Geeky Trail Building Thread.

Me and Opie jumped a sow and cub while we were scouting a reRoute zone this morning!

I love scouting for reroutes/layouts. It's crazy how much more wildlife encounters you have when off trail.

raisingarizona wrote

Thanks guys. We haven’t gotten any snow yet so we could be building like crazy but I’m buried with nursing school. I’m starting to think I need to ditch school and create a trail building co. It’s all I really want to be doing to be honest.

Do it, but finish school first.  You may need that someday if your body becomes too broken and tired for moving dirt... not that nursing is really any easier physically, but... it's good to have a backup.  Especially since you've already invested time and money into it.

Wash crossing we did over the summer.

ScottyJack wrote

Me and Opie jumped a sow and cub while we were scouting a reRoute zone this morning!

How did that go? Did the dog completely lose his shit or what?

The trailhead for this one is just up the hill from me. It's a pretty technical descent. Several well built jump lines. Descent is about 1600vf over 3.5 miles. Access is via the ski area access road. Several well built jump lines. A rehab project was completed on it over this past summer. It was completely unrideable for over 10 years. The builders recently released a sweet T2B vid

Sick vid..thanks for posting...

Between the skiing and riding , you do live in true outdoor nirvana..

That looks like some sweet flow!! how long is the trail?

Thanks Jason. That’s my (and the crews) handiwork. I’ve been doing the planning and routing on this for three years now.

As of now Little Elden is 5 miles long according to trailforks. We are rerouting the south-eastern third? I think, but adding some mileage. I think we are building 2.6 miles on it but it may be closer to 3. The original gps track was a lot more simple than the actual route since we have 250 foot corridors.

The Heart Trail is another part of this project and will connect into this section in my last photo from somewhere between 500 to 1000 feet up trail and it’s going to be close to 5 miles of descent. The Hearts upper end starts along the Sunset Trail which from the top adds another mile-mile and a half or so of descending. In all from the top there is an almost continuous 7 mile or so descent with around 2k of vertical drop. Some of that is very pedally but in a really fun way imo. It goes through some of the most varied and interesting terrain geologically and ecologically in the Flagstaff area. There’s around 800 vert of high speed descending in the same red rock as Sedona since there was a geological uplift on this side of Elden.

The Little Elden trail is also part of the Arizona Trail. That’s a nationally recognized scenic trail.

This is what we have so far on the reroute.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzIYJGHvuns

Very cool...
Around the 4min mark , i see the potential for some cool features..And I love the jank at the end of the video..

one day I will be back out there!!

Thanks bud! Come ride the new heart trail this October!

I’ve been hired on by Ace as a crew leader for next four months on the heart build. Stoked!

This build is stupidly beautiful. I can’t wait for its completion.

The trails look great , a long way for me  , its on my to do list , thanks.

Hey RA, how do you guys document/ communicate your plans? Is there a daily plan or just a master plan that you chip away at as much as you can? I feel like since the word “geeky” is in the subject we should be getting more topos or something equivalent as we proceed.
Beautiful work by the way

Brownski wrote

Hey RA, how do you guys document/ communicate your plans? Is there a daily plan or just a master plan that you chip away at as much as you can? I feel like since the word “geeky” is in the subject we should be getting more topos or something equivalent as we proceed.
Beautiful work by the way

Thank you sir!

We keep our FS contact updated weekly via email. The Heart and Little Elden Project went through the NEPA process two years ago after we did the initial routing which was very basic and not detailed but it gave us a very large corridor to work with. We didn't have any plans to work on this area until the FS proposed the project idea to us 3 years ago. Since then I've spent the majority of my free time out there figuring out the best possible alignments. Our group has signed agreements with the FS and we basically decide on the day where we are going to be focusing our efforts.

We sign safety meeting forms and record our hours. We are somewhere around 230 volunteer hours already for this season.

I’m having one heck of a season so far! On Tuesday we start on the Heart Trail project.

some serious bench cut, all by hand?