0:01  
I'm Anders and welcome to the Bike Dudes.

0:05  
We're heading to Toronto's backyard the Don Valley to learn more about the scene and one of the best urban trail networks in the world.

0:12  
The Don has about five kilometers of legal bike trails, but almost 70 kilometers of illegal path created by enthusiast trail builders. We talk to a pro-cyclist and an official trail builder about their experiences in the Don. 

0:26  
Your average day job, keyboards clack, phones scream and shake and time ticks by. Alex Legums day is a little bit different.

0:37  
Alex is a professional mountain biker from Virginia. Between races, she tunes bikes and leads trail runs that aim to get more women interested in mountain biking. Since March, she's ridden almost 1700 kilometers recreationally

0:52  
I've been riding this is my second full season really. I just kind of fell into it and loved it. And now just obsessive mountain biking a couple years ago and found it to be a super empowering experience and somehow swung it so it ended up being my day job to get a lot of other people on mountain bikes with me. Which is the sweetest gig in the world.

1:11  
Alex is sponsored by Track, one of the biggest biking companies in the world. She leads weekly hill climbs in the Don designed to get more women on the trails, regardless of skill level.

1:22  
You get more women ride bikes, that's, you know, 50% of the market share that nobody's really addressing and not in a really super positive way.

1:28  
The official trails are maintained by the City of Toronto, but the community made tracks dominate the landscape the DV ride

1:34  
There was actually in a section of trail that is formally maintained by the city, there's one little jump into a dip. I remember last year I looked at it and I was like who on earth would hit that jump? And then this year was like, I would, I would hit that jump. I'm gonna try that and I tried it and it actually it transitions so perfectly into this little G out little dip in the trail. And you you just jump right in, it's actually a really smooth transition. And I'm like, Oh, that's not nearly as terrifying as I thought it was going to be.

2:01  
Still the official trails are nothing to sneeze at.

2:04  
It gets pretty gnarly. There's like some pretty gnarly stuff. So not none of the gnarly stuff is on trails that are technically supposed to exist. It's there's some really gnarly stuff. You'll see some things like no wall, right? Like did that actually launch into a wall? Who rides that? 

2:20  
Alex uses parts of trails leftover from the Don's motocross era in the 1960s. Dangerous? Yes. Fun? Definitely. Alex has had her fair share of close calls. Do you have like a favorite section of the trail or anything?

2:32  
I do. I do. It's called big old titties. That's a really great trail. I love that trail. Oh my God,

2:44  
Is that the bit where they have the burm that's like literally two times my size?

2:48  
How do you ride that?

2:50  
She's not joking when she's saying that certain sections of the trail are pretty sketchy. When I was riding the same trail that she was talking about they were easily cliffs that you could have fallen off and broken many bones. I mean, beyond that, if you were to fall on one of those runs, you wouldn't just fall and stop. You'd fall and roll all the way down the valley pretty much so the the steepness is definitely real.

3:10  
Scott Laver an official City of Toronto trail builder knows how scary that section is all too well. Scott's approach to the trail network isn't as high octane is Sal's, he prefers to walk.  

3:20  
Because I am always focusing on the nature side of things when I'm on a trail. I'm looking at trees, I'm looking at plants. I'm looking at birds, I'm a nerd. And being on a bike, I'm going too fast. Because I'm always looking around, I have to walk so I'm definitely in that sort of hiker category.

3:34  
According to Scott, people have been cycling in the Don for over 100 years. But the technical and challenging trails that the community rides today started out of something totally different. They started as motocross trails, but the city couldn't allow that to go on. The noise echoing through the valley was too loud, but mountain bikers, they don't face that problem to the

3:53  
City of Toronto is just starting to wrap its head around what is gnarly and are we willing to accept gnarly? And originally the answer was no, we're not really willing to take on the risk and liability of putting a trail feature in the middle of forest where you can't necessarily have emergency access and that kind of thing.

4:10  
Emergency access is important. Cell signal can get spotty under the dawn's luscious tree canopy and there aren't many roads in or out.

4:17  
Slowly what we are learning is you know these features are across the City of Toronto anyway. Riders and joggers and hikers are looking for these different types of features.

4:27  
Playing nice with others. Scott reminded us that this is still a Canadian issue or in other words, not serious at all. For the most part, all the different outdoorsmen and women get along rather nicely.

4:38  
It's sometimes you get sort of an extreme mountain biker or an extreme dog walker or someone who really takes ownership of an area and that's where the conflict comes in. And I do find most of the conflicts comes between off leash dogs and mountain bikers, because they don't mix well.

4:56  
That's it for Bike Dudes. Join us next week for more where we talk about bike messengers. Bye.