Right now it is a bit wet and wild up here in the western Highlands so it seems a good time to remind ourselves how great it can be when it's good weather. We have an exciting mountain bike project underway up at Nevis Range where they are building a red grade downhill mountain bike track. This new trail will be do-able by most competant cross-country mounain bikers unlike the existing downhill competition track which really is for experts only. Due to open in May 2009 work has been underway on the new track for a couple of months. Bob MacFarlane is the expert track builder based at Nevis Range and responsible for the Mountain Bike World Cup route and he is supervising the work. Below is an extract from his 'New track diary' .....

NEW BIKE TRACK DIARY

Friday 26 September 2008

The next step will be to transport the dumper and the small digger to end of the boardwalk, to start working way down the ridge.

Going according to plan, reasonably on schedule!

Monday 22 September 2008

An autumn blue skies day seemed like a great excuse (as if we needed one) to get out on the bikes and test the track so far … obviously an extremely important part of the construction process!

End August 2008

Old important task is to reinstate the old start of the black downhill track to natural hillside. The large machine has been sent off to do this.

August 2008

The next section under construction is the start section. Those of you that ski and board at Nevis Range (and if you don’t … why not???) will know the start of the new track well, it’s at the quad chair, a short walk from the gondola top station, towards Meall Beg.

This area of track is across open grass land hillside. This is a fairly flat (ish) section and the large machine has been doing the main shaping and the smaller machine, has been tidying up the ditches. Under the approximately 2ft layer of peat, is a thick band of glacial moraine (gravel like stones). This is excavated from the hillside and used to surface the trail!


Mon 30 June 2008

Its not easy constructing half way up a mountain …

First task was to get the machinery up the hill. Those of you familiar with Nevi Range will know that the easily accessible car park is at 100m, but that the top gondola station is at 650m, some 2.4km away! Its was really important to get the machinery up the hill, in one piece, whilst causing minimal damage as possible to the mountain environment.

The first part of the track to be constructed was the boardwalk section, which is approximately in the middle of the track.

The planks are treated pine, and pained with grey non slip paint; grey, rather than green, as this blends into the mountain terrain.

The boardwalk is used to cover the particularly boggy terrain. The posts are constructed from larch, which ages well, doesn’t rot, and will last as long as possible in the acidy peaty ground.

The planks needed to be treated indoors, so each day the guys took over the gondola hall after the gondolas were loaded onto the line.

The next task was to get the wood up hill. Nevis Range regularly uses a helicopter to transport supplies and materials between from the car park to the existing balack downhill track, the summit of Aonach Mor, as well as ‘over the back, into the back corrie. The helicopter has already been at Nevis Range about 4 days this summer, so it greatly helped transport the supplies for the new track.

The boardwalk sections are looking good, and there are some amazing views across to the black downhill track and the Snowgoose restaurant & bar at the gondola top station, as well as back across Loch Linnhe towards the town of Fort William. The track is about 1 metre wide. Sections of the boardwalk are broken up using natural boulders.

Boardwalk section – looking good, amazing views. Towards end, a great flat area, for stopping off and taking a break!


Background

The main contractor is Mark Hedderwick, along with Chris and Hans.

He’s using 3 machines, a 14 ton machine, a 5 ton machine, and a standard digger and a 3 ton track dumper. The 14 ton has a special attachment that lets the bucket to be tilted and rotated through 360 degrees, to allow easier shaping of the terrain without having to continually reposition the machine in order to get the correct angles. The 3 ton truck dumper can transport 2-3 tons of material at a time, dropping it where you want!

The weather has been mixed recently with quite bit of rain interspersed with sunny periods, with the weather forecast often worse than reality. However Sunday's forecast was completely correct and rain it did - all day on and off! With trip to the Skye Cuillins coming up I need to get out and get some longer walks and hill days under my belt, so I roped in a friend to accompany me on Sunday. We changed our plans once we were out and realised that the weather wasn't going to lift and kept to paths below 600 metres. Starting in Kinlochleven our walk took us out to Loch Eilde Mor, up and over past Meall na Cruaidhe, down to the Blackwater Reservoir and then down the Kearan trail along the river back to Kinlochleven. A good walk that gets you out without going too high. One thing all the rain was good for was waterfalls. As we walked back into Kinlochleven we went past several that were spectacular. Some of the river crossings were 'interesting' as water levels rose during the day - we were both glad we had poles to help us balance as we crossed over some quite fast flowing water.

Anna