FOR TRAIL BUILDING BULLETIN
#1 December 2022

WHY the TRAIL BUILDING BULLETIN

The Trail Building Bulletin is a new information tool for the Finale Outdoor Region. This is a monthly update where we will tell you about the most important thing for many of us and, above all, for the hundreds of thousands of bikers who choose the Finale area for a mountain biking holiday: THE TRAILS.

Trails are the main motivation for people from all over the world to travel to our beautiful destination, making it one of the most famous and popular in the world. There would be so many stories to tell about trails, and our Trail Building Bulletin is certainly not meant to be exhaustive. We believe, however, that it is necessary to tell more about what is being done, to explain how maintenance works are organized and what it means today for a destination like the Finale Outdoor Region to have a trail network that meets expectations.

With the Trail Building Bulletin, we hope to create greater awareness of this incredible resource and of the efforts that each of us - whether users or tourist facilities and services - has to make to keep it alive, while respecting and protecting this wonderful land.

The Trail Building Bulletin is edited by the Finale Outdoor Region Consortium in collaboration with the Trail Building Board instituted within the Consortium in order to plan, coordinate and manage land maintenance.

TRAIL BUILDING, or TAKING CARE OF TRAILS AND OF THE TERRITORY

This expression, it is meant the act of developing new or renovating trails but it also means all the maintenance, cleaning, refurbishment, and management of the trail network.

A truly crucial activity in a destination where the presence of bikers - which is closely linked to the quality of the trails - has become a significant part of the local economy. But also a dutiful and necessary activity to make the trail sustainable, reduce impacts on the natural environment, and minimize future trail maintenance.

FINALE OUTDOOR REGION’S TRAIL NETWORK

The territory that we now call Finale Outdoor Region lies between the Golfo dell’Isola area (Spotorno) to the east and Pietra Ligure to the west, as far as the Val Bormida with Bardineto and Mallare to the north. Finale Outdoor Region has no defined boundaries but trails, cliffs, and attractions for outdoor enthusiasts, as well as tourist operators and local governments that have joined forces to share a project for the environmental protection and promotion of this territory. 

While Finale Ligure was the first community to bet on an alternative way of tourism, over the years the trend has involved an increasing number of towns. In some cases, the trails have existed since the earliest times as ancient connecting routes between settlements, others have been wanted by local governments, and others have been discovered, cleaned, shaped, and maintained by passionate people. 

What is most important, however, is that today the Finale Outdoor Region network counts more than 160 trails with free access. In fact, there is no ticket to access the trails as in a bike park or a privately run resort and this, of course, makes it pretty hard to find the necessary funds for the maintenance and the way the coordinate maintenance works.

To overcome this situation, the FOR YOU CARD was introduced in 2021, a tool that enables the territory to raise funds for trail building, thanks to the active involvement of tourist businesses and users.

Here is one more good reason to inform you about the results obtained through the FOR YOU CARD and how its revenue is going to be used.

ONE YEAR OF THE FOR YOU CARD: THE INTERVENTIONS CARRIED OUT AND FUTURE PLANNING

In September 2021, during the EWS, the FOR YOU CARD project was launched: a tool developed by the Consortium to collect resources to be used for the maintenance of the area, involving everyone who benefits from the trails: users and tourist operators. The resources obtained from the sale of the card and the points it generates, as well as some donations, have been added to public contributions and to the work carried out on a voluntary basis, making ordinary and extraordinary maintenance work possible.

From October 2021 to October 2022, the trails that benefited from these resources and where most of the work was done are Crestino, Ingegnere, Toboga di Canova, Super Groppo, Roller Coaster, and Cravarezza. The trail builders also worked on the Nato Base trails (H, Madre Natura, 115, Base Nato), in the Feglino area on Neanderthal, Pino Morto, Margot, Oribago, Little Champery, and Cà Bianca. Here, work has resumed in recent weeks, while in these days the trail builders are again at work on Cravarezza.

Toboga di Canova is the first trail in the Pietra Ligure and Valmaremola area whose maintenance - underway these days - is part of the interventions supported by the FOR YOU CARD, while the biggest part of the trail maintenance in this area is still supported by the Pietra Ligure municipal administration. We hope, however, that the card will become more and more popular also in Pietra Ligure and Valmareloa, and in other areas of the Region in support of trail building.

The budget allocated for 2023, which at the moment amounts to around € 50,000, will be made up of a combination of the proceeds of the For You Card and public contributions, the latter being greater in the areas where the CARD is still little used, from initiatives such as the BIKE FOR YOU lottery (Canyon Strive) and the auction promoted by the company Bike Yoke, and from the partnerships entered into in recent months with companies, including Bosch. This budget, although still far removed from the real needs of the area, will allow the Trail Building Board to plan the work of three teams that will be working in the coming months in different areas of the Finale Outdoor Region.

We will give more details on the planned work in the next Bulletin. Keep reading us!

FINALE OUTDOOR REGION TRAIL BUILDING CREW

In the next issue of the Trail Building Bulletin we will introduce you to Finale Outdoor Region Trail Building Crew, the team currently responsible for planning, coordinating, and managing trail building work in the Finale region.

For this first issue, we had a long chat with Fabrizio Valenti, who today holds the role of coordinator and supervisor of the team, supported by Alessandro Massa, and we went over with him some of the fundamental steps of trail building in the Finale area.  As we said at the beginning, we do not pretend here to be exhaustive, nor to retrace the history of mountain biking in Finale, but only to describe how trail building is managed today. Who better than the people who have experienced the mountain bike movement in the Finale area since its beginnings and who are still personally committed to ensuring that it continues to exist and evolve could tell us about it?

We will therefore not read about those who first organized mtb races or opened the first trail, we will not mention all the people involved in these years because we would certainly forget some of them and, probably, tell 25 years of history would require a book that maybe one day someone will write!

Fabrizio, today you are the coordinator of the Finale Outdoor Region’a trail building board. When did you start working on trails?

I have always been passionate about my turf: when I was only 17 I founded the Caprazoppa Cooperative with nine other people and we were involved in land maintenance. I started working on the trails in the early 90s. In particular, after a flood that caused a lot of damage to Ponti Romani path, I went to fix it with a group of bike mates. On that occasion, I realized how we could work to make the path more suitable for biking.

In those days mountain biking was in its beginnings but the first tourists were arriving...

Yes, in fact, I was a guide for clients at the Hotel Medusa, Florenz, and San Giuseppe. The tours were exclusively pedaled and the trails we used to ride were just few like Briga, Orera, Caprazoppa, Sentiero dei Ciechi,  30 minuti a piedi,  and DH Donne.

Then I met Fulvio Balbi. He was a climber and route nailer but was getting into mountain biking. At the Manie the first problems were beginning to occur with hikers, so with Fulvio, who in the meantime had tried some trails in the Molini di Triora area, we decided to explore the Pian dei Corsi area to create something specifically for mountain bikes. He loved finding the lines while I was more dedicated to finding ways to soften them, and also to make sure that they didn't wear out too much with the passages. In those years we also worked for the Comunità Montana and cleaned tracks, for example, Poste and Isallo Ecstasy. There were other people who helped us, including Luciano Vassallo, Riccardo Serrato, and Betta Belmonte, but the movement was still little.

Today shuttle tours are the main product that tourists buy, but when did this activity start, and what did it mean for the trails?

Around 2000 I started with the first van to support the gravity classes organized by Bruno Zanchi. As the trail network developed, obviously this activity also began to spread, new companies were born and other people came to work on the trails, but always on a level of volunteer work, and without any coordination, everything was done spontaneously. In 2012, CIPS (Independent Trail Cleaning Committee) was born, a group formed by shuttle companies, guides, and volunteers, which took care of the trails for a few years. Resources for the group came through donations and the sale of t-shirts and maps.  After CIPS, it was the Polisportiva Finale Outdoor Resort that tried to set up a funding system for the maintenance and coordination of the work until 2019 when it became necessary to create a proper structure.

In the meantime, however, tourists continued to increase, also thanks to the international promotion done by big sports events such as the Enduro World Series…

Of course, with 2013 came EWS and the number of tourists increased year by year and, consequently, so did the shuttle activities, the guides, and the bike hotels. In short, more and more people were going to the trails. Some numbers, this year in 90 days on the Cravarezza trail 6900 passages were registered only via Strava... 

It, therefore, came to the point of having to create a more organized structure, with clearly defined roles, which could deal with trail building on an ongoing basis. Today, the Finale Outdoor Region Consortium, through the Trail Building Board, acts as the coordinator of a work that for years has been done spontaneously by volunteers. I think this is a good step, but there is still work to be done to have a really solid structure.

So, after so many years as a trail builder and operator, you have taken on quite a responsibility…

I have been part of this movement since its beginnings and in all these years I have been able to accrue a great deal of experience. I therefore believe I can make a concrete contribution to the area. The numbers we have reached have made it necessary to create an organised structure and having the opportunity to play an official role within it is a great motivation for me. Today we have a trail coordination board and two people employed directly by the Consortium who work regularly on the basis of what has been agreed by the Trail Building Board. Maintenance works are decided on the basis of the identified priorities, available resources, seasonality and the needs of our guests. In addition to these two people, there are Associations and MTB Guides working in different areas but always under the coordination of the Trail Building Board.

We will definitely come back to this topic in future issues, but how has the visitors in the Finale area changed and, as the Trail Building Board coordinator, what do you feel is most lacking in the destination today?

What we have seen in recent years is the increasing presence of families, even in the summer months where until a few years ago bikers practically disappeared. Years ago in the Finale area you could see almost exclusively men on bikes, while today there are many active families and with mums and dads there are also kids. The level, especially among non-Italians, is certainly high, but we are convinced that a place that is considered the Mecca of mountain biking cannot fail to also have some trails suitable for children or the less experienced. This does not mean changing the nature of the Finale area or neglecting the maintenance of the existing or most popular trails, but simply being more aware of a public that continues to grow and wants to have fun in our area, perhaps combining sea, cycling, climbing and other activities, with a positive impact on the local economy.