For the LAST edition of the week, we have a special interview. PLUS: An epic trail build, cutting through berms like butter, "just one more" energy, and much more. Happy Friday! LET'S SEND IT👇
2857 words of pure stoke.
Read time: 10 min 44 seconds.
Photo of the Day
Greg Callaghan threads the needle straight through the gnarliest gap between two rock faces like it’s just another Tuesday.
Get ready for his epic video below. 👇
📷 Bartek Wolinski behind the lens.
Video of the Day
MUST WATCH: Greg Callaghan just pulled the ultimate “dream come true” card.
Spent years racing all over the world, comes home, builds the hardest-hitting trail on his childhood mountain. Must be nice!
Greg’s Granite is open - bring extra brake pads.
⏰ Watch time - 5 min 08 sec
BONUS: We sat down expecting a chill watch, but nope, this turned into an all-out freeride mayhem.
Enzo showed up at Rocapark, took one look at the lines, and said, “Yeah, let’s send it.”
Steep chutes, sculpted lips, and some full-gas moments that were frothing for airtime.
⏰ Watch time - 4 min 01 sec
Send of the Day
Marky Math carving these berms like a hot knife through butter 🔥🧈
Behind the Berms
Special Interview With Mike Repyak - Professional Trail Designer
Ever found yourself mid-ride wondering, who the heck thought to put that berm in the perfect spot?
Or maybe, why does this trail flow so well while another feels like a bad life choice?
Well, turns out, there are masterminds behind all of it.
People who make a career out of crafting the trails we love to ride.
Mike Repyak is one of those people.
From childhood backyard sled tracks (with strict uphill rules) to designing thousands of miles of trails for IMBA, SE Group, and now his own firm, Kayper Works, Mike has spent his life shaping how and where we ride.
👉 288 Trail Based Projects
👉 Over 3,500 miles planned
👉 750 miles field designed
👉 109 of those projects have been built
👉 34 built by IMBA Trail Solutions construction team
He’s got insights into what makes a trail work, what kills a project before it starts, and why your favorite line might not have been an accident after all.
We sat down with Mike to talk about his journey, what it really takes to build trails, and how someone could break into the business of making dirt dreams a reality.
Let's get into it 👇
You’ve had an incredible career in trail planning and design. How did you first get into this field? Was it intentional, or did you just find yourself in the right place at the right time?
During my career moments it sure felt like the right place at the right time, but when I look back there’s an intersection of intention and passion for outdoor recreation. From grade school through to high school I was always either on bikes or skis. Way back when I was 8 years old, I would create a complex network of sledding trails on our backyard hill, even yelling at my sister if she walked up one of the downhill trails. In college I started out as a mechanical engineering student, a couple core classes just became a barrier for me, which led me to change my major to Landscape Architecture.
10 years ago or so, I was cleaning out boxes of college projects that were in storage at my parents, nearly all of my projects had some sort of trails aspect to them. I was weaving in outdoor recreation experiences into traditional landscape architecture and planning projects. That then launched me into a career focused on outdoor recreation.
Walk us through the typical process of designing and building a new trail—from concept to completion. Where does it start, and what are the major steps?
Visioning with goals and objectives for what trail development is meant to be for a property, community, organization, and/or land management agency.
Planning that conceptualizes a trail plan that meets the vision’s goals and objectives that has information on potential trail mileage, range of trail experiences, access points, key control points, scale of bike-optimized facilities, range of construction costs, recommended phasing, and approval/permitting strategy.
Informed by the plan, Design Development dives into the details from site design of trailheads to field designing trail alignments to determining construction approach all of which helps to refine the construction costs and approval/permitting processes.
Breaking ground as Construction begins is exciting, but the path to get to that groundbreaking can go many ways… procuring a trail builder through design/build or design/bid/build, will volunteers be part of the workforce, what best management practices are to be followed or required by permits acquired, and many more considerations.
Underlining each of these major sets is fundraising, community engagement, and always thinking about what trail maintenance and continued funding will be needed to keep trails in as-built condition.
What’s one of the most surprising or unexpected parts of working in trail design that people wouldn’t realize?
Trail planners and designers don’t work solo or in a vacuum, we spend a lot of time engaging with land managers and surrounding communities to best understand what the trail users are looking for their local trails to provide across a range of experiences.
What are some of the biggest mistakes you see in trail design, and how do you avoid them?
Biggest mistake: going straight to construction, skipping planning and design. A well thought out plan that considers the entire property then guides the detailed design even if you are just building the first phase or two.
In terms of design, the biggest mistakes I’ve seen are when a trail is identified as a shared-use trail that has pedestrians and mountain bikers on it and then the design inserts bike-optimized features that degrades the pedestrian’s experience and add the potential for conflicts.
Sight lines, turning radius, appropriate grades, well thought out intersections are key to creating a successful shared-use trail. That shared-use trail then can be a connector or a climb to a bike-only, highly bike-optimized trail where feature frequency and amplitude can be turned up.
With eMTBs becoming more popular, how has that changed trail design considerations?
This is a question with answers that are ever evolving right now. We still have to design for the “lowest common denominator”, those without e-assist. At the moment, eMTB design considerations are mainly being seen on climbing trails that need good sightlines for the increased closing speeds (eMTB overcoming acoustic bikes and hikers) and wider turning radius due to higher climbing speeds. Beyond that, we start to ask if we need to have eMTB only trails or zones.
Favorite trail feature to design: berms, jumps, rock gardens, or something else?
I wouldn’t say there is one favorite trail feature to design, my favorite terrain is to design in complex rocky topography. Figuring out a puzzle of terrain with rocky texture, linking high points to interesting formations to discovery of a view to challenging moves. Then seeing how the builders take my design guidance into their rock work artistry.
What’s one trail project you’ve worked on that you’d consider your “dream build”?
So many to choose from! The first one that comes to mind is Walden’s Ridge in Chattanooga, TN. Private lands acquired by a land trust, private dollars funding the planning, design, and construction of over 10 miles of bike-optimized gravity-focused trails ranging from smooth and flowy to rocky tech to big jump lines.
For people who love riding but have never thought about what goes into making a trail, what’s one thing you wish more riders understood about trail building?
Short answer… There is a lot of work behind the scenes that determines what gets built. Don’t be quick to be critical of trail experiences being built, instead get informed on the process that took place before the trails were built. Secondly, using volunteers to build trails is more about building community and not about building trails for free. While there are volunteer trail builders creating great trails, that is not typically the case. Professional trail builders are trained and experienced to build high-quality, sustainable trails. You wouldn’t ask a volunteer to install the electrical and plumbing in your new house.
How do you determine whether a trail should be flowy and machine-built versus more raw and technical?
That comes out of the visioning and planning where we discuss trail experiences goals and objectives. Are we in a trail desert where we need to create a progression of beginner (smooth and flowy) to advanced trails (tight and technical). If trails already exist nearby, what trail experiences are available in the area and what’s missing. Are we filling experience gaps, intermediate skill level flow trails or intermediate level rock tech. Then the landscape considerations help determine how the trails will be constructed, looking at topography, soils, forest health/size/density, understory vegetation, rock content, etc. Hand-build and machine-build can be done in nearly all situations, desired daily production rates and costs also influence the construction style. Soils void of rock content on hillsides tends to be a good application for a trail dozer to knock out good daily production rates with a hand crew following behind for the final tread finish. Very rocky terrain on steep slopes may lend to a full hand-build scenario. A flow trail with dynamic soil and rock features might see best results with a couple mini-ex’s and hand crew.
When planning a new trail, how do you balance environmental concerns with creating a fun and rideable experience?
It is very important to build relationships with the land manager’s resource specialist, working side by side with them will result in a good balance. They can easily shut a project down, get to know them and learn about their resources and get insights on what they see as opportunities. Start by asking questions about the natural resources that are on site, any threatened or endangered species present, what regulations will guide trail development, are there specific resource buffers we need to be aware of, and request resource data layers that can be imported into the project spatial data. Knowing where resources are located begins to build the framework we are working within. In general, trails are very flexible. We can work around most environmental concerns. And if we need to encroach on or cross resources there are permitting processes and best management practices specific to trail development that help us do so.
Funding and approvals can be a major bottleneck for new trails. What does it take to get a project from idea to a funded and approved plan?
Plan, plan, plan. A trails plan is a multi-faceted deliverable that informs land managers, stakeholders, public-at-large, funders, and permitting agencies. The plan sets a foundation to tell your trail story, be used to support grant applications, and show your vision to funders. When asking for approvals and funding, the first question you will get is “show me your plan”. The cost of planning is a small fraction of what will be needed for design and construction, planning leads to funding opportunities. From 2018 through 2022, IMBA’s Trail Accelerator Grant program matched $577,000 in local funding to create 42 trail plans. Those plans unlocked $12.8 million in additional funding for design and construction.
What’s one project in your career that you’re most proud of, and what made it special?
That’s a difficult question to answer, that’s like asking what your favorite bike is. As I recently left IMBA I recapped my 8.5 years of projects… I oversaw 288 Planning and Design Projects across the US that outlined over 3,500 miles of planned trails of which 750 miles were field designed.109 of those 288 projects went to construction and 34 built by IMBA Trail Solutions teams. Being that I’m a Midwesterner to the core, the city-wide trail plan for Madison, WI is showing the importance of connected green spaces. The destination trail network planning in Wausau, WI is going to be a big win for central WI. And a recently completed strategic trails plan for Marquette County, MI was very rewarding by bringing dozens of stakeholders together to work on making Marquette trail experiences sustainable into the future. Out west I loved to see the trail design at Arapahoe Basin Ski Area come to life, gravity trails and a high alpine loop all above tree line. Then out east, the work IMBA and partners have done throughout West Virginia is changing the outdoor recreation complexion of that state, strengthening communities and creating amazing destinations.
Beyond specific projects, I'm very proud of the impacts that IMBA Trail Labs has made across the US and internationally. That educational program, which I was a part of developing and as the lead speaker, has informed hundreds of communities on what it takes to create high quality trail experiences for residents and how to go about making a trail destination if that is a goal of theirs. Trail Labs attendees range from local trail orgs to mayors, parks and recreation directors to funders, tourism bureaus to utility managers. Lastly, it was very rewarding to be part of the teams who worked on the Guidelines for a Quality Trail Experience book that we created for the US Bureau of Land Management and the Mountain Bike Trail Development Guidelines book funded by the Greater Minnesota Regional Parks and Trails Commission, one of the most comprehensive trail development resource created in recent years.
If someone wanted to follow in your footsteps, what’s the best way to break into trail design and planning?
There are a few paths that I’ve seen to be good ways to enter this profession, all of which the individual needs to have a passion for outdoor recreation as a guiding light. Education wise, landscape architecture and planning develop a great knowledge base for this type of work. So does civil engineering and natural resource management. Going to work for a professional trail construction company is another route, gaining practical experience develops an eye for good planning and design grounded in how those trails are built. Add GIS, CAD, graphic design skills sets are required to complete day to day tasks and create deliverables that convey planning and design intent to clients and stakeholders.
What advice would you give to a local community that wants to develop a mountain bike trail network but doesn’t know where to start?
Download and read the books I mentioned above. Attend an IMBA Trail Labs. Organize, the power of a group of unified voices is stronger than one or more advocates with different narratives and approaches. Build a team of advocates, community leaders, and experts to create the vision and determine next steps.
If you could design and build a trail anywhere in the world with no limitations, where would it be and what would it look like?
Norway! Riding rugged technical trails in a fjord landscape under the midnight sun. I have a lot of family in Norway that we’ve visited a couple of times. We’ve explored some amazing places, but there is so much more to see with my trail eyes.
We’ve covered a lot of ground—just like Mike has in his career designing and planning some of the best trails out there.
Big thanks to Mike for sharing his insights, wisdom, and a peek behind the curtain of what it takes to bring trails to life.
Next time you're railing a berm, sending a jump, or just enjoying a perfectly sculpted ribbon of dirt, take a second to appreciate the work that went into making it happen.
And if you're looking to get into trail building yourself, take Mike’s advice: plan, organize, and always keep the dream of fjord-side riding in Norway alive. 🤘
Dream Rides ❤️
Chainline Bikes hit it out of the park with this build.
It’s everything we need, and nothing we don’t - all on one bike.
Got a bike that makes your friends drool? We wanna see it! Shoot us an email at editorial@thesenditdaily.com, and maybe your ride will be the next superstar.
Trail of the Day
We figured you’ve had your fill of trails for today, so we’re hitting pause on our next feature until Monday.
Give those legs (and eyes) a break. 😉
Laugh of the Day
Send to your riding buddy that always wants one more lap 🤣
That’s all for this week folks. We hope everyone gets some saddle time out there. See you all on Monday! 🤙
For the ❤️ of two wheels.
We write The Send It Daily Monday - Friday (we’re out riding on the weekends). We do not proofread our material before sending and did not get A’s in English.
Our mission is simple: To advocate and bring awareness to the athletes that Send It and the media teams that capture it.
If you’re looking to feature content on The Send It Daily, reach out to editorial@thesenditdaily.com.
For more information, visit us at thesenditdaily.com
