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Friends of Pathways volunteer Randy Rodgers works on a section of the new Ridge Trail singletrack in Phillips Canyon. Volunteers can meet every Friday at 8 a.m. at the Stagecoach in Wilson to help in the trail's construction. BRADLY J. BONER / NEWS&GUIDE

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Tim Brown has a favorite part of Jackson he shows guests who visit him at his Cache Creek-area home.

Not far from his house he takes visitors to the trail system and points out the Sidewalk, a trail he helped build last year.

About five years ago, Brown attended a volunteer day to help with trail work in Teton County. He kept coming back.

“I like the fact if I wasn’t doing it, it wouldn’t get done,” he said.

Brown now regularly joins trail volunteers Friday mornings for several hours of work.

The Friday morning program started casually when Walt Berling started volunteering to work on trails about four years ago. This summer he challenged members of his high school Nordic team to come out Friday mornings alongside him.

“I call it training with a cause,” he said.

His enthusiasm spurred an open Friday morning volunteer session for anyone in the community. The group meets at the Stagecoach Bar in Wilson and works on trails in the area, such as on Teton Pass. Volunteers work for several hours and stop around lunchtime.

Trails are built at a 5 percent to 6 percent grade for mountain bikes and up to an 11 percent grade for horses, Berling said. The work is physically hard, but watching a trail form and later seeing it used makes it rewarding.

“You don’t realize how much work goes into them,” volunteer Leif Huot said.

Huot has volunteered a couple of times, knowing he will eventually be able to bike his handiwork.

Many of the volunteers are trail users, Brown said.

While volunteer participation varies, the group has teamed up with other programs — one week the group worked with kids 8 to 10 years old, Berling said. All participation helps because there is something people of all abilities can contribute, he said.

“There is an art to the design of the trail,” Brown said.

Trails are designed with maintenance, erosion and environmental impact in mind. While the process is simplified for volunteers, they help on all aspects of building the trail, Brown said.

“There’s always, always, always a job,” said Randy Roberts, who works for the U.S. Forest Service and Friends of Pathways.

Roberts, one of the founders of Friends of Pathways, started volunteering in recent years, developing trails and pathways to get firsthand knowledge of the work that goes into the building a good trail.

The trail system impacts the whole community, he said. As the trails get better, more people come to town specifically to take advantage of biking and hiking, which brings money into the community, Roberts said.

Roberts found the work and watching a path take shape somewhat addicting.

“You want to extend it and work on it and make it better,” he said.

Enjoying the work is key to volunteering. Roberts’ hands are blistered and sore. The work is energy consuming and hot, and sometimes the air is filled with mosquitoes.

“When you’re wheelbarrowing dirt, you better love what you’re doing,” he said.

The obvious benefit to volunteering is getting trails built, said Galen Rockenbach, a trail designer with Friends of Pathways, who will run the Friday volunteer program the rest of the summer. But the big reward is a sense of ownership volunteers establish with the trail system and the community as a whole.

Most people, like Brown, love to come back and see the work they’ve done and, of course, take advantage of it.

“It’s really sweet to ride a trail you helped dig on,” Brown said.