SF Urban Riders has put together a team to race at the Sea Otter in April, and we need your help. We’re raising money to fund IMBA and SFUR’s advocacy effort to build a bike park in SF. SRAM is matching donations so your donation will have double the impact and it’s tax deductible.

Go here to DONATE NOW!

Thank you!!

you could be forgiven for thinking these sound like the characters in a ’70s cop show. they’re actually key tools in a trail builder’s arsenal. the pick mattock (which my brain transliterated to “pick-matic” until the interweb corrected me) looks like an old miner’s pickaxe, with a pick on one end and an adze on the other. this thing can do some serious damage very quickly. it breaks up super-compacted soil and even rocks, and can help grade a new section of trail.

then there’s the pulaski. also equipped with an adze. it’s not as good as the pick mattock for breaking up soil or rocks, but it’s great for cutting through roots.

and finally, the mcleod. this is good for raking stones out of the soil, pushing dirt from A to B and tamping down the soil on, say, a new berm.

why do we care about these colorfully-named tools? well, they’re helpful if you need to build or maintain a trail. last saturday, with a bunch of other SF Urban Riders folks, I attended v-o-cal.org’s trail crew leader training session. here’s a quick highlight reel of the experience.