Professional Builder Profile Interview: Garreth Paton of Iconic Trails in Australia
As we continue our series on interviewing professional trail builders, we couldn’t be more excited about the response. When we tossed it out on social media a few weeks ago about whether anyone was interested in being interviewed, we had no idea the kind of response we’d get! Also, based on the last interview we posted with Patrick Podolski of Golden Dirt Trails, this series hits home. You’re interested. It’s fun and educating to hear from professional trail builders worldwide.
For this interview, we move the conversation from British Columbia to Australia, where we hear from Garreth Paton of Iconic Trails. The vision of Iconic Trails is: “To make freedom and the feeling of adventure accessible to everyone through amazing and unique walking and mountain bike trails.” Their website goes on to say:
Our love of the outdoors and passion for mountain biking is why Iconic Trails was created. The mental and physical health benefits to the community is what drives us to design, develop and build trails that excite and encourage people to get outdoors and make the most of every day.
Without any delay, let’s jump into this interview!
Sean: What are you currently doing?
Garreth: Our team is currently spread across several projects in our hometown of Canberra. These projects include school and community pump tracks, mini flow trails, and the maintenance contract at Stromlo Forest Bike Park. Stromlo is Australia’s busiest bike park, receiving over 500,000 visitors annually.
We also have some large-scale hiking trail projects underway in the Blue Mountains National Park and Kosciusko National Park. I am currently spending most of my time managing the Blue Mountains trail projects.
Sean: What prompted you to take the plunge in launching out and starting your own trail building company?
Garreth: Australia has some of the best trail building companies in the world. Still, our hometown of Canberra was falling way behind the rest of Australia/world as we only had one small local trail building company that lacked passion for the sport of mountain biking. As I saw Canberra falling further and further behind, I decided it was time to step up and try and make a difference. We are slowly but steadily making a difference and bringing some fun and progressive mountain bike trails to the Canberra mountain bike community.
Sean: What’s been the craziest story or a-ha moment so far?
Garreth: That would have to be before the inception of Iconic Trails. It was hosting the (unofficial) inaugural Pump Track World Championships in my backyard in 2009. This event started off with a magazine editor offering me money to do a shoot in my backyard with a few pro riders while they were in Australia for the world championships. I certainly wasn’t going to accept any money, but it got me thinking much bigger than just a photo shoot.
I spoke to a few of my friends in the mountain bike industry and told them of my plan to hold an event on my backyard pump track. The format was a 10-lap time trial, and every cent and product the sponsors supplied would return to the place-getters on the night. It went from just an idea to 3 weeks later, I had 200 spectators in my little backyard and 20 pro downhill riders hitting up laps of my pump track. The whole event was invite-only to help manage numbers. The entire night seemed surreal as I had some of the biggest names in mountain biking, drinking beers, and racing around my backyard. Some of the entrants were Steve Pete, Greg Minnar, Brendan Fairclough, Brian Lopes, Mick Hannah, and Dave Mcmillan, to name a few of the legends.
Mick Hannah took the win at this world's first event.
Sean: What was the biggest obstacle you faced when starting?
Garreth: I started Iconic Trails with almost no money, but I was experienced in trail building and not afraid of hard work. For the first year, I worked everyday trail building and reinvesting every cent back into the business and buying more and more equipment and machinery. I drove public buses at night to pay the bills and support my family while the company grew and cost much more than it was making. It took approximately one year until I hit that turning point of having the right equipment and enough money in the business to start paying myself a wage and give away the bus driving.
Before I could even start building trails, one of the biggest obstacles was finding an insurance company that would cover me for public liability insurance. It took almost a month of searching and trying several insurance brokers before we finally found someone to insure me for this high-risk industry.
We have been extremely lucky and never had any shortage of work. I will always give the highest priority to those who took that risk in the early days, gave me a chance to prove myself, and helped Iconic Trails become what it is today.
We started small, but four years later, we have 32 staff and a barrage of machines and vehicles growing rapidly.
Sean: What is one thing you wish you knew when you started?
Garreth: How to run a business. This was the biggest challenge and still is to this day. Building trails is the fun and rewarding part. Sitting behind a computer for several hours most nights after 10 hours on the trails is not something I thought about when I first started. I struggled through school, so admin work feels like I’m back in the classroom.
Sean: What advice would you give to someone thinking of venturing out to start their own trail building company?
Garreth: Make sure you have the skills and knowledge to go out independently and build high-quality professional trails. Take pride in your work and make every project your best yet. Quoting trail work is extremely difficult as you don’t really know what challenges lie beneath until you start digging. You may completely stuff up a quote (like I often do), and the project may run at a loss. Still finish that project to the highest standard and learn from that project. I make fewer mistakes with quoting now, but unfortunately, I still get a few horribly wrong. You will definitely win some and lose some. Fingers crossed for more wins.
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That concludes our interview. If you have a story to tell, click the button below and drop me an email.
Interview by: Sean Benesh Photos: Supplied by Garreth Paton and Iconic Trails
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sean Benesh
Sean is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Trail Builder Mag. He is also the Communications Director for the Northwest Trail Alliance in Portland, Oregon. While in grad school, he worked as a mountain biking guide in Southern Arizona. Sean also spends time in the classroom as a digital media instructor at Warner Pacific University.
