Topic: Trail Building Tips
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Posts
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This one from Grant Cooper.
This section had a big rut down the center of the track so I’ve cut in drainage on the inside to keep the water from running down the riding line and re cut the nicks at the grade reversal. We’ve been doing this in other sections and seems to be working ok where water running down the trail is unavoidable.
"I never said it was going to be easy, I said it was going to be worth it!" "Cake or Death?"
Words from the wise. Haydns email resurrected by onegee.
“Whilst riding the recently cut UTR last week with Geoff Jordan , we both agreed about how enjoyable it was with longer site lines, readily visible apex’s and the “feel” of the freshly cut grass seeming to add some traction to the dry dusty, soil.
It was great to see the grass hadn’t been raked but was being allowed to decompose and add some much needed organic matter to the tread.
Whilst the subject of our poor quality soils is where many a TBC conversation begins and ends there are some things we can do to help, like not raking the freshly cut trail . One of the contributing factors that makes our soils highly erodible, is the lack of organic matter, resins etc. to hold them in place. We place high value on our trees at Douglas because they are a great source of this organic “glue” that binds the soil particles together.
We don’t have a heavy forest canopy to provide lots of leaf matter or shade to retain moisture and provide protection from torrential rain drops. The steeper slopes add to this problem of lack of water retention, and topsoil runoff. We’ve all seen the luxurious canopy of Melaleucas’ alongside the Ross River as well as the surrounding vegetation and native forest. This is especially visible on the riverside bike path at Douglas. It’s no accident that before the development of that suburb this was where we had one of our most memorable MTB trails.
It was originally created by Motos and dropped off the highest bank down onto the lower riverside area slaloming between the large healthy trees. We named it “as good as it gets” the soil was river loam, sticky when wet, grippy, even when dry and not a rock or pebble anywhere in sight. The challenge was to see just how fast we could rail the naturally evolving berms and it wasn’t uncommon to howl with delight at the amount of traction and G forces it provided.
What’s the connection with our current hillside trails you’re asking? Well over the hundreds of thousands of years the Ross has been travelling down its path it has been bringing topsoil and it’s nutrients onto its flooded banks in the wet and they also happen to be where a lot of the organic nutrients contained in the topsoil that originate on the Douglas hill slopes end up after heavy summer rains.
So by building contour trails along our hill sides (think of the terraces on the hillsides in S E Asia ,slowing the water flow) and retaining as many trees as possible and leaving the freshly cut grass on the trails we are adding to the organic base of our soil and therefore assisting in making our trails more sustainable. Thoughts from the Trails”
Haydn
"I never said it was going to be easy, I said it was going to be worth it!" "Cake or Death?"
Another example of some trail work. this by Grant Cooper again. Land slips/slides, cave in’s of back slopes. See in the first photo you may come across this, takes some serious hard work but not technical. Remove all the dirt and make sure there is a gentle slope off the trail so water can run off to the outside. use a rake hoe to test the angle is sloping off the trail. this is basically called de-berming, we are just removing a bigger amount of soil. If need be and the gradient down the trail is great, you could add a grade reversal a small hill with slight shape to shed water off the trail again. Water falling and gathering momentum is our greatest enemy here.
"I never said it was going to be easy, I said it was going to be worth it!" "Cake or Death?"
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