By Ambassador Sydney Schumacher // Photos by Alex Erickson
What happens when you get twenty ladies together for an all-women’s trail building party? Well, turns out you get a pretty unstoppable force. Full of finesse, determination, and giggles. And that’s exactly what happened at the first Sculpt. Twenty ladies decided to drop their bikes for the day and give back to the local trail system. They met up to work on the notorious Kleeway trail in Hood River, Oregon. If you have ever ridden the Post Canyon trail system, you know that Kleeway is one of the main veins of the system. It’s one of two trails that transports people to the bottom of Post Canyon. Kleeway was built in 2014 after Matt Klee passed away from a bike-related accident. He was a legend to the local community and a lot of energy was put into bringing this trail to life after his passing. Fast forward to 2022, Kleeway is still an incredible roller coaster of a trail. It needs continued maintenance from the trail alliance and its current state was overdue for a little TLC. All of that being said, Kleeway became the ideal choice for the all ladies’ dig party.
The motivation behind Sculpt was to not only empower women to build trails, but also to give them the skills and tools to do so. This meant giving everyone a role and letting them bring their ideas to the table. That being said, the dig day started with some light education. Everything from bench cutting to duff removal to shaping and packing was covered. Afterward, ladies broke up into smaller groups where everyone was assigned to a different corner, lip, landing, or hip. Groups shaped lips, removed weird bumps, de-brushed overgrown trees, took care of drainage, packed berms, and so much more. At the end of the day, it was insane to see how much energy went into every feature on the trail.
It rained, it hailed, it was sunny, and even snowed for a hot second. Despite the weather being all over the place, it was incredible to watch the different groups of women communicate and build each other up to make the trail come back to life. I believed it inspired a lot of women to look at the trail in a new way, maybe in a way they have never seen the trail before. Most importantly, it inspired women to do more trail building. To know that they can call the shots and pour their creativity into the local system that they ride. It will be sweet to see more women leading the charge on trail projects in the seasons to come.
