Home Mountain bike trail system

[Fenlason]

A week ago, much of our snow was gone. It left us excited, very excited, to get out and do more trail work. On our Monday night group hike I did a little exploring, and I found some awesome places for new single track. Some of our neighboring lands we have only had permission to use the existing dual track trails that pass through an area. Not that we have been denied more access, we just haven't sought more in those places yet. Some of the new potential area's we spotted are on a property owner we haven't sought permission yet. Well we went to see him yesterday. His property behind us, is a landlocked piece [89 acres], and the owner lives a couple miles away at another location. We now have primary permission... meaning he said yes, but he wants to talk further, and walk the property etc, [he was heading to an appointment at the time]. Interestingly he is the President of another trail group in the area. They have done some pretty involved and substantial trail projects. Things like some nice river trails. He is a cyclist himself also, but does not mountain bike at all. He does not realize what we can ride. Nor does he realize how non-invasive some of these single track trails can be. At least some of the trails we are looking to do, will take very little work, and if down the road, he chooses he no longer wants trails there, a year of no maintenance, one would not know there is a trial there. Heck some trails we have, once the leaves fall off the trees, the trail are invisible. So while we might have a little more "red tape" on these new trails... we have enough other work to keep us busy while we go through any process.

I am guessing we have more work planned, that we could possibly do this summer. Which really isn't a bad problem

Meanwhile, I have done more work on my RTV.. improving it's tool carrying capacity. I have also made another tool pack. I took a [very old ] Cannondale hip pack, I put a hammer holster on each side of it. I carry a set of loppers on one side, and a small axe on the other. I also carry a folding pruning saw in the pack itself. We did some trail work Friday and Saturday using it. 2 of the newest unfinished trails, needed more pruning, and this pack works great. It works awesome.. having the axe and the loppers right at hand.. all the time... it speeds things up greatly.

I had thought of putting my chainsaw pack and this pack together, and if I had to hike into the woods 10 miles.. I probably would, but with a lot of the pruning I am doing.. I would not want to be restricted by the chainsaw pack. Yesterday I did use both. I would park near the trail.. midway along it's length. I would walk to either end with one pack.. then places where the saw was "needed" I would walk back out with that. It really worked great.

[Fenlason]

I have not posted in a while. I have been working. With the new tool storage system in my RTV I can't put my generator in. So instead of taking it out when I need the generator I bought one of these.

In this photo it sits pretty low. which was fine for today's work. I do have a piece that will raise the hitch about 10" or I can slide the rack into the reese on my new 3pt hitch.

[Fenlason]

I previously owned a small York rake. It was a 4ft. tow behind... and I sort of didn't like it. I have to get off the tractor to raise it.. and it clogs easily. Well I modified it to fit that new reese hitch on the 3pt hitch on my tractor.

I have also been working on some ideas to mount it under the front bucket.

[Fenlason]

We have done more pruning on the trails we started to build last fall... but right now.. before the leaves come out is the perfect time to flag new trails. We have flagged a couple of good sized single track, with more to come.

I have also worked on a small section of trail near the house. I had a small esker like section. It is perhaps 60ft long.. 3' to 5' high on one side..but it drops further down to a brook on the opposite side. It has a beauty of a big pine on one end and 2 smaller pine on the other end. It was pretty heavily covered in brush. This end of it, is pretty steep. I build a ramp so as to not cause the soil to erode from away from that pine.

[Fenlason]

We have continued to do a lot of trail work. We had gotten 2 significant trails flagged, and a bit more scouted. I sort of wanted to get more flagged, but it felt funny getting too far ahead of ourselves. We have since gotten one of the recently flagged trails roughed out. We really really like this area. We will need at least 5 bridges in this area. I have been working on plans and designs on these. I am contemplating "playing" with building some arch bridges, I keep going back and forth on this one. One of my bridges will have 2 trails entering, on one end of it at an angle. I am going to try and build it with each side of it banked somewhat.

I have used the tractor, the new debris fork, and rake to clean some of the logging debris. 3 of our more important dual tracks have been cleaned up. The tools work great. I need to beef up the top of the rake, it did bend some, but otherwise I was very very pleased with how it worked. I have decided to forgo trying to put it on the bucket. My neighbor is planning to rent an excavator to clean up the new logging paths. Some of them will be turned into dual track trails. We both went out recently talking about plans.

[Fenlason]

We have continued to do a bit of work. I have applied a clear finish to our trail signs and have been installing them. I just completed the finish on them Friday, so still have some to put up. We of course have a lot more to do, as well. I need some arrows also [color coded] We have continued to work on those new trails. I do have 4 of the 5 bridges made. I did make an arch bridge. I kept going back and forth on the idea. It was sort of an experiment. In the size I made it was more expensive, and more work than just building a flat bridge. I build one arch.. and was pleasantly surprised how solid it felt. So continued on and made the other side and completed the bridge. hmm my other photo's are on my wife's computer.. not mine..

The bridge is solid. I can easily make a longer bridge with this method. In that case, it will be a little less expensive than a more conventionally beamed bridge. Also on the next bridge in mind, I will have to carry the beams in a little ways, so these lighter beams will be helpful in that way. Oh the beam is made from a piece of pressure treated decking. 5/4 x6 I ripped it in half, so one piece is the top, the other the bottom. The spacers are sections of 2x4's. It is made in a jig, and is screwed and glued.

We did also build a bridge with banked sides. This one took some time to figure out, how to build it, but we like how it came out.

I did get my York Rake back modified, and put back together.

[Fenlason]

We have connected the end of Tom, Dick and Harry. It is connected to Lucinda on "this" side of the brook. We also have installed a bridge and connected it to the knoll. I used another arched beam bridge. This one is 12 feet long, and when I remade the jig. I increased the arch a bit.


We have continued to "polish" TDH as well as Lucinda. While I expect we will find more to do, for the most part it just needed to get broken in.

I have tried out the York rake and am happy with that. We have also been installing signs, with most of what has been made so far put up. We of course need many more.

[Fenlason]

I continue to work on trails.. not every day but most every day. Sometimes just a couple of hours, sometimes 8 or so. I have continued to polish Tom, Dick and Harry, and Lucinda. We had done a lot of work on Just a Bunny, but that one is still a work in progress. We have put up more signs. I have to make more.. and was getting low on lumber scraps. So I have gone back to some house building to give me more.

We have also started making arrows signs. I have been using scraps of Azec composite trim for that. They are done similarly to my regular signs. I route out the arrow, spray paint, then sand of the over spray.[in this case I am using paint, and not spray ink] They need no other finish so are a fast, easy and durable sign.

[Fenlason]

We continue to work on the trails most days. While still continuing on new work, we have had to put a bit of time into maintenance. Mowing, string trimming, pruning etc. It seems as if we have had a bit of wind and have had a lot of downed trees to take care of also. I have continued to "polish" some trails. Between the work, and the riding of them to break them in, they are getting nice. I have made a few new trails.. but really small stuff. I added 40 or so feet to the upper end of AngeR, so that instead of having to make a difficult tight right hand turn at the top of a challenging hill, you can go straight.. up a more challenging hill Then I decided to add 120 feet to the lower end of Pumpkinhead. So now one can ride up Ange R [single track] cross Sam's trail [dual track] and jump right onto Pumpkinhead [single track].

I have added a few more signs and have gotten arrows put up for 2 trails. I don't expect all the trails will need arrows, just certain ones. The first I did [Uncle Wiggly] Is fairly long, and crosses other trails in a few places.. or has other intersections. We have a regular way that we normally ride it, so I put the arrows up to mark that. This last Monday was our first ride with them, they seemed to work well.

I also have a loop I used to do as an interval workout. It starts at the back of our property and zig zags through a variety of trails, heading back to the house. I tend to loose people when I crank it.. so I had stopped doing it on group rides. The arrows seem to work well for that also.

Our group rides have people of varied skill and fitness levels. Right now It is less extreme than it had been, but there is still a big difference between the front and back people. I am "developing" options for that instead of the lead people having to "sit' around waiting. Tom, Dick and Harry, Lucinda, and Just a Bunny, all lead to a trail called The Knoll. It is a knoll that has a trail around the perimeter of it. It is sort of like a rotary.. with a seperate exit to each of the previously mentioned trails. So the lead guys can keep hammering around The Knoll, while "waiting" for the slower riders to arrive. Of course people still have the option to wait. Monday I added a little connector trail between Tom, Dick and Harry, and Lucinda.. so that we could do the same, on that end. It also worked awesome.

[asianflava]

You should take your Garmin and do a screenshot of the trace overlayed on Google Maps.

[Fenlason]

You should take your Garmin and do a screenshot of the trace overlayed on Google Maps.

I no longer have a working GPS [although I do have plenty of friends that have them.] It has been suggested, and It would be nice to have a map. For the area where are trails are the densest I don't think it would work, there are a lot of trails very close together with pretty good tree cover. There are places where trails are closer together than GPS's accuracy.

Heck it would be a pain trying to keep track of what we have ridden... making sure to get it all.

Even just getting the main trails mapped would be a plus.

[Fenlason]

I don't even know how many miles of trails we have? For a while Laurie and I have sort of been saying maybe 20.. but our last Monday night ride, we rode 10 miles.. and there were whole areas we did not get to.
One of the hard things in measuring.. there are many trails one can't get to, without re-riding other parts more than once.

[Fenlason]

We have continued to work on the trails, maybe not quite as much as last year. I am trying to be more mindful of building in some rest, with my training schedule. It seems that trail building does not count as a rest day.

I have done some polishing of some of our existing trails. As part of that going back and taking out the little stumps from saplings that were removed during the build process. In some places I have done a little earth work.. taking a place that had a bad side slope... in a turn and berming it a little.

Spidey's Wild Ride area is like a park inside a park. One could spend quite a bit of time just doing loops in there. This area is like a roller coaster. I have added a few additional connector trails in that area.

HalFast has been extended. It was one of the first real single track trails I built here. It ended in a tight T. I decided to let it continue straight. At the time we built it, we thought it would be a lot of work... and not worth it. Well after some of what we have undertaken.. it did not seem so bad. That section was only about 300 feet.. but it helps the flow a lot. We did had another option on the far end of that one.. another few hundred feet... which also included another bridge.

We have also cleaned up a lot from the last logging done at the neighbors. It is nice having most of those trails back. We have also started building new dual track from the new logging swaths. One of them... while needing more work is rideable and is going to be a blast. It is curvy and sort and rolls nice.. a little up and down.. but mostly downhill in one direction [which of course means uphill in the other].

[Fenlason]

It was weird going back and reading over all this. I guess the biggest was seeing how much work I got done after that last post. [toward the end of Sept.] We did get more dual track cleaned up. We have also ditched some of that, and added culverts. I myself love a wide variety of trails, from some fairly technical single track to fast and fun dual track. We have increased what we have for dual track, whether from cleaning up logging debris off of what we had for trails, to taking places they have logged and turned them into new dual track. I do have more ditching to do, and more culverts to install… but we are getting a nice network of dual track. In some places the ditching is to just give us fill, trying to address some wet spots, on this dual track. We have added small sections of single track here and there. Some of them just adding a few hundred feet at a time. To improve flow, or add nice options .

There is an area where we added some incredible new single track. Some of our longest sections yet. I have a trail heading up over a fairly big hill, one that goes up in steps, and has a bit of ledge over it. I have a nice trail winding it's way up over the hill. At the top of the hill is a section of ledge that runs along the top of the ridge. I have a trail that runs along the ledge, [very technical] as well as 2 others parallel to the first. The one of the back side is easier [or will be] and the one on this side has some technical sections to it. These trails did get ridden a bit last fall… but they need a bit more breaking in / earth work.

We have had a late winter here.. so we have not gotten the chance to get out yet for work yet this spring, but we are anxious.

[Fenlason]

This photo is a section of that top ledge. This is near the far end of it, but it runs maybe 1/3 of a mile to the right. Further down toward the photographer and back there are other sections of similar ledge that pop out of the earth here and there. It is treasure to work with.

In this photo there is the little gap in the ledge.. a little chute. This photo is part way through the work there was a big dead tree in the way. In the process of taking out the stump, I unearthed some jagged rocks. I ended up removing them. smoothed out the landing further down. I ended up with about a foot drop just as you exit the chute. I ended up placing the big rock back up to smooth out that drop. It looks pretty tame in the photo.. but most of my riders find it a challenge… actually so far only a few have ridden it. It is scarier than it is real hard. You don't really see it well as you approach it… and that gap is not much wider than the bike.