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Brothers of the brush hook continued


What are your thoughts about the future of trails?


Charlie Dundas heading out with materials for the job


read the literature to learn at least the basics of the program. To me, of course,  recommend is the trail building hand- book that the US Forest Service has come up with.”


Charlie holds the US Forest Service trail building resources in very high regard. Charlie says that they represent decades of the best on the ground expe- rience and research in appropriate trail building techniques, structures, and methods.


He also points to the Trail Solutions guide to building mountain bike trails as a good resource. Ultimately, Charlie says, it is up to an aspiring trail builder to read up on the latest trail building techniques and do their research.


If you had it all to do again, what 


“Yeah, actually I have given a lot of thought to this,” says Dundas. “I would’ve gotten into mechanization sooner. It’s kind of like that movie, ‘if you build it, they will come.’ If we’d have purchased a trail dozer or a mini excavator earlier, we would have made more money.”  dozer (a Sutter 480) only a few years ago. He, of course, got a great deal on it. And when he thinks back on that, he


38 SPRING 2018 AmericanTrails.org


says, “The fact is that if you have a trail dozer, there’ll be people wanting you to use it.” The changing demographic of customers and the need for wider, high- ly sustainable trails made the use of trail dozers and mini excavators not only desirable, but necessary. Charlie explains the business of trail building as, “You can’t stay in busi- ness if you don’t make money. And it is hard in the trail business to make money. In the sea that we swim in, you have to survive on competitive bidding. You can’t make money at low bid, you know, so you have to constantly stay working. That’s hard.”


Charlie goes on to explain how


they’ve overcome the constraints of the low bid process on their company’s  we’ve gotten away from exclusive gov- ernment low bid contracts, and we’re doing private contracting, which we made a lot of money at. With private contracts, we have people calling us and we also have people that just select us. Many people consider us to be one of the premier builders and we have a great reputation, so they want that.” In this way, Tri-State Company has become a very successful trail company that travels far and wide, building excellent trail.


Charlie does have some concerns about the future of trails. “I’ve come to view development as probably the big- gest threat to trails. We’re particularly vulnerable to it because the trail sys- tems that we have in this area are pri- marily on private land, and we’re con- stantly having to compete with com- mercial and personal development, and the land is just being eaten up in this part of the country.”   that he does not always see eye-to-eye with the burgeoning growth of moun- tain bike trail construction. However, he does concede, “I will credit the biking community, quite frankly— and you can quote this on me on this— that mountain bikers have been the salva- tion of the trail system in this country, you know. No ifs, ands, and buts about it. They have organized and promoted trails and have organized huge num- bers of clubs. I don’t always agree with everything they do. Very little of it I actually agree with in terms of the trade. But I just cannot help but give them all kinds of credit for having turned around the trail building indus- try.”


Charlie is very animated when he thinks about the future of trails. He says, “The thing that excites me is when I go out and I see people using our trails and I see families on the trails, you know? It pleases me and excites me that I’m beginning to once again see moms and dads and kids on trails, not just the mountain bikers. And I add that people are building trails that are not just mountain bike trails, but are attempting to draw families in, too.” Without the decades of work and experience and knowledge brought to our outdoor environment by Charlie, and the trail builders like him, we all would have far fewer quality places to recreate. I feel that we all owe these folks a debt of gratitude for their dili- gence over the decades. They make trails happen, and for that, I am forever grateful.


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