EAGLE RIVER — The Keweenaw County Board has asked the Copper Harbor Trails Club (CHTC) who would bear the liability costs in the event of a catastrophic accident involving a biker on one of the trails. The matter was discussed at Wednesday’s regular board meeting.

Nathan Miller, executive director of CHTC, told the board several measures, including cleaning the trails, are taken every spring to prepare the 37-mile mountain bike trail system for safe usage, and the club is beginning a new trail bike patrol this season.

Miller told the board that the first round of trail cleanup occurred the previous Sunday with 25 volunteers.

The cleanup includes removing debris, such as chainsawing downed trees and branches from the trail, then following up with leaf-blowing, clearing drainages, and inspecting bridges.

“This work that we do every year, before we even think about opening our trails,” said Miller, “and we won’t open any trails until we’ve inspected them and gone through this entire process trail by trail by trail, and if we do identify some maintenance needs on some of these trails, we will hold of on opening those trails in particular.”

If there are enough maintenance demands, CHTC will hold off opening the entire system until they are addressed.

Another item addressed is problems where mud could potentially cause a “slip and slide kind of accidents,” but also inspecting boardwalks, bridges and other manufactured features.

“These are the features that are most scrutinized as far as insurance goes,” Miller said, “and so, we really work hard to maintain those to a high degree.”

Miller went on to say that CHTC does not build its trails, but instead contracts with a company named Rock Solid Trail Contractors.

Rock Solid Contractors was established in 2014, and has built thousands of miles of trail in Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Arkansas, California, Hawaii, New Mexico, and Canada.

Miller said that while their trails are built by the foremost professional contractor in the business, none of the CHTC trails are what could be called exceptional, so they are no more dangerous or “scary” than any other trail across the nation.

Miller said as an added precaution, there is Use at your own risk signage on their trail head.

“The language is out there for people to read, either on our website, the trail head signage, and elsewhere,” he said.

More such signage will be installed this coming spring, he said. Several dozen are currently being printed off, he added.

“All of these signs are going to help reduce our risk and liability,” said Miller, “because that’s the biggest thing for our organization and all of our partner landowners. It’s to reduce that liability, whether that’s inspecting our features and maintaining them to a high degree, keeping trails closed if they are not prepared to be ridden or hiked on, or just informing the users of the potential dangers that they may encounter on our trails.”