Motivation

This past weekend was a good one. We moved, smashed, pulverized, drug, placed and threw more rock than I have ever seen. It was a lot of work and there was still a ton of work left undone. It seems as though we bit off a little more trail than we could chew. Which led to some hastiness but you can only do what you have the resources for.

This didn’t leave much time for creativity or fun trail features. Luckily I caught up with Dave Cook at the top of our work where he was building a little rock berm. I helped him with the end of that work and it was great when we rode over it on Sunday.

It is really satisfying work and I can’t wait to see what the trail looks like since Trail Dynamics “finished” the work yesterday. It was also hard to tell what work we had done on Sunday because the rocks were still covered with “crush and run” and fill dirt.

We were educated on “keystones,” rock armoring, erosion, trail sustainability, and water/sediment factors.

I personally learned how to operate the ditch witch and I can’t wait to for the opportunity to run that machine again. I also assisted in some trail trimming. Everybody worked really hard and it was awesome.

Sunday morning I laughed at Woody when he told me about another one of his “secret” trails in Dupont. By “secret” he means that it is a remote section of the park and people don’t use the trail very often. The trail he told me about is Canon Creek trail at the very top of the Rock Quarry section on the parking side of the Corn Mill Shoals lot. He told me that this out and back trail was built by him and some Boy scout troops quite a few years ago. Since there are very few trails left in Dupont that I have not ridden. I took the group over that way.

The trail is awesome and I wish Dupont had a ton more of it. It is hand built lush single track that has some really good steep grades to it. It is the kind of single track that was built with hikers in mind more than bikers. I like this type of trail because it forces you to ride with all of your skills to even navigate through without getting off the bike. It is pristine, even Pisgahesque in spots with its rhodo tunnels and single track that is no wider than six inches in spots.

When we got back from the ride, I told Woody that Dupont needs much more trail like this. I already knew his argument was going to be resources and that is the point he made. Without a ton of resources in a thick forest, it is very hard to build trail without machines.

I will argue my point to have this type of trail build at every opportunity that presents itself within SORBA or any other trail meeting for that matter.

So thanks to everyone who helped out this weekend and let’s reap the fruits of our labor and ride this Wednesday:

Fawn Lake Access (07/18/2007)
5:30 (If you can’t make it until 6:30, let me know and we can swing by and pick you up)