As riders, and people who love the sport, we were thrilled by the world’s elite XC riders taking on the technical trail features at Glentress. In particular, the event-specific Salmon Ladder rock roll, Quarry gap jump, and Storm Arwen features were exciting, challenging, and tested the abilities of the world’s best XC riders.
The images of Pidcock, Schurter, van der Poel, Sagan, Richards, Ferran-Prevot, Short, and Aldridge (to name just a few of our heroes) riding these features and the drone images over the Tweed Valley made us really proud of Scotland and our ability to host world level events.
We have had many questions from riders and businesses asking about the removal of these features. From the outset, the plan was that these features would be installed on a temporary basis and were constructed for the purpose of creating a world level event.
That said, Forestry and Land Scotland have spent many hours with their own teams and with external partners, including ourselves, investigating options, debating and analysing the risk/benefit of retaining any of these temporary features, assessing whether there were any mitigations that could be put in place to help their management. This was a complex process during which FLS reached a decision that may disappoint some of the mountain bike community but was deemed necessary for FLS to mitigate risks to itself as the organisation which manages the site, and its many users, on an ongoing basis.
We hope it might be helpful for the MTB community, and other interested stakeholders, to understand the perspective of the land manager and the decision making framework that land managers (or owners) use to help them make decisions on the level of management, and subsequent risk, that any trail on their property occurs.
‘Managing Visitor Safety in the Countryside’ publication from the Visitor Safety Group
(VSG) has defined within its ‘Guiding Principles’ a risk control matrix that has three factors which helps land managers ‘strike a balance between visitor self-reliance and management intervention’.
- Location and terrain – From ‘Undeveloped to Heavily Developed’
- Level of visitor’s skill, self-reliance, and personal responsibility – From ‘Advanced to Minimal’
- Level and type of hazard management from manager/owner – From ‘Minimal management to Advanced Management’