Geeky Trail Building Thread.

gorgonzola wrote

some serious bench cut, all by hand?

Haha! Good eye, nope. That section was hand finished machine build.

I’ve got 12 days of building in over the last 14! I’m loving it.

Nice, one of our local tracks is 90% machine built/hand finished - the previous trail boss owned an equipment rental business and along with some pro design (dirtsculpt dave) made for some great build progress. Unfortunately politics mucked it up a bit and halted progress and we even lost some mileage with (bogus?) E&S regs and nesting ground limitations. Hopefully things seem to be getting back on track and the next phase is supposedly approved to start this  summer - pro build vs. volunteer so it will be interesting to see how it all shakes out

https://www.mtbproject.com/trail/5533437/north-range-loop

gorgonzola wrote

Nice, one of our local tracks is 90% machine built/hand finished - the previous trail boss owned an equipment rental business and along with some pro design (dirtsculpt dave) made for some great build progress. Unfortunately politics mucked it up a bit and halted progress and we even lost some mileage with (bogus?) E&S regs and nesting ground limitations. Hopefully things seem to be getting back on track and the next phase is supposedly approved to start this  summer - pro build vs. volunteer so it will be interesting to see how it all shakes out

https://www.mtbproject.com/trail/5533437/north-range-loop

Ugh.....politics.

We have had our share of that with this project as well but we keep pushing forward regardless. Man it's crazy how much of that there is with trails. I tend to build with bikes in mind and apparently that isn't appreciated by some of our more vocal local hiking community even though they obviously don't have a clue about sustainable trail building. Oh well, I won't stop no matter what. Gotta keep on with the fight.

We finished up .5 mile of new tread on the Heart Trail project last week and got a bunch of new trail done on Little Elden during a volunteer event yesterday. We spent two 10 hour days building this rock armored wash crossing.

Very sweet looking build...
It's finally starting to dry out in the North East...
Now if I can only kick my addiction , riding bike park.  

There’s certainly worse addictions

raisingarizona wrote

Does the water rip through there? How many inches of rain per year?

Harvey wrote

raisingarizona wrote

Does the water rip through there? How many inches of rain per year?

It sure does. Flagstaff averages 18 inches of precip a year, a lot of that comes during our monsoon season which generally kicks off in July-ish. Those thunder storms tend to be heavy and fast so drainages like this one can run pretty good. That’s why we used such big rocks, many of which we had to use a grip hoist to move.

i like the "where's waldo?" effect!

Az are these one way trails?

Nope. Both are bidirectional. Geology might have a different say once we get further on the Heart up the mountain and force a short hike a bike for uphil and/or lesser skilled riders but we’ cross that bridge when we get there I guess.

We hit the 1 mile mark on the Heart trail this week after doing an 8 day stretch of building and camping. I’m so beat but I’m totally loving it.

So cool to get a quasi blow-by-blow about building a trail, especially one in that gorgeous setting. Most of us assume that singletracks were just put there by nature and never consider the work and thought that goes into them.

Jamesdeluxe wrote

So cool to get a quasi blow-by-blow about building a trail, especially one in that gorgeous setting. Most of us assume that singletracks were just put there by nature and never consider the work and thought that goes into them.

Thanks James. I decided to look back through this thread after reading this post and it was fun to see the progress made over this last year. There's a ton of hard work from a lot of different people that’s gone into this thing. Hopefully it’s completed by this November.

When do you work every day? By noon, it must be brutal under that blazing sun. When I lived in NM, I always made sure to finish riding by late morning.

That's the tradeoff -- while we don't have the killer landscapes like in the southwest/in the east, we're usually riding under a canopy of trees so you don't die on hot sunny days.

It does get real hot over on that side of the mountain but we are now at 7500 feet so it’s not too bad. We do 10 hour days from 7 to 5:30, this includes the 2.5 mile hike in and out. From around 11 to 3 everyone gets a bit slower and we take plenty of water breaks.

raisingarizona wrote

It does get real hot over on that side of the mountain but we are now at 7500 feet so it’s not too bad. We do 10 hour days from 7 to 5:30, this includes the 2.5 mile hike in and out. From around 11 to 3 everyone gets a bit slower and we take plenty of water breaks.

You guys can't ride in?  Check out how the trail is flowing and get you there a lot faster.  

The ACE crew kids don’t ride and even if they wanted to they can’t afford it. I just rode it this morning, things are coming together nicely!