Thanks dude

In my area, the trail systems are on conservation land and are dominated by horseback riders, walkers, xc riders and nature enthusiasts. I am very pleased that we have access to a decent trail network, but the only problem is that me and my friends all have larger travel freeride bikes that don't exactly fit into what we are given. We resorted to building our own trails illegally in a woodlot that was quite hidden. We experienced a ton of fun in building our trail which encorporated drops, berms, and jumps, until a group of others showed up and decided to litter, destroy our jumps, and steal our shovels. If that wasn't bad enough, a few months ago a letter was sent to every house in my area saying that the city of Hamilton had recently acquired the very woodlot our trail was on. The activity of trail building is not permitted in this area as it is a fragile environment and we were apparently destroying it. So, now having nothing, we contacted the city about this letter that we received. The lady that we talked to was very understanding, she said that the city looked into giving us riders a place to build but had no where good to do it as they believed the only place that would work would be in a forest. When we told her that it does not need to take place in a forest, and that any open space such as a field would more than suffice. She assured us it would be brought up in the next city's recreational council meeting. Since we have no other options and our illegal trail has been found, we have nothing else to do but hope the city gives us somewhere to build. A group of us will be attending the IMBA trail building session this weekend at Christie Conservation Area to pay our dues to the biking community so that we may all have more trails to ride, but it still doesn't give us the same satisfaction of having our very own local freeride trail like we used to.