The trail technician program at Northwest Arkansas Community College will begin this fall. The inaugural director of the trail technician program, Lori Greminger, will start in that role on Monday. She agreed to meet for a quick conversation about the program and its curriculum on the NWACC campus last week. She says the trail technician program will train people to work in a growing industry that isn’t always top-of-mind for trail users.
“You don't think about who creates trails you're out riding,” Greminger said. “You're just, you know, enjoying your time in the woods, and you assume there's some tiny little fairy that comes up its trails on the ground at night. While you're sleeping, a trail fairy, and you know, as I kind of grew up in the sport of mountain biking, I realized that wasn't the case. You know, volunteerism, stewardship, things like that became really important to me, and then just discovering who it is that puts trails on the ground. How do we get trails, like who talks to land managers, and where does the property come from? Just so many questions were spiraling in my mind.”
The trail technician program will complement NWACC’s Bicycle Assembly and Repair Technician program, which started three years ago. Greminger said the trail technician course will cover all of the trail chronology— from land and right-of-way acquisition to design to the physical building of trails. Her resume includes building and maintaining sustainable mountain bike construction for the International Mountain Bicycling Association and, most recently, managing the Coler Mountain Bike Preserve for the Peel Compton Foundation. She said she thinks students in NWACC’s trail technician program might share some of her love for biking and the outdoors.
“I think students that will excel in this program are those that enjoy conservation, that enjoy nature, that are probably mountain bikers by trade, or just enjoy trails in general use trails,” Greminger said. “For me, I didn't love organized sports. I didn't like to be on a team I really wanted to rely on myself, and for mountain biking, I could do that. And that's sort of the same with trail building. You're out there in the woods, sometimes by yourself for hours on it. You got to get used to talking to trees and talking to mushrooms and things like that. So, people who excel in this program have a passion for cycling. They're not afraid to work independently, and they just really enjoy being outside.”
She said her work with the International Mountain Bicycling Association took her to all fifty states, and she’s become familiar with the trail-building companies whose work is in high demand.
“Through those 50 states and all of the different jobs that I've worked on all different trail building projects,” Greminger said. “I've worked with the same companies over and over again, troubling, you know, we see it as this huge international industry but it really is a small community. There are companies that you see over and over again working in various states. So yeah, I mean, it's it's actually a really tight-knit community.”
Greminger said there can also be diplomacy and advocacy involved in the trail-building process, such as explaining to cities, residents, landowners, and other stakeholders why trails are a benefit. There is also geology, math, and logic used in creating successful, sustainable trails.
“The way that you maintain a trail is first knowing what material you're working with,” Greminger said. “Is it just regular old dirt? Is it clay-based dirt? Is there a loam in the soil? Is it a very sandy soil? Are there rocks? Once you know what aggregate and dirt you're working with, then you can kind of start to dissect what type of trail maintenance you need. Are you hardening the surface? Are you putting an extra layer of clay on the surface? Are you recapping it entirely? So mean, it's a multifaceted thing. Like you really have to understand the trail that you're working with so that you can create not a band-aid, you want something that's going to last through rain, through people through you know all the different things that are going to hit the trail. So it is a process, and it's a learning curve.”
She said the NWACC program will include fieldwork with the surrounding trails, and she hopes that internships and apprenticeships will follow. Enrollment for the Northwest Arkansas Community College trail technician program is now open, and classes begin in September. She said class schedules will accommodate different schedules: there will be Monday through Friday classes, night classes, weekend classes, and online options as well.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline by reporters. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of KUAF programming is the audio record.
