You might thrash the occasional off-camber switchback with a touch too much rear brake lever pressure, but there’s nothing forgivable about tossing plastic trash about.

Undoing the hundreds of hours invested into building a trail network, with unsightly trash, is completely removed from the core values of mountain biking.

As land use activists attempt to protect what access is currently available, and hope to expand build projects in disputed areas, trash has become a huge issue.

To assist the mountain biking community in its quest for cleaner trails, Trash Free Trails (TFT) want you to participate in its Halloween campaign.

Bingo for cleaner trails

Operating under the Autumn Litter Watch banner, TFT has created a trail bandit bingo card, with wonderfully Halloween themed graphics.

This card lists most of the prevalent trash types and allows dutiful riders on a clean-up, to tally exactly what quantity of each they find.

Beyond the act of taking responsibility for the state of your local trail network, the TFT inspired Halloween clean-up, contains a vital element of data harvesting.

The strategy is simple: get out there and identify, record and remove trash from your local trails. As part of a crucial ‘State of our Trails’ report, TFT is attempting to compile reliable and comprehensive data about trash types and hot spots.

This is a five-year project, set for academic maturity in 2025, and will in all likelihood become a global reference study for mountain bike trail trash management.

Broadly supported by Muc-Off and Komoot, the work TFT does is terrifically important to sustain a pristine trail network.

It is no use having that perfect drop-off landing zone or impeccably banked berm, when its appearance is spoiled by an energy bar wrapper in the braking zone.

Want to get involved? Details in the link.