VOLUNTEER

For the last 20 years NMTBC has been digging trails for mountain bikers to enjoy. It might have started off a bit underground, but these days we are a trusted partner of local landowners, forestry managers and the councils. We work really hard to ensure the trails we develop are sanctioned, built sustainably, graded accurately and are a heck of a lot of fun to ride. 

95% of the money the club generates through memberships goes back into maintaining the trails we have to a world class standard, and developing new trails to fill gaps in our offering. We rely heavily on our volunteer network who organise regular working bees for each of our trail areas and put in hundreds of hours each year to keep things running sweet. 

While we are proud to have a paid part-time Trail Manager working on our trails, we still need help.  There are lots of ways you can be involved in a bit of digging and trail development/maintenance, whether by a bit of manual work, or financially.  Professionally built trails can be very expensive to build, especially those requiring machinery, and those that are built by hand can take a lot of time.  Whether you have time or funds on your side, you will feel great contributing to Nelson’s exceptional trails.  Here’s how you can do it: 

JOIN OUR VOLUNTEER CREW

Be part of a great team of people who volunteer. There is no minimum commitment – come to one dig day or come to them all, everyone’s support is really appreciated. Digging not your thing? There a plenty of other ways to help out the club, fill in the form below to let us know your skills and you will go on to our volunteer database.   

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Skills/Roles you are interested in
Health & Safety Officer
Trail Maintenance

Adopt a trail

It has been a long-standing tradition in the Nelson/Richmond area for different trail areas to be developed and maintained by self-organised volunteer groups. Historically, some of this activity has been done in co-operation with NMTBC and other activity has not, but regardless the club supports all trail maintenance and development as it fits our vision of making Nelson an exceptional place to ride. The club calls this practice “Trail Adoption” and we think it’s a simple and really effective way to ensure that people can build and ride the kind of trails they enjoy.

The club does not intend to tell groups and individuals who have already built or adopted trails how to do their work, we understand that volunteering can be a thankless task and we really appreciate the massive amount of time and effort that current volunteers have put into making our existing track network. What we do offer is advice, support, working bee promotion, access to tools, help with land owner negotiations and consents, and funding for maintenance and upgrade materials.

We know that lots of people sometimes offer comment on trails without lifting a finger themselves to help, and hope that with this initiative some of those people can be encouraged to adopt their own trail and help with deeds, not just words. 

So, if you want to adopt a trail, take a look at the attached document:

How to Adopt a Trail