using it. I often think of the old school, it’s credited to Keith Bontrager, “Light. Cheap. Strong. Pick two.” Same thing applies to trail building tools, light, cheap, strong. It’s like if you want it strong so nobody can break it, it’s not really going to be cheap and it’s not going to be lightweight.
Jeff Barber:
Yeah, right, right. Well, it’s interesting too. 20 years ago when you were starting out, I mean, tools existed like the McLeod. But I don’t know, you can’t just walk into your Home Depot and pick one up. I mean, Home Depot is going to have rakes and shovels and real basic yard gardening stuff. So how are people even accessing McLeod’s and Pulaski’s 20 years ago? Did they have to go to these fire supply places, mail order them?
Greg Mazu:
When I was working for state parks and working for with a couple of nonprofits back then, yeah, you had to order them online through a catalog and have them delivered. Nowadays, there are some box retailers that may stock them in remote locations. But usually our competition for Backslope Tools and Tools for Trails is really still the local ACE, the local True Value, the Home Depot.
I remember the day that I walked into my Fort Collins Home Depot and realized that Home Depot now carries Nupla tools, which is one of the primary tool companies for Tools and Tools in that local store. I was wondering why our stock supply hadn’t shown up. And in that local store, they had enough tools to equal what was essentially the entire Tools and Tools yearly order. And so I was like, ah, this explains why Nupla doesn’t really care about filling my stock order is they now have the orange store as one of their chief retailer units.
Jeff Barber:
Right. Interesting. I mean, yeah, I’m sure it depends where you live. It makes sense somewhere like Fort Collins and out West where people are building more trails and potentially there’s the wildfire uses. I mean, where I live, you can’t find that stuff at all. And yeah, it’s all mail order.
Greg Mazu:
And right now shipping is rather murderous right now for us. So our sales are down. Because even last week we got like, “Why are your shipping rates so expensive?” And it’s just like, “Well, let’s talk to FedEx and UPS.”
Jeff Barber:
It’s a weird shape and potentially heavy stuff. Interesting.
Greg Mazu:
Not many people understand the concept of girth weight, which is you have to create a volume around your tool and then they add the weight to it. So McLeod, it’s really big and funky with weight. They really like small boxes that they can load their trailers with.
Jeff Barber:
Right.
Greg Mazu:
And here’s a stack of six tools that don’t fit on a shelf in their trailer very well.
Jeff Barber:
Right, right. Well, yeah, so Backslope Tools, those are your own tools that your company has designed and sells. Where are the tools manufactured currently?
Greg Mazu:
We have a foreign domestic supply chain. So when you actually buy one of our Clydes or Berts or any other hand tool, it has the old school bike industry sticker from the late 1990s of assembled in the USA with foreign domestic parts. So our tool heads come from a small manufacturing facility in Taiwan and our fiberglass comes from a USA manufacturer, all the Grand Junction where we assemble our tools in Grand Junction to send out to you.
Jeff Barber:
Yeah, cool. So yeah, looking at the website, some of the tools that I saw there like the rock hammock, they’re clearly designed for backcountry use. So is that the focus? Are all of your tools designed for use in places without machine access or maybe even wilderness areas? Obviously we’re not building bike trails, but building trails in those areas.
Greg Mazu:
Our tools are not necessarily for remote areas. They’re just created for just trail building in general, whether it’s outside your house or whether it’s 20 miles into the back country. As much as I think that Backslope Tools can stay true and dear to the trail industry, the trail industry is a small percentage of outdoor rec and a small percentage of this world.
We’re going to have to take our tools into homeowner and landscaper and span into other industries as it is. So every trail project needs to have a hand tool on it, whether you have a grumpy old trail builder operator that says, my only tool I need is an excavator, that person really still needs to get off the machine and use a McLeod every now and then just to stretch out specifically as well.
Jeff Barber:
Right, right. I mean, the rock hammock, like I mentioned, that one was really interesting to me. I mean it made me tired just looking at that thing and how it’s used. So can you explain what that is and how you use it?
Greg Mazu:
The rock hammock is roughly four endless webbing loops. It’s three inch webbing and an endless loop is take three inch webbing and just cut it and stitch it and bar tack it into one loop, and that’s called an endless loop. And so it’s four endless loops that are bar tacked together in multiple spots to make roughly a 60 by 60 net.
And the theory is that you can use this net to put rocks in and then either highline, which is to string a wire rope, and then you lift the rock and inside the rock hammock and can let you use a belay style system to take that rock down to wherever you’re working or bring it up to wherever you’re working. Or as a lot of people do, they just use the rock hammock.
They put a couple boulders in there and then they just winch it and drag it across the ground. It’s a consumable item. We don’t recommend dragging it across the ground. It’s made to lift and hold things because webbing is not an ideal material to drag across the ground amongst boulders with boulders inside of it.
Jeff Barber:
Yeah. I feel like I saw a picture too of a four person carry of a boulder, and it’s like you’re using it in place of a wheelbarrow, which again, wilderness areas, I think technically you can’t use a wheelbarrow, right, because it has a wheel.
Greg Mazu:
Capital W wilderness, you can’t use a wheelbarrow and technically you can’t use a come along. It’s a small argument. I lose it all the time. But even a grip hoist, you’re not supposed to use capital W wilderness.
Jeff Barber:
Wow. So you have to get old school like that and just lots of muscle power.
Greg Mazu:
Lots of it. And yes, it makes me tired looking at it. We’ve got to be able to find a way to manage wilderness better where we don’t have to crush human souls to take care of it.
Jeff Barber:
Right, right. Well, yeah, I mean, you mentioned it with the example of the excavator operator. A lot of trails today are machine built, but obviously a lot of handwork goes into finishing trails as well, which maybe people don’t understand. They think either a trail is machine built or it’s hand built. Do you design your tools with that in mind like these are finishing tools, or are some of them made just for building a hand built trail from the beginning?
Greg Mazu:
Have some tools in development that will be better grubbing tools, if you will, thinking of a pick mattock or a very stiff hoe type tool. Right now, our current selection is more on the finish side, so doing back slope, doing the finished tread, doing rake down, or moving materials, rocks and/or brush or anything else in terms of the haul all and the rock hammocks and things like that. So our tools are made to work in… Whether it’s a hand crew or whether it’s a machine crew, our tools are capable of being on that project.
Jeff Barber:
I’ve done some volunteer work at my local trails here, and in the southeast we have tons of trees and roots and stuff. And so the machines will go through. They’ll cut the tread, but then there’s all these roots and things still stick up. And one of the jobs it seems like we’re always doing is cutting those roots, those little stragglers that are still sticking out. And we just use loppers, the things we use to cut branches and stuff, but clearly they’re not designed for that. They’re getting dull because of the dirt and all that kind of stuff. Is there a better tool for that job possibly?
Greg Mazu:
Honestly, no. For cutting roots, loppers are really the best one. You can just get in there. You can take a McLeod and sharpen the bevel and use that, but then you’re swinging a sharp tool at your shin. And my shins have some scars from that over the years, and 97% of all McLeods out there have the bevel on the wrong side of the tool for cutting roots like that.
The side of the bevel is on is better for dirt versus cutting roots. We’ll say there are some old school southeast trail builders that love to tell me that we put the bevel on the wrong side of our tool. It’s just like you’re more than happy to change it. I know you know how to use an angle grinder. You can go in there and change it yourself.
Jeff Barber:
I mean, I’m always curious about the loppers. You can sharpen those, I assume. But yeah, I feel like it’s a consumable because after a while those things just stop working. And then who knows? Hopefully people aren’t just throwing them away.
Greg Mazu:
Well, and that’s the unfortunate thing about just tools are consumable items and especially with how we use them in the dirt and the rocks and leaving them out in the weather. People who have a McLeod that they’ve had for 25 years, they have gone out of their way to take care of that tool and nurse that tool and keep it in a safe place. If you use them on a daily basis, you’re going to replace cordless tools on an annual basis at least kind of thing. So it’s the unfortunate thing is to build what we want, we unfortunately have to consume the tools that we use.
Jeff Barber:
Interesting. Yeah, I never thought about that. I mean, tools also, as I understand it, they’re made from tool materials. It’s hardened steel and different materials. Does that make it difficult to recycle?
Greg Mazu:
I mean, no. I just did it last week with some other stuff is you just go down… The problem with it is getting the handle out. Most of the companies that sell tools, they really use a lot of epoxy, a lot of epoxy for that, whether it’s a wood handle or a fiberglass handle into the collar. But I just went down to the local metal recycling place and took 1,500 pounds of steel from a few other things and I got $16 back, but I got my $16 back.
Jeff Barber:
And you’re doing your part. I mean, that’s probably the more important side of it, right?
Greg Mazu:
Yeah. And for our tools, it’s AR400. It’s just like any other steel. It can go down to the local metal recycler.
Jeff Barber:
Interesting. So if you could only have one tool to use for building a trail, what would it be?
Greg Mazu:
I can’t. No.
Jeff Barber:
No? You cant do it with one tool.
Greg Mazu:
I need a dozen tools. Tools, bikes, and shoes. You can’t have just one. Everything has a different purpose. There’s this dream. We can all believe in the dream of one tool to do the job of everything out there on the trail. Maybe when it comes to maintenance, you can have that tool. But if you’re building a new trail, whether it’s by hand or by a machine, it’s like you still need a pick mattock out there.
You still need to have a Pulaski out there. You need McLeod and a shovel and a dirt rake. Every tool has its purpose and there’s a reason why. I used to show up on Singletrack Trails projects and there’s four guys working on a trail and we literally had 75 different tools sitting on the side of the trail, because everybody wanted a dozen tools for what they were doing. They all wanted their own set. There were always a lot of tools on our projects.
Jeff Barber:
Interesting. I mean, it makes sense. I think most of us have experienced this in various activities where you start out, you don’t have the proper tools. But then you get the right tool for something and you’re like, oh, this is way better if I have the right tool. They get more and more specialized the more you do the work. People talk about trails that are “rake and ride.” Is that ever a thing where literally you could just go out with a rake and build a trail depending where you are or what the conditions are?
Greg Mazu:
Correct. Yeah, a rake and ride trail is typically in gentle cross slope. So the terrain is not too steep. It’s the least amount of work. And rake and ride trails anymore typically are the term I picked up a couple years ago organic trails. So they’re built under the cover of darkness by the local builders, putting the least amount of effort, but able to open a trail. Many agencies and landowners aren’t going to pay for rake and ride. They still want to see you move some dirt and get rid of the vegetation and make sure it’s good clean soil that is the trail surface.
Jeff Barber:
Yeah, interesting. Some of the local trails around me, we call them ride and ride because we don’t even rake them sometimes. Sometimes you can just ride a trail over and over until there’s a trail there.
Greg Mazu:
Right. A great example is the 18 Road Trails out in Fruita. They were walked and then ride basically, but that terrain under the travel management back then 30 years ago is they couldn’t use a tool, but it was open travel management so they could go wherever. So they went out and flagged the trails, started walking the trails, and then started riding the trails. And then we had things like Zippity Do Da and Joe’s Ridge and all of that stuff.
Jeff Barber:
Interesting. I mean, that was legitimate then. As long as you didn’t use the tool and the trail just formed on its own, that was okay.
Greg Mazu:
Yeah.
Jeff Barber:
Wow.
Greg Mazu:
It’s since changed, but now you have to get permission.
Jeff Barber:
Those were the good old days to some of us. Interesting. I know a lot of mountain bikers who say they prefer natural trails to machine built ones. So I’m curious, do you have a preference for one or the other as a trail builder, as a rider?
Greg Mazu:
I mean, we could probably go on for a couple hours on this topic. I ride trails to become engaged with the trail. And I think that you can build what I will call an intimate trail with a machine, just like you can hand build an intimate trail. And I think the problem is that machine safety and operator safety are priority number one when it comes to machine building trails.
And that, unfortunately, means that the operator gets rid a lot of the obstacles that could have remained in the trail. So I default to I want a trail that is well-built and has vertical texture, things that you have to pay attention to in terms of not clipping your toes or your handlebars and things like that. I want that kind of experience. So yes, I tend to be more of a natural trail experience myself.
Jeff Barber:
Well, right. I mean, you make a good point that even machine built trails can be built to feel natural. And so I’m curious too, as a trail tool creator, builder yourself, is there opportunity then for the machines to change? I mean, I’m sure they have over the years, but yeah, is there opportunity to build smaller machines or ones that you are able to get more natural experience out of building?
Greg Mazu:
There are already small excavators out there. There are a few builders Singletrack Trails didn’t go down to this size machine. We stayed in the 36 inch wide machine, but there are some that are like 30 inches out there. I was just recently riding with Zach Adams from Appalachia Trails out of Davis, West Virginia, and he’s got a couple smaller machines that he builds with. They lack the power.
A lot of the operators, when you get even down to the Kubota U17 or the John Deere 17G size and all that stuff, the power in those machines really diminishes. You’re trying to lever a rock out of the ground or trying to move a bunch of dirt and you just lack the power. And it’s a patience thing. It’s a attention to detail thing. It’s a patience thing. And so if you’re using a smaller machine, it’s just not going to go as fast and it’s going to take a little bit longer for that.
So I think, yeah, you can use smaller machines, but also I think current operators can learn how to take their time. Don’t get rid of the tree. Work your way around the tree. You might scratch your machine. It’s just a machine. It’s like a truck. If you see a pristine truck without a scratch, you should be scared. That person, they’re concerned with the wrong things. A bike without a scratch is unused.
A truck without scratches is unused. A machine without scratches is unused. And so yeah, you might scratch a tree, you might scratch your machines, but go close to that tree, go close to that rock kind of thing.
Jeff Barber:
Yeah, interesting. Those machines that you mentioned, are those designed specifically for trail building or were these designed for other tasks and then people figure it out?
Greg Mazu:
Same thing. It was always fun dealing with equipment salespeople like, hey, I’d like to try out that machine. Sure, we’ll bring out no problem. And then they show up and they’re like, you’re going to do what with this machine? Again, some of our hand tools are becoming specific to trail building, but none of the machines we use are specific to trail building yet.
Jeff Barber:
Interesting. A big part I’m sure of what drives machine built versus handbuilt is just the time involved. I mean, you can build trail much more quickly and efficiently with a machine than you could by hand. Is there an in-between space? Maybe you’re not going to build it as fast. It kind of sounds like that’s what you’re saying in terms of how you use the machines, taking your time with the machines.
Greg Mazu:
You can build trail faster with a machine and with less people, but it all depends on how much of a mess you’re going to make. And so yeah, you can build trail really fast and leave a big mess behind. And it’s just even over the weekend, I was riding a trail that was built in the last nine months, and it was just like they didn’t even take with your excavator to smooth out their spoils piles below the trail. There’s just dumps of material with the excavator.
And it’s just like, yeah, everybody can make money building trail if you make a mess, but you got to take the time and go back. We’re building infrastructure for the world. We got to take time to do that. If we came back on the interstate system when they just built a new system and saw they left their spoils piles on the side of the highway, we would all be grumpy about that. We want this to be infrastructure and have a finished product look like it’s been professionally built.
Jeff Barber:
I mean, that’s interesting though. Are you able to turn off that trail builder vision when you’re riding a trail? I could see that being distracting. Every time you ride, you’re judging like, “Oh, they did a good job, or, oh, they could have done this better.”
Greg Mazu:
The short answer is no, I can’t. The long answer is what I looked at 20 years ago and what I look at now are two different things. 20 years ago, I would nitpick the rock wall or that corner or things like that. And now I look at it, the outdoor recreation industry is a behemoth in this country. It’s $1.1 trillion at this point, right?
Jeff Barber:
Wow.
Greg Mazu:
And so I show up and I’m like, well, there’s no trailhead. We’re just parking on the side of the road. There’s no sign to get me into the trail. There’s no porta potty or vault toilet or anything like that. I just drove three hours, so I guess I’ll go behind this tree over here real quick. And what’s the intersection? So I’m looking at it from a different standpoint. I don’t nitpick the build like I used to. I came across a quote in another podcast as I drove home from the PTBA Conference in Georgia this year, and it was about something different.
I would give you a blog post. This is awesome because you have a website that publishes articles. So I give you an article that I just wrote and I say, “Will you proofread this?” And really what I’m saying is, “Jeff, can you copy edit this? Can you make sure I have all the commas in here and cross the Ts?” And there’s a huge difference. Proofread means will you make sure that all of this makes sense and I give you permission to slash and cut sentences and make everything sound good.
Whereas when we look at trails right now, people come in and they proofread too much like, “Oh, that corner doesn’t work. They should have done this differently.” And it’s like, you know what? Honestly, that corner’s pretty okay. What they could have done is just made sure that the grade reversal before it was a little bit bigger so that it drained a little bit better and keep on going. For the longest time on Singletrack Trails, I had a policy that the shortest person on the crew couldn’t clear the corridor because I smashed my shoulders on a lot of trees.
Jeff Barber:
That’s me too. Oh my goodness.
Greg Mazu:
Or I got hit in the face with branches and whatnot because… That’s a copy edit. That’s not a proofread. Just make sure that I’m not going to lose an eyeball because this branch wasn’t cut.
Jeff Barber:
Well, it’s interesting because I think a lot of us as core riders, we would look at a new trail and, like you’re saying, we would see the parts that we want to see and that concern us, but we’re not looking at the whole system. And I mean, is that part of these projects too when they’re put out for bid where there’s just a real focus on we need X number of miles and that’s it?
As a core rider, that’s what I want. I just want a lot of trail, versus saying, well, we need a good parking lot. We need a trailhead. We need signage. We need all these things that are going to make it user-friendly, not to the core rider, but to a much wider audience.
Greg Mazu:
Correct. And if we want to have line item allocations and funding for maintenance and funding for new trails, we need to have the core, the greater popula… We need the top of the bell curve, the normal curve to appreciate showing up. We need the left hand side of the normal curve to appreciate outdoor recreation. You teed me up for a soapbox, and I’ve been on this for a while, and I believe that Las Vegas is the center of outdoor recreation development and trail development in the world.
Jeff Barber:
Wow. That’s a bold statement. Not what I would expect.
Greg Mazu:
And every time you go there, there’s more and more organic trail. But everybody goes there to game and everybody goes there to see shows, but they all end up in one day of their week going out to Red Rock or Calico Basin or riding trails, and they show up at a trailhead that’s not a trailhead. That is somebody who just ripped a whole bunch of fence posts out of the ground and established a trailhead and built a system from there.
And so my thought is, if Vegas just buys into this and builds awesome trailheads everywhere, puts signage in, takes care of their outdoor recreation, puts vault toilets at these trailheads, people are going to travel from around the world and they’re going to go out for the one day that they actually see the sun while they’re in Vegas and get sunburned.
They’re going to have a good time, and then they’re going to go home and say, “You know what? I went mountain biking in Las Vegas and it was super awesome. We need more mountain bike trails here. Or I went for a hike in Red Rock Canyon and we need more hiking trails here.” And they’re going to vote for outdoor recreation and they’re going to fund outdoor recreation.
And so when we think about building these things, building new trails in our own backyards, what’s the trailhead look like? Is it inviting? Does it get other people out there? Do you have a green trail from the trailhead? Do you have a good green loop from the trailhead so that people can then… Have your stack loop system so people can enjoy the time.
And then all of a sudden, instead of saying, “I wish we had more money to take care of this trail,” it’s like we have a paid staff to take care of all of the rest of the county. And instead of in five years, this trail washing away or we built this jump trail, we have somebody who can take care of the jumps on a monthly basis. That’s where we find that funding is through more people.
Jeff Barber:
That’s a really interesting perspective and one that I’m sure… I get the sense that people in the trail building business and in tourism, they’re starting to understand that. But as core riders, again, I think we’re just like, “Sweet. There’s a trail. That’s all we need.”
Greg Mazu:
Totally. Well, take this past weekend up in… I was chatting with a friend of mine yesterday morning like, oh, it was so busy up here this weekend, and this is from Winter Park, Colorado. It was so busy up here. And I’m like, it’s how the county pays their bills every year. You want all of these trails to yourself.
And I honestly didn’t think it was a very busy weekend. I was like, man, users are down this year. And then a lot of locals were like, it was so busy. It’s like, I think last week you were complaining about teachers not getting paid enough in the local schools. This is how they get paid, people coming here to ride our trails.
Jeff Barber:
Right. Yeah, interesting. Well, so your trail company, Singletrack Trails, was involved in some really iconic trail projects over the years, like 18 Road and Lunch Loops in Fruita, Black Mountain in North Carolina, the Palisade Plunge in Colorado, Hand Cut Hollow in Bentonville. It’s a pretty awesome list. So which trail building projects are you most proud of out of all the ones that you’ve done over the years?
Greg Mazu:
I’m going to skirt your question to say I’m proud of all of them. Whether it’s the quarter mile trail that was just a connector from a trailhead to a waterfall or all the way to the Palisade Plunge, all of them have an impact. Every project that a pro builder does right now, every project that a land agency does right now, we’re building an industry. And so I can say that with the Palisade Plunge, that was awesome. We built 32 miles of trail from the top of the Grand Mesa down into Palisade.
But that one probably ranks a little bit lower on the list in the long run because I would rather go out to 18 Road and see people on PBR and the projects that we just fit. To me, the remote projects are awesome. They get you away. Or the big projects also like the Plunge, they’re awesome. They have high value impact and all that stuff. But to go out and just see the family cruising on PBR or the family cruising out of the trailhead or the family at the bike park or the middle-aged people getting into mountain biking for the first time, that happens on all the projects.
It’s not about the core. The Plunge is for the core people, and that’s awesome. I’m glad that we could have that impact. To get more people into outdoor recreation, not even mountain biking, outdoor recreation, getting them outside, hiking, running, horseback riding, that’s what makes me most proud of Singletrack Trails for the last 20 years is getting people outside, and then also getting communities to buy into outdoor recreation as a viable economic driver.
Jeff Barber:
Well, what about for you personally? Are any of those more your style, ones that you would go back and ride over and over just for fun? And I’m curious too, I’m sure you have your own preferences in terms of the types of trails that you enjoy riding, and I imagine your team does too. Do you have favorites and how do you separate that out?
Greg Mazu:
I certainly have my personal favorites. I have 12 trails that we have built over the last 20 years in my top three, and I won’t rank them beyond that. I will just tell you, this is one of the 12 in my top three. Some of them are pumpy, jumpy, kind of flowy trails. Others are technical trails.
It also probably has to deal with a bit of where I was mentally in terms of running the business and the stress that I had and what we had to do to get through that project in terms of maybe client management or funding or crew management, or even just battling Mother Nature in terms of rain if we were working in a rainy place.
The one for me is still probably PBR 18 Road. We built that in 2012. It was really the last trail that I built start to finish on the lead machine. And so every time I ride that trail, it takes me down memory lane kind of thing.
Jeff Barber:
Well, it sounds like too, you’ve traveled a lot. You ride a lot of places. Do you have any favorite trails maybe that you didn’t build or projects that you’re like, “Whoa, that was a really cool project, or I really like what they did there?”
Greg Mazu:
Yeah, quite privileged what Singletrack Trails has allowed me to do to travel the world basically, to go talk about trails. I in Singletrack Trails didn’t build outside of the United States, but I did get to go. In 2021, I got go speak at the IMBA Europe conference and then go see some friends. And I really think in terms of this, my buddy Tomash in the Czech Republic at Singltrek pod Smrkem, I think his vision of what he had for designing and building a trail system that is for everybody.
The core person will be like, “The trails here are easy.” It’s like, well, did you see that little hit from here and land on the back slope? He was able to build trails to entertain the gamut of the trail riding spectrum and get people out. And so if I had to throw one out on a podcast, I would throw out Singltrek pod Smrkem for being… I love what Tomash was able to accomplish there.
Jeff Barber:
Yeah, that looks like a super cool place to ride and really unique in terms of what they’re able to do there. Very cool. And we’re talking about this, it seems like there’s a huge demand right now for experienced trail builders and trail building companies. What are some of the challenges the industry is facing in meeting that demand?
Greg Mazu:
Again, you can keep me short on this one if need be.
Jeff Barber:
There’s a lot of challenges, or is it one big one?
Greg Mazu:
There’s a lot of challenges. I think the thing that people don’t realize, and I think this is what we’re trail building as an industry, as an adolescent.
Jeff Barber:
Even still, I mean, how long has it been in industry, would you say?
Greg Mazu:
Really it was 40 years ago when people started getting contracts to actually build trail as private contractors. And it was really like…
Jeff Barber:
So this would be the 1980s, I guess.
Greg Mazu:
Yeah, yeah. There was the CCC back in the ’30s building those trails as part of the dig out from the Great Depression. The Forest Service and National Park folks have had trail crews that entire time. But really if you look at it, 40 years ago was when people started actually getting like, hey, I can start a private company and build trails.
And it wasn’t until the late ’90s, early 2000s where people started thinking not only do we need to build trail, we need to build trail for economic drivers, and we need to build trail for user engagement, not just how do we get to the top of the mountain and down. We’re an adolescent industry and we’re working through that.
And I think one of the big things is that most people get into building trail, whether it’s working for a county government or whether it’s working for a private builder or whether it’s starting your own company, you get in it because you love being out there and doing it. You don’t want to have a “corporate job” in a cubicle and all that stuff, and you don’t have to deal with that. You want to be out amongst nature kind of thing.
Jeff Barber:
Sounds good to me.
Greg Mazu:
But again, from the Outdoor Recreation Roundtable and the BEA, we know that the outdoor recreation economy, OREC, is $1.1 trillion. You can’t look at it at an advertisement and not see a jacket company showing their jackets on a trail or a bike company using a trail. And we need to have the people in this industry know that there’s nothing wrong with running a business.
You got into it for the love, but it’s okay to have people. In the last few weeks since I’ve made the announcement about Singletrack Trails, people are like, “Oh, you don’t have employees anymore. Your quality of life is going to go up.” Nothing frustrates me more. I get angry at that one. I’ve never complained about having employees. Don’t tell me that. Just because you don’t want to have employees doesn’t mean that I didn’t want to have employees.
I take pride in what we were able to build at Singletrack Trails and how we took care of our staff and what we got done. And I think we need more people willing to build a business, not just own their job, but build a business and have that impact because contracts are going to get bigger. The requirements of those contracts are going to get bigger.
If we as trail builders don’t step up for that, those are going to go to general contractors, those are going to go to landscaping companies that can get the performance bond, that can have the insurance, that can pay the staff and have the line of credit. They will build to the spec, they won’t build to the land. And that’s what we all as mountain bikers and trail users want. We want to interact with the land. We don’t want a flat highway through the woods.
Jeff Barber:
I mean, I’ve been hearing this from trail builders for a number of years now, particularly the way that a lot of the bid processes are set up where you have all kinds of people bidding on trail projects that maybe don’t have experience. They’re one man or woman operations, or they’re, like you said, a landscape company and they’re under bidding, one, because they don’t know how difficult it is to build a trail, or two, they’re not going to put the attention into the project that a trail builder would.
And then they get the contract because they’re the lowest bidder. It makes it a lot harder for the professionals. And it’s interesting too what you say in terms of the industry, it sounds like you’re saying the industry needs a little more professionalism, like more of an industry and less of a cottage industry.
Greg Mazu:
Yes. We need to embrace the I word. People think that we’re still a community, that we’re a commune, we’re out there for the love of it, but we’re not going to gain… As long as we want to be more community and less industry, people will always wonder why or how we make money as trail builders.
Jeff Barber:
Same with the media. People always wonder how we make money. I’ve seen a lot of parallels.
Greg Mazu:
Understood. But at the same time, by saying you’re in the media, people still think of that as a career. And for the last 20 years it’s like, so what are you going to do when you grow up? In my presentations over the last five years, I talk about this quite a bit, and it’s just like what we’re trying to do at Singletrack Trails and what we’re trying to do in this industry and what we’re trying to do for outdoor rec is build careers that moms approve of.
I know people go to work for Shimano in the mountain bike, or I know people who probably go to work for other large bike industries. You know their parents are just like, “Don’t you want to go get a real job?” $1.1 trillion of GDP is outdoor rec. SingletrackTrails.com is part of that as well. You fall into that. And it’s like, no, we’re viable. This is a viable industry. I don’t need to go pretend like I’m putting the proper cover sheet on my TPS reports. I can do this for the next 20 years.
Jeff Barber:
I mean, I think I’ve said this or I’ve had this theory about the bike industry and I will lump it under this outdoor rec industry in general. And it touches on what you’re saying that, I mean, it is a fun industry. There’s always going to be people who want to enter it just because they’re passionate. Maybe they don’t have the skills or they’re not professionals.
And so there are always people willing to do a job for less money than those who have built up a real business. Right, that is a big challenge. It seems like, yeah, you’re always going to have new people coming in just because they love it and it does make it harder.
Greg Mazu:
Right. I’ve thought about that as a owner. It’s the same in the local trades of wherever you live. There’s always going to be somebody who hangs their own shingle on their van and wants to be a plumber or an electrician and all. The same thing in the trails industry. There are plenty of people that spun off of Singletrack Trails and started their own company.
Same thing from other trail builders is employees have spun off and started their own companies and all that stuff. That’s always going to be a thing. But whether you’re part of building a company or whether you’re an owner operator, we all have to be pursuing the same polestar of we’re trying to professionalize this industry. We’re not just building a trail, we’re building local infrastructure.
Jeff Barber:
Yeah, right, that lasts for a long time. I mean, it’s going to be there for decades.
Greg Mazu:
Well, it will, but we also have to take care of it, right? And so then we as users have to understand that maintenance is okay. I love getting people over beers riled up about this one. It’s like when you do trail maintenance, are you supposed to maintain that trail for the way it degraded over the last 20 years, or are you supposed to take it back to the skill level that it was built?
And so if you build a green trail, but now it’s all eroded away in a black trail, are you supposed to do maintenance in terms of making it a green trail again, or are you supposed to keep it as a black trail? Paying for maintenance is going to be the next big frontier for the industry and how do we get paid for that, and also how do we find a bunch of builders. Because most builders want to build for the Instagram shot. And really there’s going to be more maintenance projects coming down, and we need to take as much pride in doing maintenance projects as we do new build projects.
Jeff Barber:
I’m sure that is a challenge that that is needed, but right, there isn’t the funding for that yet. Nobody wants to spend money on that when they could be building new trails. As an amateur trail builder, I like building more than I like maintaining. For sure. What about this trend of trail advocacy nonprofits spinning up their own trail building arms? How is this affecting the trail building industry? It seems like these are more non-professional crews. They’re not profit motivated. They’re not necessarily businesses. Is that affecting things in the industry?
Greg Mazu:
A lot of the nonprofits that I see hiring staff, they’re professionals. They’re getting paid to go out there and do it. And I can hear all the owner, “They don’t know what I know.” It’s like, well, you’re an owner-operator. You’ve been doing it for 20 years. We all started out there someplace. And so to me, more people building trail means that more people are getting paid and careers are getting built and more respect to it.
And so again, when the local nonprofit gets funding for a crew of four and they go out there and start building trail, it’s up to me for the next 20 years or me for the last 20 years and people like me to work with those local nonprofits to get them the knowledge that they need. We need to share our knowledge. Whether it’s an experienced volunteer or whether it’s a pro builder or whether it’s a county employee, it’s up for us to pass on this knowledge. If you want to complain about somebody else’s work, which I have on this podcast already, by the way, I’ll say this.
Jeff Barber:
Not by name. Nobody by name.
Greg Mazu:
This is how you could do this better and this is why. It’s on all of us to grow this industry. I just bashed the community work, but it is about the community to build this industry.
Jeff Barber:
Well, what are the opportunities for people to get that knowledge or to pass it on? I think we’ve seen a few program startup like community colleges now, a few are offering trail building programs, which I guess that’s on the more formal side. But what other opportunities do people have to learn about trail building for new people or for people like you who have a lot of experience, how do you pass that on?
Greg Mazu:
Right. And so there’s about 15 different community colleges out there that are developing some sort of certificate program for trail building. A cool thing that I think out there is there’s a nonprofit out there called Project Bike Tech, and it’s a nonprofit that built a curriculum for teaching high school kids the vocation of being a bike mechanic. And they’ve been slowly working on…
And all these programs are not going as fast as I wish they had, but they’re working on curriculum called Project Trail Tech to teach high school kids the vocation of building trail. And so in theory, you can learn in high school through that program, and then you can get a certificate through the local community college of trail building and then move on to working for a pro and all that stuff.
That’s eventually going to be the way to learn how to build trails. But really, even for me, I’ve helped out with a couple of these community colleges and taught a day of programming and whatnot. It all comes down to, how did I learn how to run Singletrack Trails? It was through experience and time and getting out there. And it will be the same for the future is other builders need to hire staff and take the time to train them.
Other county governments and city governments and forest services need to hire people and pass on that knowledge in terms of getting more people out there and we just need to keep spreading it out. I do get grumpy when I hear people like, “That person doesn’t know how to build trails.” They don’t even know what the word back slope means. Why don’t you just go over there and talk to them about what the backs slope is because you told them to back slope the next 500 feet and they have no clue what you said.
Jeff Barber:
Right, yeah. Well, so as you said, the trail building industry is sort of in this adolescent phase now. So I’m curious, as writers, a lot of us would say like, man, trails are better now than they’ve ever been before. I think even on Singletracks, we’ve published articles and things that have used the phrase like, this is the golden age of trail building. Really cool projects going on. So have we reached a peak in terms of trail quality, or do you think there’s growth and potential improvement on the horizon?
Greg Mazu:
I think that we’re about to ramp up on the hockey stick for what is trail quality. What we’re building is super high quality, but we’re not taking care of it on the backend. And again, maintenance is the future. And so the local community rec center, your town doesn’t have three different rec centers because you needed to build three. They take care of that rec center. They have a maintenance budget for it. And so the same thing with our trails. It’s infrastructure.
It’s a capital investment by your community in the community, and we need to take care of it afterwards. And so it needs to have a maintenance and operations budget. And so I think the quality of trail that we’re building is good, but trails get beat up just like the rec center, just like the highway, just like your house. You have to take care of it. And so that’s the next step is over the next 10 years, we’re going to realize that the industry is not just about building new trail, but maintaining what we have so that we don’t lust for the brand new thing.
Jeff Barber:
Well, thinking back 15, 20 years when I started first being aware of trail building and what goes into that, it seemed like back then what was new was the idea of building trails so that they didn’t require as much maintenance. Have we tapped that out? Are we already maximizing that to, we’re building the trails as best we can to minimize and make sure they’re sustainable, but there’s always still going to be this requirement for maintenance? Is that where we’re at?
Greg Mazu:
Yes. We leveraged low maintenance trails 20 years ago as a selling point to agencies so that we could go in and build, well, essentially sustainable trails. Just pre 2000, mountain biking was straight up the hill to straight down the hill.
Jeff Barber:
Right, right.
Greg Mazu:
Hiking was straight up the hill to straight down the hill. Horseback riding was straight up the hill to straight down the hill. And mountain bikers leveraged sustainable trails as a way to gain advocacy, access and create trails. Mountain biking and our advocacy, our want to gain access to trails helped to change the industry.
And if you look at the last 20 years of who’s gotten into trail building as a professional and joined Professional TrailBuilders Association, there’s a lot of mountain bikers there. And people complain that mountain bikers are building trails, and it’s like, well, we have the best passion for it and user engagement and whatnot.
Jeff Barber:
Did we oversell it then? Back then it’s saying, “Oh, we’re doing this and you won’t really have to maintain it. We figured it out.” Or was some of that true? But yeah, it’s somewhere in the middle.
Greg Mazu:
A lot of it’s true. 20 years we were using it as a selling point to take fall line trails and put them on a contour so that the water would sheet flow across and they would survive and be more weatherproof, but they always needed maintenance. And that’s the downfall of what we did 20 years ago is people thought that if we build this trail, it doesn’t need maintenance. And that was never, never the truth.
Jeff Barber:
Interesting. Well, so what’s next for Backslope Tools? What projects do you have going on that you’re excited about?
Greg Mazu:
Backslope Tools, we’re continuing to develop our tool line. Right now we’ve got four hard tools. Hopefully in the next 12 months we’ll have maybe a dozen hard tools. Plus, we’ve got a couple other products in my mind that we got to get to market and figure out how to produce them and then package them and sell them. Now I have more time to focus on the company as well. We’ve got a Canadian distributor, Cascadia Trail Building Supply. We have a few retailers here in the States other than just Tools for Trails.
So ideally, we find a way to support our retail network as well, so that they not only are reselling tools to folks, they are selling the tools that they’re buying as well to folks. And then the second thing is circling back to why did I start Backslope Tools, it was because there was a lack of margins in trail building tools. And so how can I now figure out efficiencies in our supply chain to increase margins for our retailers?
And so instead of diminishing retailers on the backend and what they can sell the tools for, how can we increase that so that it functions like everything else? The t-shirt that you buy has margin. Why can’t the McLeod that you buy have margin as well?
Jeff Barber:
Well, all right, I look forward to the day when I can walk into my ACE Hardware here in Georgia and I can find some Bbackslope Tools, purpose-built tools for building trails and doing fun stuff like that. So that’s awesome.
Greg Mazu:
I love that vision. Thank you.
Jeff Barber:
Well, Greg, thanks so much for taking the time to chat. I learned a ton about trail building and trail building tools. Really cool to see what you’re up to. So thank you.
Greg Mazu:
Thank you.
Jeff Barber:
So you can find out more, see some of the tools we talked about online at backslopetools.com, and we’ll have that link for you in the show notes. That’s all I’ve got this week. We’ll talk to you again next week.
Hey, everybody, welcome to the Singletracks Podcast. My name is Jeff, and today my guest is Greg Mazu. Greg is a self-described chief dreamer behind Backslope Tools, a company that designs and sells tools for trail building and forest maintenance. He’s also the founder of Singletrack Trails, a trail building company that recently finished its last project after 20 years in the business. Thanks for joining me, Greg.
Greg Mazu:
Thanks for having me.
Jeff Barber:
So, tell us, when did you build your first trail?
Greg Mazu:
My first trail, other than showing up for volunteer days, my first trail was at Lory State Park here in Fort Collins, Colorado. Back in 2003, Howard Trail was the first one that I got to design and build from start to finish. There’s a lot of switchbacks on that one, a lot of people still swear at me about that one.
Jeff Barber:
Did you get to name it? Howard Trail, where does that name come from?
Greg Mazu:
The Howards were the family that homesteaded on what was the state park originally many years ago. I did come up with the name simply just because I knew the history of that. At a state park, every trail name has to have some sort of link to the property, so it was an easy name to do.
Jeff Barber:
Yeah, interesting. It sounds like you volunteered before building your first trail. I mean, had you ever built trails unofficially or backyard stuff?
Greg Mazu:
Not really. After university I moved from the Midwest out to Seattle and then made my way to Colorado. And in Seattle and in Colorado, I connected with folks who were into volunteering as trail builders. And so I joined. My girlfriend here in Fort Collins got me to go to a couple of days, and so I enjoyed it a lot. I was in my early 20s with some dead end jobs, ended up getting some education, learning how to be a better crew leader and all that stuff, and ended up weaseling my way into a job with the state parks as a seasonal.
And then shortly after that realized that the pot of money that they had to pay me with actually paid me more as a contractor than a state employee. So I woke up one day and realized I was my own boss and was able to start going out and farming myself out for other jobs.
Jeff Barber:
Interesting. I mean, did you have any experience with, I don’t know, operating equipment or any kind of manual labor before that?
Greg Mazu:
I mean, no. I learned all of this stuff on the go. I learned hopping in and working as a seasonal employee. There’s not much training from state parks down to that staff. So I learned by continuing to go to work with other trail builders and with other trail building volunteer days. Again, when you think about it, 20 years ago, this industry itself of trail building was technically really only 20 years old at that point. We were all still trying to figure out how to do it at the time.
Jeff Barber:
Yeah, interesting. You’ve started a website, a company called Tools for Trails, and then later Backslope Tools, I think, which you make your own tools for trail building. So what was the motivation behind that? Did this come out of your trail building company and your work at Singletrack Trails?
Greg Mazu:
Yeah. Tools for Trails was founded in 2012 on a long drive back from I believe that was from… We were driving back from New Mexico. I started that with a partner, Scott Linnenburger, and we were driving back from either the IMBA Summit in Santa Fe in 2011, which… When I say that out loud. So we were driving back from Santa Fe at the IMBA Summit and just like, there’s got to be a place that specifically tailors sales towards trail building.
And still at the time and still there’s multiple websites that they sell trail building tools, but they also have a catalog full of a whole bunch of other stuff. A couple of those have been absorbed and have disappeared into other larger websites at this point. But we were driving back and was like, there needs to be a place where trail builders can go and buy tools that were vetted by other folks already so you know they’re good quality.
And also he and I had an idea of how to… We wanted to take Tools for Trails and use it as marketing for his planning company, Kaylin Enterprises, and for me, my build company, Singletrack Trails. We did a little bit of that to begin with. And also as a growing trail building company, it was a great way to have access to all the proper tools at more of a discount than I was able to get from other people.
So that helped me out. Scott left the company a few years later and I’ve kept it going. And then in 2019 I was at the Outdoor Retailer Show hanging out with some old bike industry friends lamenting about the lack of margins in existing trail building tools and the lack of innovation. When I lived in Seattle, I worked in the bike industry briefly. And so the solution was, what’s the problem here?
Let’s just take your ideas and manufacture those and you get to sell them and control the supply chain, control the margins, and bring a product to market that nobody else is. Because when you actually think about it, a Pulaski, a McLeod, a dirt rake, a shovel, these are all tools that have been in their current form with lack of innovation since they were really created. There’s not much innovation has happened to a McLeod since McLeod created the McLeod back in the early 1900s.
Jeff Barber:
Wow! Well, yeah, let’s talk about the McLeod. I mean, amateur trail builder here, that’s probably my favorite tool. It’s super versatile. What was that originally made for? You said it was made in the early 1900s?
Greg Mazu:
Yeah, so the Pulaski and the McLeod were both created to help fight forest fires. Again, a couple guys were doing an activity just like US trail builders and they were using tools that were not made for the activity that they were working on. So both of them created those tools to help fight forest fires and help the Forest Service adhere to their 48-hour policy of all fires must be out in 48 hours. For a McLeod, it has the flat add side and it’s got the teeth on the other side.
So it’s made for raking the duff and then getting the duff out of the way with the rake side and then raking down to mineral soil with the ads side. And for trail builders and specifically for volunteer trail builders, the worst thing is at the end of the day when you’re trying to squeeze everything back into your trailer after the volunteer day and there’s no good way to store a McLeod. And I had seen some people who had cut out the center tooth a little bit to make it more stackable.
So we simply just took that to the manufacturing end of things and spread out that center tooth. So our tools are stackable and we make sure that it’s a good fit. And so we don’t use epoxy between the handle and the steel interface, the collar of the head so that if you break a handle, because tools do break. One of the questions that I get at trade shows and across the country is like, do your tools break? And I was like, I give you 100% guarantee that somebody’s going to break this tool.
Jeff Barber:
Right. It means you’re using it hard.
Greg Mazu:
You’re using it. I often think of the old school, it’s credited to Keith Bontrager, “Light. Cheap. Strong. Pick two.” Same thing applies to trail building tools, light, cheap, strong. It’s like if you want it strong so nobody can break it, it’s not really going to be cheap and it’s not going to be lightweight.
Jeff Barber:
Yeah, right, right. Well, it’s interesting too. 20 years ago when you were starting out, I mean, tools existed like the McLeod. But I don’t know, you can’t just walk into your Home Depot and pick one up. I mean, Home Depot is going to have rakes and shovels and real basic yard gardening stuff. So how are people even accessing McLeod’s and Pulaski’s 20 years ago? Did they have to go to these fire supply places, mail order them?
Greg Mazu:
When I was working for state parks and working for with a couple of nonprofits back then, yeah, you had to order them online through a catalog and have them delivered. Nowadays, there are some box retailers that may stock them in remote locations. But usually our competition for Backslope Tools and Tools for Trails is really still the local ACE, the local True Value, the Home Depot.
I remember the day that I walked into my Fort Collins Home Depot and realized that Home Depot now carries Nupla tools, which is one of the primary tool companies for Tools and Tools in that local store. I was wondering why our stock supply hadn’t shown up. And in that local store, they had enough tools to equal what was essentially the entire Tools and Tools yearly order. And so I was like, ah, this explains why Nupla doesn’t really care about filling my stock order is they now have the orange store as one of their chief retailer units.
Jeff Barber:
Right. Interesting. I mean, yeah, I’m sure it depends where you live. It makes sense somewhere like Fort Collins and out West where people are building more trails and potentially there’s the wildfire uses. I mean, where I live, you can’t find that stuff at all. And yeah, it’s all mail order.
Greg Mazu:
And right now shipping is rather murderous right now for us. So our sales are down. Because even last week we got like, “Why are your shipping rates so expensive?” And it’s just like, “Well, let’s talk to FedEx and UPS.”
Jeff Barber:
It’s a weird shape and potentially heavy stuff. Interesting.
Greg Mazu:
Not many people understand the concept of girth weight, which is you have to create a volume around your tool and then they add the weight to it. So McLeod, it’s really big and funky with weight. They really like small boxes that they can load their trailers with.
Jeff Barber:
Right.
Greg Mazu:
And here’s a stack of six tools that don’t fit on a shelf in their trailer very well.
Jeff Barber:
Right, right. Well, yeah, so Backslope Tools, those are your own tools that your company has designed and sells. Where are the tools manufactured currently?
Greg Mazu:
We have a foreign domestic supply chain. So when you actually buy one of our Clydes or Berts or any other hand tool, it has the old school bike industry sticker from the late 1990s of assembled in the USA with foreign domestic parts. So our tool heads come from a small manufacturing facility in Taiwan and our fiberglass comes from a USA manufacturer, all the Grand Junction where we assemble our tools in Grand Junction to send out to you.
Jeff Barber:
Yeah, cool. So yeah, looking at the website, some of the tools that I saw there like the rock hammock, they’re clearly designed for backcountry use. So is that the focus? Are all of your tools designed for use in places without machine access or maybe even wilderness areas? Obviously we’re not building bike trails, but building trails in those areas.
Greg Mazu:
Our tools are not necessarily for remote areas. They’re just created for just trail building in general, whether it’s outside your house or whether it’s 20 miles into the back country. As much as I think that Backslope Tools can stay true and dear to the trail industry, the trail industry is a small percentage of outdoor rec and a small percentage of this world.
We’re going to have to take our tools into homeowner and landscaper and span into other industries as it is. So every trail project needs to have a hand tool on it, whether you have a grumpy old trail builder operator that says, my only tool I need is an excavator, that person really still needs to get off the machine and use a McLeod every now and then just to stretch out specifically as well.
Jeff Barber:
Right, right. I mean, the rock hammock, like I mentioned, that one was really interesting to me. I mean it made me tired just looking at that thing and how it’s used. So can you explain what that is and how you use it?
Greg Mazu:
The rock hammock is roughly four endless webbing loops. It’s three inch webbing and an endless loop is take three inch webbing and just cut it and stitch it and bar tack it into one loop, and that’s called an endless loop. And so it’s four endless loops that are bar tacked together in multiple spots to make roughly a 60 by 60 net.
And the theory is that you can use this net to put rocks in and then either highline, which is to string a wire rope, and then you lift the rock and inside the rock hammock and can let you use a belay style system to take that rock down to wherever you’re working or bring it up to wherever you’re working. Or as a lot of people do, they just use the rock hammock.
They put a couple boulders in there and then they just winch it and drag it across the ground. It’s a consumable item. We don’t recommend dragging it across the ground. It’s made to lift and hold things because webbing is not an ideal material to drag across the ground amongst boulders with boulders inside of it.
Jeff Barber:
Yeah. I feel like I saw a picture too of a four person carry of a boulder, and it’s like you’re using it in place of a wheelbarrow, which again, wilderness areas, I think technically you can’t use a wheelbarrow, right, because it has a wheel.
Greg Mazu:
Capital W wilderness, you can’t use a wheelbarrow and technically you can’t use a come along. It’s a small argument. I lose it all the time. But even a grip hoist, you’re not supposed to use capital W wilderness.
Jeff Barber:
Wow. So you have to get old school like that and just lots of muscle power.
Greg Mazu:
Lots of it. And yes, it makes me tired looking at it. We’ve got to be able to find a way to manage wilderness better where we don’t have to crush human souls to take care of it.
Jeff Barber:
Right, right. Well, yeah, I mean, you mentioned it with the example of the excavator operator. A lot of trails today are machine built, but obviously a lot of handwork goes into finishing trails as well, which maybe people don’t understand. They think either a trail is machine built or it’s hand built. Do you design your tools with that in mind like these are finishing tools, or are some of them made just for building a hand built trail from the beginning?
Greg Mazu:
Have some tools in development that will be better grubbing tools, if you will, thinking of a pick mattock or a very stiff hoe type tool. Right now, our current selection is more on the finish side, so doing back slope, doing the finished tread, doing rake down, or moving materials, rocks and/or brush or anything else in terms of the haul all and the rock hammocks and things like that. So our tools are made to work in… Whether it’s a hand crew or whether it’s a machine crew, our tools are capable of being on that project.
Jeff Barber:
I’ve done some volunteer work at my local trails here, and in the southeast we have tons of trees and roots and stuff. And so the machines will go through. They’ll cut the tread, but then there’s all these roots and things still stick up. And one of the jobs it seems like we’re always doing is cutting those roots, those little stragglers that are still sticking out. And we just use loppers, the things we use to cut branches and stuff, but clearly they’re not designed for that. They’re getting dull because of the dirt and all that kind of stuff. Is there a better tool for that job possibly?
Greg Mazu:
Honestly, no. For cutting roots, loppers are really the best one. You can just get in there. You can take a McLeod and sharpen the bevel and use that, but then you’re swinging a sharp tool at your shin. And my shins have some scars from that over the years, and 97% of all McLeods out there have the bevel on the wrong side of the tool for cutting roots like that.
The side of the bevel is on is better for dirt versus cutting roots. We’ll say there are some old school southeast trail builders that love to tell me that we put the bevel on the wrong side of our tool. It’s just like you’re more than happy to change it. I know you know how to use an angle grinder. You can go in there and change it yourself.
Jeff Barber:
I mean, I’m always curious about the loppers. You can sharpen those, I assume. But yeah, I feel like it’s a consumable because after a while those things just stop working. And then who knows? Hopefully people aren’t just throwing them away.
Greg Mazu:
Well, and that’s the unfortunate thing about just tools are consumable items and especially with how we use them in the dirt and the rocks and leaving them out in the weather. People who have a McLeod that they’ve had for 25 years, they have gone out of their way to take care of that tool and nurse that tool and keep it in a safe place. If you use them on a daily basis, you’re going to replace cordless tools on an annual basis at least kind of thing. So it’s the unfortunate thing is to build what we want, we unfortunately have to consume the tools that we use.
Jeff Barber:
Interesting. Yeah, I never thought about that. I mean, tools also, as I understand it, they’re made from tool materials. It’s hardened steel and different materials. Does that make it difficult to recycle?
Greg Mazu:
I mean, no. I just did it last week with some other stuff is you just go down… The problem with it is getting the handle out. Most of the companies that sell tools, they really use a lot of epoxy, a lot of epoxy for that, whether it’s a wood handle or a fiberglass handle into the collar. But I just went down to the local metal recycling place and took 1,500 pounds of steel from a few other things and I got $16 back, but I got my $16 back.
Jeff Barber:
And you’re doing your part. I mean, that’s probably the more important side of it, right?
Greg Mazu:
Yeah. And for our tools, it’s AR400. It’s just like any other steel. It can go down to the local metal recycler.
Jeff Barber:
Interesting. So if you could only have one tool to use for building a trail, what would it be?
Greg Mazu:
I can’t. No.
Jeff Barber:
No? You cant do it with one tool.
Greg Mazu:
I need a dozen tools. Tools, bikes, and shoes. You can’t have just one. Everything has a different purpose. There’s this dream. We can all believe in the dream of one tool to do the job of everything out there on the trail. Maybe when it comes to maintenance, you can have that tool. But if you’re building a new trail, whether it’s by hand or by a machine, it’s like you still need a pick mattock out there.
You still need to have a Pulaski out there. You need McLeod and a shovel and a dirt rake. Every tool has its purpose and there’s a reason why. I used to show up on Singletrack Trails projects and there’s four guys working on a trail and we literally had 75 different tools sitting on the side of the trail, because everybody wanted a dozen tools for what they were doing. They all wanted their own set. There were always a lot of tools on our projects.
Jeff Barber:
Interesting. I mean, it makes sense. I think most of us have experienced this in various activities where you start out, you don’t have the proper tools. But then you get the right tool for something and you’re like, oh, this is way better if I have the right tool. They get more and more specialized the more you do the work. People talk about trails that are “rake and ride.” Is that ever a thing where literally you could just go out with a rake and build a trail depending where you are or what the conditions are?
Greg Mazu:
Correct. Yeah, a rake and ride trail is typically in gentle cross slope. So the terrain is not too steep. It’s the least amount of work. And rake and ride trails anymore typically are the term I picked up a couple years ago organic trails. So they’re built under the cover of darkness by the local builders, putting the least amount of effort, but able to open a trail. Many agencies and landowners aren’t going to pay for rake and ride. They still want to see you move some dirt and get rid of the vegetation and make sure it’s good clean soil that is the trail surface.
Jeff Barber:
Yeah, interesting. Some of the local trails around me, we call them ride and ride because we don’t even rake them sometimes. Sometimes you can just ride a trail over and over until there’s a trail there.
Greg Mazu:
Right. A great example is the 18 Road Trails out in Fruita. They were walked and then ride basically, but that terrain under the travel management back then 30 years ago is they couldn’t use a tool, but it was open travel management so they could go wherever. So they went out and flagged the trails, started walking the trails, and then started riding the trails. And then we had things like Zippity Do Da and Joe’s Ridge and all of that stuff.
Jeff Barber:
Interesting. I mean, that was legitimate then. As long as you didn’t use the tool and the trail just formed on its own, that was okay.
Greg Mazu:
Yeah.
Jeff Barber:
Wow.
Greg Mazu:
It’s since changed, but now you have to get permission.
Jeff Barber:
Those were the good old days to some of us. Interesting. I know a lot of mountain bikers who say they prefer natural trails to machine built ones. So I’m curious, do you have a preference for one or the other as a trail builder, as a rider?
Greg Mazu:
I mean, we could probably go on for a couple hours on this topic. I ride trails to become engaged with the trail. And I think that you can build what I will call an intimate trail with a machine, just like you can hand build an intimate trail. And I think the problem is that machine safety and operator safety are priority number one when it comes to machine building trails.
And that, unfortunately, means that the operator gets rid a lot of the obstacles that could have remained in the trail. So I default to I want a trail that is well-built and has vertical texture, things that you have to pay attention to in terms of not clipping your toes or your handlebars and things like that. I want that kind of experience. So yes, I tend to be more of a natural trail experience myself.
Jeff Barber:
Well, right. I mean, you make a good point that even machine built trails can be built to feel natural. And so I’m curious too, as a trail tool creator, builder yourself, is there opportunity then for the machines to change? I mean, I’m sure they have over the years, but yeah, is there opportunity to build smaller machines or ones that you are able to get more natural experience out of building?
Greg Mazu:
There are already small excavators out there. There are a few builders Singletrack Trails didn’t go down to this size machine. We stayed in the 36 inch wide machine, but there are some that are like 30 inches out there. I was just recently riding with Zach Adams from Appalachia Trails out of Davis, West Virginia, and he’s got a couple smaller machines that he builds with. They lack the power.
A lot of the operators, when you get even down to the Kubota U17 or the John Deere 17G size and all that stuff, the power in those machines really diminishes. You’re trying to lever a rock out of the ground or trying to move a bunch of dirt and you just lack the power. And it’s a patience thing. It’s a attention to detail thing. It’s a patience thing. And so if you’re using a smaller machine, it’s just not going to go as fast and it’s going to take a little bit longer for that.
So I think, yeah, you can use smaller machines, but also I think current operators can learn how to take their time. Don’t get rid of the tree. Work your way around the tree. You might scratch your machine. It’s just a machine. It’s like a truck. If you see a pristine truck without a scratch, you should be scared. That person, they’re concerned with the wrong things. A bike without a scratch is unused.
A truck without scratches is unused. A machine without scratches is unused. And so yeah, you might scratch a tree, you might scratch your machines, but go close to that tree, go close to that rock kind of thing.
Jeff Barber:
Yeah, interesting. Those machines that you mentioned, are those designed specifically for trail building or were these designed for other tasks and then people figure it out?
Greg Mazu:
Same thing. It was always fun dealing with equipment salespeople like, hey, I’d like to try out that machine. Sure, we’ll bring out no problem. And then they show up and they’re like, you’re going to do what with this machine? Again, some of our hand tools are becoming specific to trail building, but none of the machines we use are specific to trail building yet.
Jeff Barber:
Interesting. A big part I’m sure of what drives machine built versus handbuilt is just the time involved. I mean, you can build trail much more quickly and efficiently with a machine than you could by hand. Is there an in-between space? Maybe you’re not going to build it as fast. It kind of sounds like that’s what you’re saying in terms of how you use the machines, taking your time with the machines.
Greg Mazu:
You can build trail faster with a machine and with less people, but it all depends on how much of a mess you’re going to make. And so yeah, you can build trail really fast and leave a big mess behind. And it’s just even over the weekend, I was riding a trail that was built in the last nine months, and it was just like they didn’t even take with your excavator to smooth out their spoils piles below the trail. There’s just dumps of material with the excavator.
And it’s just like, yeah, everybody can make money building trail if you make a mess, but you got to take the time and go back. We’re building infrastructure for the world. We got to take time to do that. If we came back on the interstate system when they just built a new system and saw they left their spoils piles on the side of the highway, we would all be grumpy about that. We want this to be infrastructure and have a finished product look like it’s been professionally built.
Jeff Barber:
I mean, that’s interesting though. Are you able to turn off that trail builder vision when you’re riding a trail? I could see that being distracting. Every time you ride, you’re judging like, “Oh, they did a good job, or, oh, they could have done this better.”
Greg Mazu:
The short answer is no, I can’t. The long answer is what I looked at 20 years ago and what I look at now are two different things. 20 years ago, I would nitpick the rock wall or that corner or things like that. And now I look at it, the outdoor recreation industry is a behemoth in this country. It’s $1.1 trillion at this point, right?
Jeff Barber:
Wow.
Greg Mazu:
And so I show up and I’m like, well, there’s no trailhead. We’re just parking on the side of the road. There’s no sign to get me into the trail. There’s no porta potty or vault toilet or anything like that. I just drove three hours, so I guess I’ll go behind this tree over here real quick. And what’s the intersection? So I’m looking at it from a different standpoint. I don’t nitpick the build like I used to. I came across a quote in another podcast as I drove home from the PTBA Conference in Georgia this year, and it was about something different.
I would give you a blog post. This is awesome because you have a website that publishes articles. So I give you an article that I just wrote and I say, “Will you proofread this?” And really what I’m saying is, “Jeff, can you copy edit this? Can you make sure I have all the commas in here and cross the Ts?” And there’s a huge difference. Proofread means will you make sure that all of this makes sense and I give you permission to slash and cut sentences and make everything sound good.
Whereas when we look at trails right now, people come in and they proofread too much like, “Oh, that corner doesn’t work. They should have done this differently.” And it’s like, you know what? Honestly, that corner’s pretty okay. What they could have done is just made sure that the grade reversal before it was a little bit bigger so that it drained a little bit better and keep on going. For the longest time on Singletrack Trails, I had a policy that the shortest person on the crew couldn’t clear the corridor because I smashed my shoulders on a lot of trees.
Jeff Barber:
That’s me too. Oh my goodness.
Greg Mazu:
Or I got hit in the face with branches and whatnot because… That’s a copy edit. That’s not a proofread. Just make sure that I’m not going to lose an eyeball because this branch wasn’t cut.
Jeff Barber:
Well, it’s interesting because I think a lot of us as core riders, we would look at a new trail and, like you’re saying, we would see the parts that we want to see and that concern us, but we’re not looking at the whole system. And I mean, is that part of these projects too when they’re put out for bid where there’s just a real focus on we need X number of miles and that’s it?
As a core rider, that’s what I want. I just want a lot of trail, versus saying, well, we need a good parking lot. We need a trailhead. We need signage. We need all these things that are going to make it user-friendly, not to the core rider, but to a much wider audience.
Greg Mazu:
Correct. And if we want to have line item allocations and funding for maintenance and funding for new trails, we need to have the core, the greater popula… We need the top of the bell curve, the normal curve to appreciate showing up. We need the left hand side of the normal curve to appreciate outdoor recreation. You teed me up for a soapbox, and I’ve been on this for a while, and I believe that Las Vegas is the center of outdoor recreation development and trail development in the world.
Jeff Barber:
Wow. That’s a bold statement. Not what I would expect.
Greg Mazu:
And every time you go there, there’s more and more organic trail. But everybody goes there to game and everybody goes there to see shows, but they all end up in one day of their week going out to Red Rock or Calico Basin or riding trails, and they show up at a trailhead that’s not a trailhead. That is somebody who just ripped a whole bunch of fence posts out of the ground and established a trailhead and built a system from there.
And so my thought is, if Vegas just buys into this and builds awesome trailheads everywhere, puts signage in, takes care of their outdoor recreation, puts vault toilets at these trailheads, people are going to travel from around the world and they’re going to go out for the one day that they actually see the sun while they’re in Vegas and get sunburned.
They’re going to have a good time, and then they’re going to go home and say, “You know what? I went mountain biking in Las Vegas and it was super awesome. We need more mountain bike trails here. Or I went for a hike in Red Rock Canyon and we need more hiking trails here.” And they’re going to vote for outdoor recreation and they’re going to fund outdoor recreation.
And so when we think about building these things, building new trails in our own backyards, what’s the trailhead look like? Is it inviting? Does it get other people out there? Do you have a green trail from the trailhead? Do you have a good green loop from the trailhead so that people can then… Have your stack loop system so people can enjoy the time.
And then all of a sudden, instead of saying, “I wish we had more money to take care of this trail,” it’s like we have a paid staff to take care of all of the rest of the county. And instead of in five years, this trail washing away or we built this jump trail, we have somebody who can take care of the jumps on a monthly basis. That’s where we find that funding is through more people.
Jeff Barber:
That’s a really interesting perspective and one that I’m sure… I get the sense that people in the trail building business and in tourism, they’re starting to understand that. But as core riders, again, I think we’re just like, “Sweet. There’s a trail. That’s all we need.”
Greg Mazu:
Totally. Well, take this past weekend up in… I was chatting with a friend of mine yesterday morning like, oh, it was so busy up here this weekend, and this is from Winter Park, Colorado. It was so busy up here. And I’m like, it’s how the county pays their bills every year. You want all of these trails to yourself.
And I honestly didn’t think it was a very busy weekend. I was like, man, users are down this year. And then a lot of locals were like, it was so busy. It’s like, I think last week you were complaining about teachers not getting paid enough in the local schools. This is how they get paid, people coming here to ride our trails.
Jeff Barber:
Right. Yeah, interesting. Well, so your trail company, Singletrack Trails, was involved in some really iconic trail projects over the years, like 18 Road and Lunch Loops in Fruita, Black Mountain in North Carolina, the Palisade Plunge in Colorado, Hand Cut Hollow in Bentonville. It’s a pretty awesome list. So which trail building projects are you most proud of out of all the ones that you’ve done over the years?
Greg Mazu:
I’m going to skirt your question to say I’m proud of all of them. Whether it’s the quarter mile trail that was just a connector from a trailhead to a waterfall or all the way to the Palisade Plunge, all of them have an impact. Every project that a pro builder does right now, every project that a land agency does right now, we’re building an industry. And so I can say that with the Palisade Plunge, that was awesome. We built 32 miles of trail from the top of the Grand Mesa down into Palisade.
But that one probably ranks a little bit lower on the list in the long run because I would rather go out to 18 Road and see people on PBR and the projects that we just fit. To me, the remote projects are awesome. They get you away. Or the big projects also like the Plunge, they’re awesome. They have high value impact and all that stuff. But to go out and just see the family cruising on PBR or the family cruising out of the trailhead or the family at the bike park or the middle-aged people getting into mountain biking for the first time, that happens on all the projects.
It’s not about the core. The Plunge is for the core people, and that’s awesome. I’m glad that we could have that impact. To get more people into outdoor recreation, not even mountain biking, outdoor recreation, getting them outside, hiking, running, horseback riding, that’s what makes me most proud of Singletrack Trails for the last 20 years is getting people outside, and then also getting communities to buy into outdoor recreation as a viable economic driver.
Jeff Barber:
Well, what about for you personally? Are any of those more your style, ones that you would go back and ride over and over just for fun? And I’m curious too, I’m sure you have your own preferences in terms of the types of trails that you enjoy riding, and I imagine your team does too. Do you have favorites and how do you separate that out?
Greg Mazu:
I certainly have my personal favorites. I have 12 trails that we have built over the last 20 years in my top three, and I won’t rank them beyond that. I will just tell you, this is one of the 12 in my top three. Some of them are pumpy, jumpy, kind of flowy trails. Others are technical trails.
It also probably has to deal with a bit of where I was mentally in terms of running the business and the stress that I had and what we had to do to get through that project in terms of maybe client management or funding or crew management, or even just battling Mother Nature in terms of rain if we were working in a rainy place.
The one for me is still probably PBR 18 Road. We built that in 2012. It was really the last trail that I built start to finish on the lead machine. And so every time I ride that trail, it takes me down memory lane kind of thing.
Jeff Barber:
Well, it sounds like too, you’ve traveled a lot. You ride a lot of places. Do you have any favorite trails maybe that you didn’t build or projects that you’re like, “Whoa, that was a really cool project, or I really like what they did there?”
Greg Mazu:
Yeah, quite privileged what Singletrack Trails has allowed me to do to travel the world basically, to go talk about trails. I in Singletrack Trails didn’t build outside of the United States, but I did get to go. In 2021, I got go speak at the IMBA Europe conference and then go see some friends. And I really think in terms of this, my buddy Tomash in the Czech Republic at Singltrek pod Smrkem, I think his vision of what he had for designing and building a trail system that is for everybody.
The core person will be like, “The trails here are easy.” It’s like, well, did you see that little hit from here and land on the back slope? He was able to build trails to entertain the gamut of the trail riding spectrum and get people out. And so if I had to throw one out on a podcast, I would throw out Singltrek pod Smrkem for being… I love what Tomash was able to accomplish there.
Jeff Barber:
Yeah, that looks like a super cool place to ride and really unique in terms of what they’re able to do there. Very cool. And we’re talking about this, it seems like there’s a huge demand right now for experienced trail builders and trail building companies. What are some of the challenges the industry is facing in meeting that demand?
Greg Mazu:
Again, you can keep me short on this one if need be.
Jeff Barber:
There’s a lot of challenges, or is it one big one?
Greg Mazu:
There’s a lot of challenges. I think the thing that people don’t realize, and I think this is what we’re trail building as an industry, as an adolescent.
Jeff Barber:
Even still, I mean, how long has it been in industry, would you say?
Greg Mazu:
Really it was 40 years ago when people started getting contracts to actually build trail as private contractors. And it was really like…
Jeff Barber:
So this would be the 1980s, I guess.
Greg Mazu:
Yeah, yeah. There was the CCC back in the ’30s building those trails as part of the dig out from the Great Depression. The Forest Service and National Park folks have had trail crews that entire time. But really if you look at it, 40 years ago was when people started actually getting like, hey, I can start a private company and build trails.
And it wasn’t until the late ’90s, early 2000s where people started thinking not only do we need to build trail, we need to build trail for economic drivers, and we need to build trail for user engagement, not just how do we get to the top of the mountain and down. We’re an adolescent industry and we’re working through that.
And I think one of the big things is that most people get into building trail, whether it’s working for a county government or whether it’s working for a private builder or whether it’s starting your own company, you get in it because you love being out there and doing it. You don’t want to have a “corporate job” in a cubicle and all that stuff, and you don’t have to deal with that. You want to be out amongst nature kind of thing.
Jeff Barber:
Sounds good to me.
Greg Mazu:
But again, from the Outdoor Recreation Roundtable and the BEA, we know that the outdoor recreation economy, OREC, is $1.1 trillion. You can’t look at it at an advertisement and not see a jacket company showing their jackets on a trail or a bike company using a trail. And we need to have the people in this industry know that there’s nothing wrong with running a business.
You got into it for the love, but it’s okay to have people. In the last few weeks since I’ve made the announcement about Singletrack Trails, people are like, “Oh, you don’t have employees anymore. Your quality of life is going to go up.” Nothing frustrates me more. I get angry at that one. I’ve never complained about having employees. Don’t tell me that. Just because you don’t want to have employees doesn’t mean that I didn’t want to have employees.
I take pride in what we were able to build at Singletrack Trails and how we took care of our staff and what we got done. And I think we need more people willing to build a business, not just own their job, but build a business and have that impact because contracts are going to get bigger. The requirements of those contracts are going to get bigger.
If we as trail builders don’t step up for that, those are going to go to general contractors, those are going to go to landscaping companies that can get the performance bond, that can have the insurance, that can pay the staff and have the line of credit. They will build to the spec, they won’t build to the land. And that’s what we all as mountain bikers and trail users want. We want to interact with the land. We don’t want a flat highway through the woods.
Jeff Barber:
I mean, I’ve been hearing this from trail builders for a number of years now, particularly the way that a lot of the bid processes are set up where you have all kinds of people bidding on trail projects that maybe don’t have experience. They’re one man or woman operations, or they’re, like you said, a landscape company and they’re under bidding, one, because they don’t know how difficult it is to build a trail, or two, they’re not going to put the attention into the project that a trail builder would.
And then they get the contract because they’re the lowest bidder. It makes it a lot harder for the professionals. And it’s interesting too what you say in terms of the industry, it sounds like you’re saying the industry needs a little more professionalism, like more of an industry and less of a cottage industry.
Greg Mazu:
Yes. We need to embrace the I word. People think that we’re still a community, that we’re a commune, we’re out there for the love of it, but we’re not going to gain… As long as we want to be more community and less industry, people will always wonder why or how we make money as trail builders.
Jeff Barber:
Same with the media. People always wonder how we make money. I’ve seen a lot of parallels.
Greg Mazu:
Understood. But at the same time, by saying you’re in the media, people still think of that as a career. And for the last 20 years it’s like, so what are you going to do when you grow up? In my presentations over the last five years, I talk about this quite a bit, and it’s just like what we’re trying to do at Singletrack Trails and what we’re trying to do in this industry and what we’re trying to do for outdoor rec is build careers that moms approve of.
I know people go to work for Shimano in the mountain bike, or I know people who probably go to work for other large bike industries. You know their parents are just like, “Don’t you want to go get a real job?” $1.1 trillion of GDP is outdoor rec. SingletrackTrails.com is part of that as well. You fall into that. And it’s like, no, we’re viable. This is a viable industry. I don’t need to go pretend like I’m putting the proper cover sheet on my TPS reports. I can do this for the next 20 years.
Jeff Barber:
I mean, I think I’ve said this or I’ve had this theory about the bike industry and I will lump it under this outdoor rec industry in general. And it touches on what you’re saying that, I mean, it is a fun industry. There’s always going to be people who want to enter it just because they’re passionate. Maybe they don’t have the skills or they’re not professionals.
And so there are always people willing to do a job for less money than those who have built up a real business. Right, that is a big challenge. It seems like, yeah, you’re always going to have new people coming in just because they love it and it does make it harder.
Greg Mazu:
Right. I’ve thought about that as a owner. It’s the same in the local trades of wherever you live. There’s always going to be somebody who hangs their own shingle on their van and wants to be a plumber or an electrician and all. The same thing in the trails industry. There are plenty of people that spun off of Singletrack Trails and started their own company.
Same thing from other trail builders is employees have spun off and started their own companies and all that stuff. That’s always going to be a thing. But whether you’re part of building a company or whether you’re an owner operator, we all have to be pursuing the same polestar of we’re trying to professionalize this industry. We’re not just building a trail, we’re building local infrastructure.
Jeff Barber:
Yeah, right, that lasts for a long time. I mean, it’s going to be there for decades.
Greg Mazu:
Well, it will, but we also have to take care of it, right? And so then we as users have to understand that maintenance is okay. I love getting people over beers riled up about this one. It’s like when you do trail maintenance, are you supposed to maintain that trail for the way it degraded over the last 20 years, or are you supposed to take it back to the skill level that it was built?
And so if you build a green trail, but now it’s all eroded away in a black trail, are you supposed to do maintenance in terms of making it a green trail again, or are you supposed to keep it as a black trail? Paying for maintenance is going to be the next big frontier for the industry and how do we get paid for that, and also how do we find a bunch of builders. Because most builders want to build for the Instagram shot. And really there’s going to be more maintenance projects coming down, and we need to take as much pride in doing maintenance projects as we do new build projects.
Jeff Barber:
I’m sure that is a challenge that that is needed, but right, there isn’t the funding for that yet. Nobody wants to spend money on that when they could be building new trails. As an amateur trail builder, I like building more than I like maintaining. For sure. What about this trend of trail advocacy nonprofits spinning up their own trail building arms? How is this affecting the trail building industry? It seems like these are more non-professional crews. They’re not profit motivated. They’re not necessarily businesses. Is that affecting things in the industry?
Greg Mazu:
A lot of the nonprofits that I see hiring staff, they’re professionals. They’re getting paid to go out there and do it. And I can hear all the owner, “They don’t know what I know.” It’s like, well, you’re an owner-operator. You’ve been doing it for 20 years. We all started out there someplace. And so to me, more people building trail means that more people are getting paid and careers are getting built and more respect to it.
And so again, when the local nonprofit gets funding for a crew of four and they go out there and start building trail, it’s up to me for the next 20 years or me for the last 20 years and people like me to work with those local nonprofits to get them the knowledge that they need. We need to share our knowledge. Whether it’s an experienced volunteer or whether it’s a pro builder or whether it’s a county employee, it’s up for us to pass on this knowledge. If you want to complain about somebody else’s work, which I have on this podcast already, by the way, I’ll say this.
Jeff Barber:
Not by name. Nobody by name.
Greg Mazu:
This is how you could do this better and this is why. It’s on all of us to grow this industry. I just bashed the community work, but it is about the community to build this industry.
Jeff Barber:
Well, what are the opportunities for people to get that knowledge or to pass it on? I think we’ve seen a few program startup like community colleges now, a few are offering trail building programs, which I guess that’s on the more formal side. But what other opportunities do people have to learn about trail building for new people or for people like you who have a lot of experience, how do you pass that on?
Greg Mazu:
Right. And so there’s about 15 different community colleges out there that are developing some sort of certificate program for trail building. A cool thing that I think out there is there’s a nonprofit out there called Project Bike Tech, and it’s a nonprofit that built a curriculum for teaching high school kids the vocation of being a bike mechanic. And they’ve been slowly working on…
And all these programs are not going as fast as I wish they had, but they’re working on curriculum called Project Trail Tech to teach high school kids the vocation of building trail. And so in theory, you can learn in high school through that program, and then you can get a certificate through the local community college of trail building and then move on to working for a pro and all that stuff.
That’s eventually going to be the way to learn how to build trails. But really, even for me, I’ve helped out with a couple of these community colleges and taught a day of programming and whatnot. It all comes down to, how did I learn how to run Singletrack Trails? It was through experience and time and getting out there. And it will be the same for the future is other builders need to hire staff and take the time to train them.
Other county governments and city governments and forest services need to hire people and pass on that knowledge in terms of getting more people out there and we just need to keep spreading it out. I do get grumpy when I hear people like, “That person doesn’t know how to build trails.” They don’t even know what the word back slope means. Why don’t you just go over there and talk to them about what the backs slope is because you told them to back slope the next 500 feet and they have no clue what you said.
Jeff Barber:
Right, yeah. Well, so as you said, the trail building industry is sort of in this adolescent phase now. So I’m curious, as writers, a lot of us would say like, man, trails are better now than they’ve ever been before. I think even on Singletracks, we’ve published articles and things that have used the phrase like, this is the golden age of trail building. Really cool projects going on. So have we reached a peak in terms of trail quality, or do you think there’s growth and potential improvement on the horizon?
Greg Mazu:
I think that we’re about to ramp up on the hockey stick for what is trail quality. What we’re building is super high quality, but we’re not taking care of it on the backend. And again, maintenance is the future. And so the local community rec center, your town doesn’t have three different rec centers because you needed to build three. They take care of that rec center. They have a maintenance budget for it. And so the same thing with our trails. It’s infrastructure.
It’s a capital investment by your community in the community, and we need to take care of it afterwards. And so it needs to have a maintenance and operations budget. And so I think the quality of trail that we’re building is good, but trails get beat up just like the rec center, just like the highway, just like your house. You have to take care of it. And so that’s the next step is over the next 10 years, we’re going to realize that the industry is not just about building new trail, but maintaining what we have so that we don’t lust for the brand new thing.
Jeff Barber:
Well, thinking back 15, 20 years when I started first being aware of trail building and what goes into that, it seemed like back then what was new was the idea of building trails so that they didn’t require as much maintenance. Have we tapped that out? Are we already maximizing that to, we’re building the trails as best we can to minimize and make sure they’re sustainable, but there’s always still going to be this requirement for maintenance? Is that where we’re at?
Greg Mazu:
Yes. We leveraged low maintenance trails 20 years ago as a selling point to agencies so that we could go in and build, well, essentially sustainable trails. Just pre 2000, mountain biking was straight up the hill to straight down the hill.
Jeff Barber:
Right, right.
Greg Mazu:
Hiking was straight up the hill to straight down the hill. Horseback riding was straight up the hill to straight down the hill. And mountain bikers leveraged sustainable trails as a way to gain advocacy, access and create trails. Mountain biking and our advocacy, our want to gain access to trails helped to change the industry.
And if you look at the last 20 years of who’s gotten into trail building as a professional and joined Professional TrailBuilders Association, there’s a lot of mountain bikers there. And people complain that mountain bikers are building trails, and it’s like, well, we have the best passion for it and user engagement and whatnot.
Jeff Barber:
Did we oversell it then? Back then it’s saying, “Oh, we’re doing this and you won’t really have to maintain it. We figured it out.” Or was some of that true? But yeah, it’s somewhere in the middle.
Greg Mazu:
A lot of it’s true. 20 years we were using it as a selling point to take fall line trails and put them on a contour so that the water would sheet flow across and they would survive and be more weatherproof, but they always needed maintenance. And that’s the downfall of what we did 20 years ago is people thought that if we build this trail, it doesn’t need maintenance. And that was never, never the truth.
Jeff Barber:
Interesting. Well, so what’s next for Backslope Tools? What projects do you have going on that you’re excited about?
Greg Mazu:
Backslope Tools, we’re continuing to develop our tool line. Right now we’ve got four hard tools. Hopefully in the next 12 months we’ll have maybe a dozen hard tools. Plus, we’ve got a couple other products in my mind that we got to get to market and figure out how to produce them and then package them and sell them. Now I have more time to focus on the company as well. We’ve got a Canadian distributor, Cascadia Trail Building Supply. We have a few retailers here in the States other than just Tools for Trails.
So ideally, we find a way to support our retail network as well, so that they not only are reselling tools to folks, they are selling the tools that they’re buying as well to folks. And then the second thing is circling back to why did I start Backslope Tools, it was because there was a lack of margins in trail building tools. And so how can I now figure out efficiencies in our supply chain to increase margins for our retailers?
And so instead of diminishing retailers on the backend and what they can sell the tools for, how can we increase that so that it functions like everything else? The t-shirt that you buy has margin. Why can’t the McLeod that you buy have margin as well?
Jeff Barber:
Well, all right, I look forward to the day when I can walk into my ACE Hardware here in Georgia and I can find some Bbackslope Tools, purpose-built tools for building trails and doing fun stuff like that. So that’s awesome.
Greg Mazu:
I love that vision. Thank you.
Jeff Barber:
Well, Greg, thanks so much for taking the time to chat. I learned a ton about trail building and trail building tools. Really cool to see what you’re up to. So thank you.
Greg Mazu:
Thank you.
Jeff Barber:
So you can find out more, see some of the tools we talked about online at backslopetools.com, and we’ll have that link for you in the show notes. That’s all I’ve got this week. We’ll talk to you again next week.
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1 Comments
Jul 24, 2024
Greg, my bike approves!! After my bike carefully inspected, you guys passed with flying colors!! Thankya very much for the awesome trail netwerk near home.