Thomas Schoen is the CEO of First Journey Trails, a trail building company based in British Columbia. He’s also the Director for the Williams Lake Cycling Club, the Aboriginal Youth Mountain Bike Program and is the President of the Cariboo Mountain Bike Consortium.
- How long have you been building mountain bike trails professionally? How did you get started?
- Which aspects of a trail build do you enjoy the most?
- Is everything on track to get the First Blood trail officially opened this season? What’s left to be done?
- Are you seeing increasing demand for more technical trails? Do you think trails are too easy because our bikes are so good, or because bikers are getting better?
- Considering all the trails you and your team have built over the years, which one is your favorite trail to ride?
- What’s the expected lifespan for a wooden bridge on a trail in BC?
- What do you think makes for a successful mountain bike destination?
- Tell us about your work with aboriginal youth First Nations trail builders.
- What’s the next big thing for you and for trail development in BC?
You can learn more and connect with Thomas and First Journey Trails at firstjourneytrails.com.
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Automated transcript
Jeff Barber 0:00
Hey everybody, welcome to the Singletracks podcast. My name is Jeff, and today my guest is Tom Schoen. Tom is the CEO of First Journey Trails, a trail building company based in British Columbia. He’s also the director of the Williams Lake cycling club, the aboriginal youth Mountain Bike Program, and is the president of the caribou mountain bike Consortium. Thanks for joining me. Tom.
Thomas Schoen 0:26
Absolutely thanks for having me. I’ve enjoyed your podcast for a long time, and I really love the magazine, so I appreciate you having me on greetings from British Columbia.
Jeff Barber
Tell us, how long have you been building mountain bike trails professionally? How’d you get started?
Thomas Schoen
I’ve been building mountain bike trails professionally for 18 years now. I started my company 18 years ago, but my trail building background goes back a little further. I lived in a very small community in the caribou mountains here in BC Centuria, an old historic mining town that’s well known for hiking, mountaineering, especially snowmobiling. It’s called wellspc, and I was the president of the wells and area trail society. So my journey into trails and trail development started by running a professional crew as a volunteer myself, and I really developed a love for volunteering out in nature trail building. A lot of it was snowmobile trail, so we cut more corridors than actual shovels on the ground. But I really, I really learned how to use a chainsaw, and I developed this love for being out in the mountains, in the forest, and just creating something that most people then enjoy during the winter time. So from that, I transitioned into starting a professional trail building outfit. And it was relatively early in the days of our industry. There were a couple big outfits around, of course, developing bike parks. The Whistler bike park got started back then, but I was one of the first companies north of the whistler Squamish North Main Cooper corridor, who really dove into it full time.
Jeff Barber 2:36
Were people building trails before there were these professional trail builders? Like, was it? Was it all volunteer led? Or, like, were people building unofficially? Or was it government?
Thomas Schoen 3:14
It was partially government, more provincial government, BC parks, for example, here in the province of British Columbia, but in general, in Canada, it was all volunteer led. Very few of those trails were sanctioned now. Now we’re working hand in hand with recreation sites and trails too when they when it comes to trail development, but back then, it was really volunteer led. That was, that was the group of passionate builders and writers who got our industry started. They really formed this foundation.
Jeff Barber 3:35
Yeah, interesting. I’m curious too about that, that stage where it was volunteers and some government like, Were there a lot of best practices? I mean, I think, I guess, as an individual, you could probably kind of learn stuff over time. But how did people, like, pass that knowledge around, if there weren’t these, like, professional companies?
Thomas Schoen 3:57
You know, many, many guys, just like myself who got into mountain biking, found mentors. There were these. There were these club volunteers, often guys who spend a lot more time building than actually writing, but they were passionate about creating new opportunities for their friends, for fellow club members for other mountain bikers, and they, they passed down their knowledge. But it was very it was very unstructured, you know, like buzzwords like sustainability, environmental sustainability, even land ownership that just wasn’t so much on our radar. If, on a Friday evening, we decided, man, we want to create something new. We picked up our tools and chainsaw. I had a shovel and a pick, and Saturday morning, we were out building. That’s really how it started, especially here in BC interior, where we have less of a population density, where it was all very rogue, very unsanctioned, and it slowly transitioned, where we absolutely realized we have to follow rules. Yeah. Okay, so you mentioned that you got interested in trail building as a volunteer. Were you a mountain biker at the time, or did you start out as a snowmobiler, hiker kind of person? Yeah, no, my big sport was paragliding. I’m one of the original paragliders in the world. I started in Bavaria in the Alps in Germany, where I’m originally from. And actually that’s something that brought me to North America. I did a massive paragliding expedition from Seattle all the way up to Anchorage, and first descended a lot of mountains. So no, I wasn’t a mountain biker to get started with. And then after my immigration to British Columbia, there were so many hobbies, so many sports I pursued, from kayaking to paragliding and skiing, I was always reluctant to pick up another hobby and get and get on a mountain bike. But honestly, living in BC interior in Williams Lake, it’s such a mountain bike community. It’s such a hub for for mountain biking that you really can’t avoid it. All my friends or my peers were mountain bikers, so I started writing, but it took me a while to to get into it. I was definitely building more than than I was writing to start out with, yeah, interesting. And I guess you don’t really need trails for for paragliding, although, is there any building involved with that? Like, do you have a clear landing or not landing, but take off spots is that we do? We do clean up launch sites a bit, but it’s a bit of, it’s a bit of brush cutting most sites. Most sites are there, and we improve them within a couple of hours of taking a few small trees down, that sort of thing.
Jeff Barber
Yeah. Okay, gotcha, yeah. So, so in terms of trail building, you know, obviously there’s a lot involved there. There’s like the planning and the, I mean, before the planning even, there’s like, approvals and things, and then there’s the design, and then the build itself. What aspects of trail building Do you personally enjoy the most?
Thomas Schoen
It it really shifted over the years when, when I started out, when I got full time into trail building with just a small crew, a couple builders that I hired, let’s say myself, and a crew of two, three builders, when we got our first commercial contracts paid by the provincial government. My my big thing was chainsaw work. I started out by building very big, elaborate technical trail features. I i love big wooden structures. So you know, looking back now, I was almost more a carpenter than anything else. I developed a couple new techniques on how to frame big wooden features where we could pre build some of the elements we built with a lot of dimensional lumber when we were building closer to communities. So honestly, it was a lot of carpentry work, and I really enjoyed that for many years, because I love the look of these features. My more is to build them very clean and to create and to create something that lasts for a long time yet is safe for a beginner to an intermediate rider. But I just, I just wanted to create these big structures and the actual dirt work, the the building of berms and singletrack dirt trails. That was something that was almost needed to put these technical features together, you know, to string it all together. So I certainly started out as a very technical builder, where a lot of wood was involved. But then over the years, I I developed more of an eye and a love for finding lines that that that that really match their surroundings. You know, I was always intrigued.
By by putting an intermediate or or a black, difficult mountain bike trail on a mountainside that almost looked like an impossible Canvas to build, where what we as trail builders call pinch points, I was always intrigued by finding mountains hillsides where we thought we can’t really build there, because we have these pinch points. We have these we have these obstacles. My it might be a steep cliff band, or it could be a ravine, a creek bed that seemed to be very difficult to to overcome and to build a trail through. So I was always, I was always looking for challenges, and I think that probably form the, the second, third of of my trail building career, and then another big transition happened for me, where I developed the love of community and Partnership Building, where, where the big part became not the actual trail, but what the trail does for the mountain bike community and for communities at large, for for for non mountain bikers, you know, for the indigenous communities in British Columbia that we could bring in as partners. So, so I had almost these three very distinct chapters in my building career.
Jeff Barber
Yeah, interesting. Well, I’m interested about those, the challenges in terms of building trails around these pinch points or through these pinch points. Was that something that you eventually kind of mastered, like, Are you now? Is that a challenge anymore? Is that kind of why you you’re not as interested in that? Or is it still? Are there still these things where you’ll have a project and you’re like, oh my goodness, I have no idea how we’re going to do this. We have to do something really creative here.
Thomas Schoen 12:05
That’s absolutely still the case, and I’m I’m in a position right now where I can pick and choose a bit in terms of the contracts, in terms of the projects that I like to take on. I’ve built so many signature trails in British Columbia that that, yeah, I can, I can really pick and choose a little bit and, and I absolutely like these challenging projects. I find it keeps my my builders, more engaged, and, and it’s just so satisfying. If you spend days and days out in the field, hiking, exploring and finding ways to overcome these these obstacles, it’s the real reward and and often you have to create new, new possibilities, new new technical ways to to overcome these obstacles. And that is being again that not just myself enjoy, but I really think it brings very good trail builders back to my company, because trail builders love a good challenge.
Jeff Barber 13:31
Yeah. Yeah, interesting. Well, so in the fall, you talked with Singletracks about the first blood trail that your company is building in hope British Columbia. Is everything on track to get that trail officially open this season. What’s, what’s left to be done?
Thomas Schoen 13:37
Absolutely, we’re, we’re, we’re fully on track, and it’s a, it’s, it’s a really good question, because it builds up on what we just thought. Like, hope you see, in 18 years of trail building was absolutely my most challenging project. We had weeks where we had up to 17 super highly skilled, experienced trail builders working on the same trail. Wow. I’ve never, I’ve never experienced that, but it was, it was so difficult to build where the community wanted to see a trail, where land ownership was open to us. Building this trail was built in the community forest when, when we first started exploring it, myself, together with my planner Adele, we thought it’s absolutely not possible. We discussed it with the community, with our clients, and we said, we have to find a different location. You simply cannot build a top to bottom trail here. There were Cliff bands. There was so much water runoff. It’s an extremely steep northern slope. And we thought it’s just absolutely not possible. But I brought some good builders into this project, a couple amazing.
Subcontractors, guys who build other signature trails across BC, they looked at it. We hiked it over and over again, and we were able to really put a line together that’s always challenging, but also so rewarding. Because again, we worked with with the elements, we worked with the geography and with nature to actually put a trail in where a dozen of experienced trail builders thought it’s impossible to build trail. So I’m very, very excited to open this trail up to the public, and we are on track because of our longer winters in that area, because the trail starts at almost 1700 meters elevation level, and we have to dial it in before the grand opening. The grand opening will be later in the season, so we’re looking at June, maybe early July, but it is on track. We’ve got one last wooden feature to complete. Again, this is at a pinch point. You absolutely need this ladder bridge. But once it’s constructed, then the trail will be right about top to bottom. And yeah, we’re all really, really excited.
Jeff Barber
Yeah, that’s awesome. Well, as a trail builder, is there a risk with taking on a project like this, like, you know, my understanding is, I mean, I’m sure it depends on who you’re working with, but there’s usually, like, a contract that’s that’s bid out, and you say, I can build this trail for X dollars. But then what happens if you get into it, and you say, Oh, my goodness, this is going to take way more work than we originally thought. Is there a risk that you end up losing money on a project like that? Or how does that work?
Thomas Schoen
It really is a big risk. I mean, I after so many years, I have the experience to judge the level of risk I’m taking, but I knew when it comes to first blood, this new black downhill trail, in hope, the risk was high, the cost was incredible. I mean, we all talk about inflation, we know how costs are skyrocketing in the trail building world, we’re not exempt from this, everything from accommodation to travel to wages to supplies and materials costs going through the roof. Often funding gets approved a year in advance, so we have to take that loss of inflation into consideration as a as a business owner, as a business person running a business. So I absolutely realized this trail in particular was a was a big risk. And I can tell you, I had a lot of a lot of sleepless nights it, but it was, it was a huge challenge and and in a way, I was honored that I had the opportunity to take on this project. I know a lot of people will be riding this trail. It’s, it might be the highlight of my trail building career, so I jumped into it, and I took on that risk, but absolutely, it was a big risk, and I certainly could have lost money on that trail.
Jeff Barber
Yeah, wow. Wow. Interesting. So your your company, has built a lot of blue rated sort of flow trails over the years, but in that interview, it sounded like you were seeing increased demand for for more technical trails. Do you think that’s just a thing in BC, or do you think this is riders all over that are looking for these like more challenging trails to ride?
Thomas Schoen
I think that trend is not limited to British Columbia, I see that in the United States, I travel to mountain bike and and I see this trend developing more and more as our industry progresses. As mountain bike is changing, our bikes are getting better. The skill level is coming up. More and more people are taking courses, workshops.
They hire coaches, so the general skill level of us mountain bikers is coming up. And again, it’s partly due to better equipment, but I also think that especially in the last five to 10 years, we’ve built so many flow trails, and they all seem to have the same, the the same feel to them. You know, I can ride a flow trail in Williams Lake, and I can ride a flow trail in in Bellingham, Washington. And they are very, very similar. Machine build, fast fun, flowy trails. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it. They need it for the progression of ridership. They needed to get new people into our sport. But at the same time, even even guys my age, if I travel with my partner, we both are still getting better in mountain biking, and at some point, yes, we love that one hour on your local floor trail to get a sense of the area that we’re visiting, to get a feel for the trail network. But then if we spend day two day three in a mountain bike community, we’re looking for something different. We’re looking for something a little bit more challenging. We’re looking for something that maybe we’re gonna push our bikes back up to try take a second run at an obstacle, at a technical trail feature, and I see this happening all over. This is, this is a trend that that we as builders have been observing over the last few years. Yeah, interesting. Well, it sounds like you’re saying that flow trails. I mean, they’re they’re all pretty similar, like there’s not as much room for creativity, or even for using some of the like natural elements. I mean, like for me in my area in the southeast, the technical trail is going to have lots of roots and trees, whereas if I ride somewhere out west, it’s going to be these, like rock formations and different things.
Jeff Barber
So yeah, it sounds like you’re saying more difficult trails, you can get more of the like uniqueness of the area out of those. Is that fair to say?
Thomas Schoen
That’s very fair to say. I think that really captures it. Yeah, you get to know an area better by riding more technical trails, and that’s partly due to where they are located, there is a tendency for flow trails to be closer to communities. So the experience wisdom in nature might not exactly be the same than being on a flow trail, but I would say in general, it really comes down to us mountain bikers, how we’ve developed over the years, and how, how our how our equipment improved.
Jeff Barber
Yeah, is it hard to make that argument with your clients sometimes? I mean, it seems like for communities and governments, maybe they’re looking at something that’s a little more accessible, where anybody can ride it. Do you ever get pushback when you say, hey, you know, I think, I think we should do a more difficult trail here,
Thomas Schoen 22:47
In general, that’s the way it used to be. But what communities all across North America are recognizing more and more is the need for detailed trail planning. And that’s where experienced trail planner like myself, when we develop a new trail network, or if we develop an existing network, if we improve on an existing network, that’s where our expertise and our experience comes in, and we create a solid trail network Master Plan need. We need a document that guides mountain biking in a certain area for the next five to 10 years, and, and, and I can’t stretch enough how important the planning phase is, because that’s where industry trends goes, and that’s why guys like me attend conferences. We talk to our peers, we talk to other mountain bikers. We know what people will be looking for, or at least we think we know what people will be looking for in two to three years down the road, and then we take that into consideration and build a solid trail plan on on that knowledge and and and make it fit a certain geographic area we take into consideration the increase on E mountain biking in a certain area. We take into consideration if there is an upswing in in more cross-country-oriented trails. Do people want to do longer rides? Do they want to be on their bikes for two to three hours versus one hour, one and a half hour. So all these consideration needs to go into a solid trail plan, and then this plan helps us to convince funders and and and clients to build what we think will be needed in years to come.
Jeff Barber
Yeah, that’s really interesting. Yeah, I hadn’t heard that that that’s changed, because, yeah, in the past, it seems like it was, it was much easier to get, like, blue and green trails approved. But yeah, it sounds like these stakeholders are starting to recognize that they need to attract a wide range of people and make something, you know, again, nobody’s you know, we enjoy riding our local trails, but the reason we travel is to go ride something that is going to be unique, or maybe is even going to be a little more challenging than what we have at home. So that that makes a lot of sense.
So thinking about sort of all the trails you and your team have been involved in over the past almost 20 years, more than 20 years, which, which one is your favorite trail to ride as a rider?
Thomas Schoen 25:56
It was a small project, again, in British Columbia’s interior, quite remote, a trail called Lost marbles. We’ve built a climbing trail and a black downhill trail in partnership with First Nations, with an indigenous, indigenous communities. It’s what I would call a destination trail. It’s not a full on trail network, yet. It’s something that that a group of riders, a group of friends, would travel to on on a weekend, you know, you’ll set up camp. There are a couple of guest ranches in the area that can benefit from mountain bike tourism, because people are staying there now. But it’s, it’s a true destination trail. So you’re driving out on this big Fraser plateau in BC interior in the marble range, you’ve got these beautiful mountains with Alpine tops overlooking half of the interior plateau, and it’s an experience. You go there because you want to spend time with your friends, because you want to camp, because you want to be out in nature, and then you make a day out of one trail. Basically, you’ve got a very long climbing trail.
We build a trail that climbs from the valley bottom up through open first Bruce forest into the Alpine. So you’re climbing for a couple of hours, which in itself, is something that we don’t have a lot of. So you’re on a single track, hand built climbing trail. It’s absolutely gorgeous. You have the biggest river in British Columbia. Below you you’re overlooking the Fraser Valley areas just absolutely gorgeous. You know, this is the type of this is the type of ride where you pack a backpack, you bring some food, you bring a drink, you know, you stop in between because of the scenery, and then eventually you make your way up into the alpine areas of this mountain, and you’re at the top, and you overlook the whole interior plateau, again, with the Fraser to the west. And then you get ready for, depending on how good of a rider you are, you know, you get ready for a 30 to 60 or 70, minute descent on a gnarly, black, challenging downhill trail. And it’s, it’s just unique. It’s the it’s the type of trail. You know you’re at the bottom, you crack a beer, you high five your buddies, and you know, you’ve done something special. And part of it being special is because it does take an effort. You know, if you come from the Lower Mainland, if you come from Kamloops, from our larger riding communities in British Columbia, you travel for half a day. You know, you’re you’re gonna put up camp. You’re gonna find a spot to overnight, and you it’s, it’s a it’s a destination, and that’s really what I enjoy. I don’t I don’t want to just go to any network where I pull over at a parking lot and, and, and I go on a quick, hour long ride, I’m and I, in my opinion, more and more riders are looking for these destination trails.
Jeff Barber
It sounds like, I mean, it sounds amazing. And I’m sure all of our listeners now are like, Googling this right now. You mentioned that it takes effort to ride a trail like this, to do the climb and the descent and to get even, to get there in the first place. But I imagine it also took a lot of effort to build that trail. I mean, how long did it? Was this project going on, and what did it what was involved in actually creating it?
Thomas Schoen 30:18
It was a huge project. It was a two year project. It took us one full year to build the uphill trail, to build the climbing trail. Again, it’s all hand built. I had up to eight builders on that trail. So, you know, it really starts with setting up the logistics. Where can we camp? What’s affordable? You know, can we afford to rent a cabin that sleeps eight guys all summer long that year, we were hit very hard by by forest fire. So climate change is becoming an issue for us builders, especially in the last few years, we had to deal with tremendous smoke situations, with forest fire situation where we had to, where we had to stop construction.
So we so in that case of the lost marbles trail, it took us one one season to build the uphill trail and another season to build the downhill trail, we trained new builders throughout that project, I worked hand in hand with the indigenous youth mountain bike program. So we built we trained trail building crews from the local indigenous First Nations who helped us build, but really, with, with, with a lot of these more remote projects, the the difficulty is in, is in, is in the logistics you know you’ve got, you’re losing hours a day just by accessing the work side. You know, in case of lost marbles, there is a road going up on to the top of the mountain. There’s a fire lookout. But even, even, even the drive up to the top of the mountain is an hour, hour plus. So now you’ve got a crew of 678, builders up on top of the mountain. And typically, if we build a downhill trail, we build bottom down into the valley. So now you might have another hour, hour and a half long hike to get to your building site, you know, and then you reverse that. So every day you’re losing four hours, you’re losing five hours, you know, just to, just to access the building site. And that’s really why trail building is expensive. A lot of people don’t realize, you know what, what, what the cost of trail building is, and it’s not the hours that you have your builders on the mountain with the with a pick and a shovel and a Pulaski in their hand. It’s everything else that gets people to that point.
Jeff Barber
Yeah, wow, right. Never thought about all of that. My goodness. So you mentioned, sort of early in your career, really enjoying building wooden features. And looking at some of the photos of your builds, I see a lot of these wooden features, ladder bridges and and that sort of thing. And BC is known for that too, North Shore, I mean, people, a lot of people call that North Shore features, just that whole idea, what’s, what’s kind of the expected lifespan of a wooden bridge in BC, and how can you build it so that it does last even longer?
Thomas Schoen
Very good question. And the answer is, it varies greatly. It really depends on if you hear where I am right now, Williams Lake in BC interior, where we have a relatively dry climate in the summer, cold winters with not very wet snow. Features can last many, many years. Some of the big signature wall rights that I built, they are. They are standing now for 15 years, and they’re going to last another five years to 10 years easily, but that’s because it is so dry, and you use certain techniques for water runoff, or just the type of fastness that you’re using the dimension of the lumber, we try and over build a little bit to just give it those couple extra years. But again, that is here in BC interior that would be probably more similar to building in the southern United States, in the in the southwest of the US. But then, if we’re looking at the North Shore or some of the trails we’ve built along.
In BC, West Coast and some small West Coast communities you’re building with different type of wood. You’re often using cedar because it lasts longer, but then still, you know, you might only get five, six years out of a feature down there you have to replace, you have to replace your decking and and that’s a big reason why, why we’re moving away from wooden features in those climate zones where there is just so much maintenance required.
Jeff Barber
Yeah, yeah. So you, you try to avoid, say, building a bridge, like, if you don’t have to, is that kind of the thinking now you try to build it into the dirt or even use rocks or things, or, how can you avoid using a bridge?
Thomas Schoen
Yeah, that’s That’s very true. Like when it comes to bridges, often you don’t have options that it comes down to very, very careful planning, because especially bridges require maintenance. They’re very expensive to construct. Bridges are almost like a standalone feature that you have to look at it from a maintenance from a cost point of view, but in when we’re talking technical trail features in general, I would say there is a there is a big move away from it, and that’s simply because maintenance is becoming more and more of an issue in all, in all of our trail networks. And I, and I think you can generalize that and say this, that is true for Canada and the United States. Trail maintenance is becoming very expensive, and we try and we try and minimize that Through careful planning and trail design.
Jeff Barber
So among the many hats that you wear, you’re also a tourism consultant. So I’m curious to know, what do you think makes for a successful mountain bike destination? Is it the trails? Is it the community? Is it the combination of those? What’s kind of the most important part of that?
Thomas Schoen
I think we saw a huge shift. If you would have asked me that questions 15 years ago, 10 years ago, I would have said it’s the quality of trails, it’s the type of trails a community has. I will give you a completely different answer now, and I see all about amenities. In my opinion, there are so many amazing mountain bike destinations across North America that starts up in the north, from Alaska down to the Yukon white horse is a prime example, down to British through British Columbia, Washington, Oregon and all the South West. I haven’t written much in the East. I can’t speak to that, but all those destinations have amazing trails. What happened there over the last 1015, years is absolutely incredible. So we as as tourists, as visiting riders, as mountain bikers. We have a yet it becomes all about the amenities. Is there a mountain bike culture in a given community? You know, are there good are there good mountain bike shops? How how friendly is your local bike shop? Is there a local brewery? How good is the food? How good is your coffee shop? And then, of course, from those type of amenities, it transitions into trail amenities. How, how welcoming is your parking lot? How, how good is your signage? I mean, so many of us, we don’t want to pull out our phone at every intersection. It’s nice to have routes in mind if I, if I travel and I will be going to Sedona in a couple of weeks here. So when I go down there, I’m looking for for great signage, good infrastructure at the parking lots. You know, are there facilities, outhouses. How good is the camping? Can I go disperse camping? Or do I have to spend 60 bucks a night at a campsite? So in my mind, it, it not it now is all coming down to mountain bike culture, because we mountain bikers like to meet other mountain bikers. We like to engage. If I have a beer at a brewery, I want to ask the guy sitting next to me, how was your ride today? Yeah, and, but it’s also about good food. It’s about good accommodation and just the general vibe of a community. Yeah.
Jeff Barber 40:00
Yeah, yeah. Well, I also am curious to understand, you know, you mentioned this idea of signature trails, and understand how that fits with a mountain bike destination. So my understanding, from from how you’re describing signature trails, this would be like the ride that that people come to this destination to do. It’s, it’s the main one, the most well known. What makes a signature trail is it? Is it? The length? Is it? The challenge? Is it certain features? I mean, are you trying to, like, put features in that, you know, people are going to want to take a picture at and share with their friends. What goes into making something a signature trail?
Thomas Schoen 40:44
A signature trail should absolutely highlight the riding destination. There’s gotta be something, there’s gotta be there’s gotta be a hook there. There’s gotta be something that brings a rider to a community. And when he writes a signature trail, he knows I am in this community and the reason could absolutely vary. It’s, it’s what you mentioned. It could be amazing vistas. You know, you’re riding along this rich line, overlooking a stunning Lake. You’re up in the alpine. You’re riding, you’re riding an Alpine trail that’s only accessible three months out of the season because you’re so high up.
It could be a unique feature, an incredible Rock Roll, a rock drop, you know, like you know, because my mind’s going to Sedona. I’m thinking of the white line. You know, it doesn’t matter if I have the skills to ride the white line, but it is a signature trail. So in my mind, it draws me there. If I go there, at least. I want to see it. I want to take a photo. I want to sit there with my partner and watch as long as I’ll see someone writing it, and I’ll take this away, because for 15 years I’ve been watching videos and I’ve seen images in magazines about that particular trail. So it has to have something that doesn’t exist anywhere else. And I understand that’s not an easy task. That’s why not every community has a true signature train. You really again, have to do some careful planning and come up with with with something that’s so unique to this particular trail. Yeah, well, but it also sounds more attainable for a lot of communities, I feel like, you know, maybe 10 years ago, a lot of destinations were trying to market themselves, and they would tout just how many miles of trail they had, you know, we have 400 we have 500 and, you know, but at the same time, if I think about some of these other writing destinations, a lot of them, it is just one trail. I mean, it’s like the monarch Crest Trail in Salida, Colorado. I mean, there’s plenty of other trails there too, but everybody knows the monarch crest. And this the marbles trail that you were mentioning. I mean, that sounds like I don’t even remember the name of the town, but I remember the trail. And so it seems like if you could kind of put all your your funding and your efforts into making one really great, unique trail, then maybe, is that enough to turn a place into a destination for a lot of riders? In my mind, it is absolutely I do things again, because we as mountain bikers, we tend to travel, and a destination trail can absolutely be a signature trail. In fact, they make the best signature trails. Yeah, I absolutely agree. But then there is one, one additional component when it comes to signature trails and mountain bike tourism and trail networks in general. And that is something that has often been overlooked in the past, and I know I mentioned it a couple times already, that’s trail maintenance. I think that is something that we as builders, as industry expert, as mountain bike clubs, as tourism destination organizations. We have to focus on more and more. In fact, here in British Columbia, I’m often discouraging communities to build new trails. I think we have so much trail infrastructure in place, we absolutely need to focus on trail maintenance. There is a bit of a push to revamp old trails, and that is something that’s more cost effective, that maintains trails and at the same time really refreshes it. You know.
We can add a couple features, a couple stunts, we can rebuild a few berms on an existing trail and turn this trail into a completely new, fresh riding experience. Yeah, and I think that is something that funders and all these local trail associations and our mountain bike partners need to start looking at trail maintenance is absolutely crucial, and all the good writing centers, they have very well maintained trails. Just like you mentioned, it’s not in the in in the mileage, it’s not in the overall length of the network. So much anymore, it doesn’t matter to me how many, how many miles of trails you have, if they are poorly maintained and they are trees down, you know, there’s water damage, erosion damage, trail maintenance is going to become crucial in the next few years.
Jeff Barber
Yeah, yeah. It’s definitely a quality over quantity situation. And absolutely, you mean, you think about some of these destinations too that have hundreds of miles of trails, most of us, even if we’re there for a week, we might ride 100 miles maybe, but we’re going to start with that signature trail, and we’re going to kind of work our way down. And there are those, those last hundreds of miles of trails that nobody ever rides outside of, maybe the locals, and that is difficult to maintain, and at that point, what? Why even kind of bother investing at that?
Thomas Schoen
Yeah, very much. So, yeah, very true. Yeah.
Jeff Barber
So when you talk to various communities as a tourism consultant, I imagine you’re not just pitching mountain bikers. I mean, sounds like you’re involved in a number of outdoor activities, but I am curious how mountain bike tourists are seen relative to other groups of tourists. Among your clients are mountain bikers seen as as a good demographic in terms of like they spend more, or that they their visits are longer, or what, what are people saying, or what is their understanding of what the mountain bike tourist looks like?
Thomas Schoen 47:08
A lot of communities are recognizing the value of mountain bike tourism. The demographic has changed so much over the years, the image of of the 22-year-old dirtbag mountain biker on his big downhill bike with a full face helmet that almost doesn’t exist anymore. The perception of mountain bikers has changed tremendously over the years and and I think the same is true for the United States and and for Canada. It was difficult 15 years ago to sell mountain bike trails to your local mayor and and city council. And again, that has changed so much they recognize many of the traveling mountain bikers in their in their 40s, in their 50s, they have disposable income. They are coming to your community because they love outdoor activities, because they want to be fit, they want to stay healthy. And let’s be honest, we all ride expensive mountain bikes, you know, we we spend money in communities, and that is, that is getting recognized, yeah, yeah, what?
Jeff Barber
And what is your perception as mountain bikers? Like, are mountain bikers any more or less sort of demanding of a destination. Like, are they? Are they very picky about where they go? And do you have to really work hard to, like, impress mountain bikers, or do they tend to be pretty easy going, and will kind of ride anywhere?
Thomas Schoen
I think, for an initial visit, for an initial trip, it’s relatively easy to get mountain bikers to your community, because we tend to, we tend to be, we tend to be very open to new experiences. We travel because we want to experience new things. For us, it’s so important to ride a new trail and see a new landscape, to see a new forest, to look down to a lake that we haven’t seen before, but to get us back, it takes a lot. So I think there is, there is a bit of a disconnect between getting us to a destination for a one time visit, and then we decide we absolutely love this community. You’ve got all all I can check all the boxes that I’m looking for. Good Airbnbs, great camping, you know, good food, a nice brewery, the local Bike Shop is awesome. If I have an issue with my derailer, they’re gonna fit me in, because they know I’m on vacation, and they want to make me happy. So so I will come back to that destination. You know, if it’s a if it’s if it’s a community that has developed what I call mountain bike culture, where you see a lot of riders with mountain bikes on their tailgates, it’s it makes me feel good. It makes me part of of the community of mountain bikers. So I will be coming back to your community, and I think, I think that’s really What? What? What communities, if they want to get into the mountain bike game, have to look, have to look at it’s, it’s this overarching, this overall sense of mountain bike community building.
Jeff Barber
Yeah, interesting. Well, I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about your work with Aboriginal youth and also First Nations trail building crews. So why did you start teaching trail building and design to First Nations crews?
Thomas Schoen
I have to go back a little bit and let everyone know that that’s how I started here in British Columbia after immigrated working with with First Nations, which with indigenous communities as a tourism consultant and and then after, years later, 15 years later, when I, when I, when I got into trail building and started my trail building company.
I’ve met my my my friend and business partner from the indigenous youth Mountain Bike Program, Patrick Lucas, and it instantly clicked that there is a connection between indigenous youth and mountain biking. It’s it’s about reconnecting youth to their land, to to their surroundings, getting them outside, finding a sport that’s non threatening, that’s relatively easy to get into with an old with an old used mountain bike, you can start riding around your community often this used they don’t they don’t have opportunities to get from point A to B. A bike is a beautiful tool to to overcome those issues.
So it really click that that building trails will help get indigenous use back out on the land, and help them reconnect with with their land, with their surroundings, and get them excited about something there is just something very, very rewarding. If you if you build something that you later on use. It doesn’t matter if it’s a Ford as a teenager, as a kid, or if it’s a mountain bike trail, if you, if you build it with your own hands, it’s rewarding to use it. And and, and, and both Patrick Lucas and myself, we made, we made this connection between indigenous use and mountain biking.
Jeff Barber 53:23
Do you think it does mountain biking is better even than I mean, obviously there’s other ways you can kind of form that connection. You could go hiking, or you could do other sorts of outdoor activities. Do you think mountain biking is unique, or is it just like one of many sort of paths that that help people connect to the land in that way?
Thomas Schoen 53:44
It’s unique in the sense that that it opens up more areas of of the uses territory to explore. It’s, you know, the only, the only other option in my mind, would be motorized travel. And that’s that’s often just not achievable because of the cost of fuel, because of the cost of of a dirt bike or an ATV. So so in order to cover more ground, to get deeper into into your territory, to your fishing spots, to your berry picking pots spots, a mountain bike is a really, really good tool, and yet, at the same time it challenges used to become better. Yes, you could. You could make an argument for trail running, for cross-country skiing, for snow touring, for hiking, but, but it’s, it’s, it’s less sexy. You know? Like, it’s, it’s, it’s just, it’s just, there’s just something about mountain biking that’s that’s attractive and that makes it a little bit of an easier sell.
Jeff Barber 55:00
Yeah, it’s definitely more exciting. I mean, I know with my own kids, hiking is the last thing that they want to do. And so yeah, if you can move a little faster and add a little more excitement into it then, yeah, that, that seems to be a better hook for sure. Yeah, yeah. So tell us, what’s the next big thing for you and for trail development in British Columbia.
Thomas Schoen 55:34
What’s on my focus right now is opening up the downhill trail in hope first blood, finish that trail, get it all dialed in for a big, grand opening event, and then on. On a provincial level, what I see is just the building of more partnerships, partnerships between non Indigenous mountain bikers and indigenous communities.
We have to focus on trail maintenance heavily, and, and, and, and then get people out on the land like that’s really what it’s what it’s all about.
I’m focusing with my company more and more on trail planning, because I think that is so important, and people are recognizing the importance of really careful future trail planning. That’s what helps us to secure funding for future trail projects, because it’s a well planned, thought out project. So business wise, that’s where I’m heading. More and more is the trail planning side of things. And then we constantly have to adapt. We have to adapt to to the growing segment of E mountain bikes we have to adapt to the growing segment of people who want to do longer cross country rides, more climbing. So there’s this constant shift that keeps it fresh and makes it interesting for people who work in my industry.
Jeff Barber
Very cool. Well, Tom, it was so great talking to you. Thanks for sharing your story and for all that you’re doing to build and advocate for mountain bikers and all the trails that we ride. Thank you.
Thomas Schoen
Thank you, Jeff. We really appreciate your interest in what I’m doing. Thank you.
Jeff Barber
Well, you can learn more and connect with Tom and first journey trails at first journeytrails DotCom, we’ll have that link in the show notes, that’s all we’ve got this time. We’ll talk to you again next time.
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