by Fenlason » Wed Dec 30, 2015 7:38 am
We did do a lot more trail work this again this year. The winter clean up was rather brutal this year again. We have built a fair amount of new trails made. Late fall is the best time for this, when the leaves are down.. and the grasses, ferns etc. are dead. Some of the later fall stuff is just roughed out [although rideable]. They will receive more work next season. In addition to longer trails, we did build a lot of little connector trails. 100-150 feet. Things that really helped with the flow of the network. As an example 3 Bridge Trail is almost always ridden out away from the house. There are some ups and downs to it, but it is gradually uphill in the direct we ride. Towards the end of it, we turn left on another trail.. a good uphill.. and then loop around a fast dual track section over to Dug trail. Well on one ride I popped off of Dug and headed toward and back on 3 Bridge, in the other direction. "Wow is this fun!!" In that direction.. the ending intersection doesn't flow that well, unless continuing back to the house, but by adding a turn to the left.. across the brook again.. up a short steep hill, one can more easily connect to a few other trails.
While I am of the philosophy that any trail can be a flow trail, if you are good enough, we did build some easier fun trails. These received a bit of earth work, using the rototiller, Rogue Hoe, our green ez dig and fire rakes. While I love [and my more regular riders love] our technical trails. These faster trails are a blast. To balance these out. We did build some pretty technical stuff.. some ledgy lumpy stuff.
We did also do a bit of dual track work.. ditching.. and adding culverts. We also added a dual track. It was a path that had been logged but was pretty wet. Our neighbor Lee wanted a trail through it and had rough it out. We did a bit of work on that, adding culverts etc. There are still places that get wet pretty easily, so it will need more earth work.
We did host another Time Trial [part of a multi club series], and our Spooktacular. We decided to combine them.. to save us some work, and to make it more worthwhile for those that travel some distance to come. Combining them was a mistake. While we didn't have to clean the trails up twice.. Marking the course took a bit of time.. and like a lot of the rest of it.. was last minute work. We also upped our pumpkin count, which didn't help. We had 150 carved pumpkins on our trail. Over all we had around 50 people come… but not all that many for the time trial.. nor that many for the haunted trail walk. I suspect we won't host another time trial.. The Spooktacular? I am not sure.
I still haven't added any more skinnies to the Skinny Farm.. but we did do more clearing in the area, and hauled out more logs for construction. New tools.. we purchased a small arborist saw. I am loving that. I end up doing most of my roughing out work with that. Work that I would normally use loppers on. Even though exhausting… I can get much more work done, in a short amount of time.
We recently got our first significant snow storm.. which will probably halt our work until next year.
glenn
Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.
Kahlil Gibran
We don't stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing.
George Bernard Shaw