Silvan Forest MTB Park

Trapping Vollies Wanted
We're looking for some keen peeps to help us out with Silvan's trapping program.
You might have noticed the increase in traps and associated activity recently - a core few have been setting things up and clearing/recording over the past three months to get things established.
We'd now like to bring more people into the project to share the load and make things a bit more efficient.
If you're interested send us a message or reply here. We'll train you up, get you on the TrapNZ app and supply all materials etc.

Kingsland Hang Ten Dig, August 16th **Note new meeting point**
The fourth edition of our Richmond Hill Trail Carvers dig on Kingsland's (Tasman District Council) Hang Ten is on this Sunday, carrying on from where we left off on Aug 2nd.
We'll be based at the Kingsland Cell Tower landing this Sunday.
Meet at 9am at the Cropp Place gate for a convoy up to the Cell Tower landing, all welcome. Weather forecast is great, and the digging forecast is even better!
All tools supplied, but bring your fav grubber, and/or strong rake.
Any postponement will be posted here on Sunday morning before 8am.
Nelson Mountain Bike Club
Tasman District Council - Te Kaunihera o te tai o Aorere

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Same hillside, 75 years apart.
Don Heslop farming potatoes here around 1950 — long before the pines, and long before the current forest we’re growing today. The land keeps changing; the view over the Waimea estuary never does.

We're on Instagram! 📸🌲

Silvan Forest has a new home for the everyday life of the hills — ride clips, trail updates, planting days, events, and the odd stunning sunset over the estuary.

Facebook stays our main noticeboard, but if you're on Instagram, come follow along for more of the good stuff, more often.

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Same forest. Same free trails. A whole lot more to see.

Kingsland Hang Ten Dig, August 2nd
Coming at you with the third edition of our Richmond Hill Trail Carvers dig on Kingsland's (Tasman District Council) Hang Ten this Sunday, carrying on down the trail.
We'll be based at the Big Skid this Sunday, working our way down to the container landing/cell tower.
Meet at 9am at the Silvan gate for a convoy up to Big Skid, all welcome. Weather's going to be great, and the digging even better!
All tools supplied, but bring your fav grubber, and/or strong rake.
Any postponement will be posted here on Sunday morning before 8am.
Nelson Mountain Bike Club
Tasman District Council - Te Kaunihera o te tai o Aorere

Kingsland Hang Ten Dig, Sunday July 19th
We're running another Richmond Hill Trail Carvers dig on Kingsland's (Tasman District Council) Hang Ten this Sunday, carrying on from our first session a fortnight ago.
The next section to get a bit of love working our way down is between the Heaton Rd Skid and the Big Skid.
Meet at 9am at the Silvan gate for a convoy up to Big Skid.
All tools supplied, but bring your fav grubber, and/or strong rake.
Any postponement will be posted here on Sunday morning before 8am.
Nelson Mountain Bike Club
Tasman District Council - Te Kaunihera o te tai o Aorere

Copperhead Rd good to go
Not sure you can smell the whiskey burning down on this Copperhead Rd, but some diesel fumes have got the job done.
Top to bottom refresh has been finished today, with a decent amount of near-future proofing with significant gorse removal.
The riding surface is fresh in places so its going to benefit from a bit of rain and lots of bikes - if you're riding it this week maybe try to make your own tyre tracks rather than following the sheep line, that will bed things in a lot quicker.

Kingsland Hang Ten Dig, Sunday July 5th
We're running a Richmond Hill Trail Carvers dig this Sunday, giving Kingsland's (Tasman District Council) Hang Ten a top to bottom refresh.
Its going to take several sessions, and will be something pretty sweet to be involved with. This trail has been around for many years in lots of different formats, has survived logging and some nasty storms, but still provides a huge amount of fun - its just at a stage where it needs a bit of love.
Meet at 9am at the Silvan gate for a convoy up to the top.
All tools supplied, but bring your fav grubber, and/or strong rake.
If we have to postpone due to rotten weather, we'll post here on Sunday morning before 8am.
Nelson Mountain Bike Club
Tasman District Council - Te Kaunihera o te tai o Aorere

Silvan/Kingsland Trails Updates
This time of year we get a heap of work done, and May/June has been a busy time with fixing/repairing/improving.
Here's a catch all of what's been happening
Silvan
- Mid Road Connector between Copperhead Rd exit back to Alpha scraped, cleared and drainage improved. It was a bit of a gorse alley....
- A new link track cut between the bottom of the Jumps (creek crossing) and the Arena. This is to get riders off the Griffin's driveway!
- Sequence got a full renewal and refresh from top to bottom - with corners opened up as much as possible and realigned.
- Alpha Toru was cleaned out of slips after the heavy rain bouts we had at the end of May, and we took the opportunity to retain, widen and define the rocky bluff section of trail close to the Steps that has a very steep downslope and fall zone.
- Hare Down had more nasty rootballed macs in the same rain storms, making a real mess of the trail. Took a bit of time to clear the trees and reroute the trail.
- de la Luna given a good tidy up, mostly with corner improvements.
- The Richmond Hill Trail Carvers fortnightly digs have carried on with really good numbers, working down the gullies connecting existing trails in with The Planets.
- And interspersed with all this, a lot of tree fell removal, and drainage work in places such as the Jumps lines, where legacy issues causing slumps when the ground is wet have finally been dealt with.
Kingsland
- Escalator had a chunk of work done after the end of May rain, clearing slips and removing eroding rootballs from the uphill batter in the pine section.
- Terminus beside Pylon Rd was showing some increasingly bad water rutting. Turns out two water bars on Pylon Rd had blocked and were feeding a lot of water onto the trail. Once that was sorted out we gave that section of trail a rebuild, supercharging the drainage measures and the fun factor.
- Terminus from the top down to Fowler Skid has also had a major rework, fixing every corner and opening drainage measures up. We needed to bring the camber angle of the corners back to a grade 3 angle (30 degrees), as the angles were all over the place and up to an undercutting 90 degrees in some places, with big rocks in the narrow riding lines making things a bit unpleasant. Now that the corners have been fixed, the trail rides so much better.
- The link trail between the top ridge (by the Fire Lookout) and Heaton Rd had become a gorse alley over time, so was completely cleaned out.

So pretty busy, with plenty more good stuff to come over the winter:
A Copperhead Rd refresh, a Jericho renewal, a Hang Ten refresh and more drainage work on some Kingsland ground seeps some of the jobs coming up.

Mountainbiking in Richmond is pretty sweet these days 👍

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De la Luna Love
Great clean up on de la Luna this morning. The three badly damaged corners were retained and fixed, and a stack of other work done to improve the riding experience.
We had four of the original build crew, but the best surprise was a bunch of Trail Saints coming along to help. Their Codgers Fri morning dig had been canceled so they came out to help at Silvan instead. Mucho appreciated!