During these peak summer days, I escaped the sweltering heat of Nagoya and headed for the mountains to help out with trail maintenance at an INABU BASE PROJECT event.
The Inabu Base Project is an initiative for work-style reform taking place in the northeastern part of Aichi Prefecture.
It’s a wonderful work-style reform initiative that links trail riding with our everyday jobs, but I’ll leave the details for you to check out via this link.
First, I should explain how the crew at the bike shop Circles is involved.
As people who absolutely love all things cycling, we naturally love mountain biking too. However, we also know that mountain biking is a sport that requires a place to ride, and those places don't just appear in nature on their own.
That’s why, thinking that we have to “do something about it ourselves,” we have been helping to build trails since the early stages of this project.
We are working hard with the hope that, in the end, the number of mountains in Aichi Prefecture where we can safely guide our customers will increase.
And so, the other day, I was out and about in the mountains for the first time in a while.
The Inabu district is at a fairly high elevation for Aichi, so the temperature is about 5 degrees cooler and very comfortable. However, moving around still leaves you covered in sweat just like in Nagoya (haha).
While there, we were doing the very first stage of trail building: scouting out where to cut a new route. This work involves silently pushing through untamed wilderness, finding animal trails, and scouting for gaps in the trees that look promising.
The process includes:
Swarms of horseflies attacking you.
Thickets of dense, overgrown bamboo grass.
Hidden traps in the terrain that strike even after you clear the brush.
And so on.
It's fun, but the work is extremely difficult.
Ultimately, it would have been great to discover a good route, but unfortunately, this time was a bust.
Well, those days happen. Since building up these kinds of days is the only way to create a good trail, it's what keeps us motivated.
The trails you all visit and use in the mountains—whether it's for cycling, hiking, or trail running—you’re likely using hiking courses, mountain paths, or forest roads.
Those paths, too, were built through this kind of daily accumulation of effort.
It's not about saying "so you should be grateful," but I think the world might change a little if you keep that in the back of your mind, so I wanted to let you know that this kind of work goes on behind the scenes.
Trail maintenance will continue. We’ll be inviting people again on the blog and other places, so if you ever think, "Maybe I'll go check it out," we would be delighted if you reached out to us.
