Trail Maintenance - don't do this

Hair Face said:
I ride there occasionally and wondered if the school had a crew working out there or if there was a group of volunteers that did trail work. Do you go solo or with a group? Is there a set schedule or communication chain? I might be able to chip in from time to time.......
Click to expand...
At some point the school had a presence there but that is now defunct and it is a tight crew of volunteers, 4 core guys and a handful of people that help out here and there. It took me a long time to be blessed to be accepted, lol, so if you want to help out, just message me on here and we can coordinate. I do the majority of my work between 5-7am and sometimes work with the local NICA team there.
 
stilluf said:
Hoping to utilize the MTBNJ hive brain.
Local bike haters have taken it upon themselves to perform trail "maintenance" by lining a local trail on both sides with logs, stick, branches, etc (assume they had land manager permission, though this isn't clear).

I don't know why they did this except perhaps to keep people on the trail. I do know that this approach is incorrect from a sustainability standpoint, and is also a safety issue.

Can anyone point me to literature, a website, anything, that can be used to educate both the local bike haters, as well as the land manager, that this approach is incorrect and should be reversed?
Click to expand...
I was out last weekend near my parents house in CT and saw a perfect example of why parallel logs are bad. I wish I took a photo. It was several years old and had been backfilled by leaves an silt, forming a perfect dam that ponded 20’ of trail. That photo alone would have been enough.

Next time I see one I will collect evidence.
 
I seem to recall the practice of lining the trail with branches, etc. called corridoring. If you look at the IMBA bible you can see that all trail work shows examples of allowing sheet flow off the tread as apposed to allowing it to channel and stay on the tread.
I’ve also noticed that this occurs mostly in the fall when leaf fall camouflages the tread.
 
D5FE9844-5867-4974-A066-53E5A368D972.jpeg

Pit drains should only be used when you have to address an acute issue. I created this one last year as a result of the race discussed above. Now it time to fix it for real, armoring with 6-8” thick rocks. I think I need to extend a bit further on either end but a good start. I will fill in the pit later this year when dry.
4EBF8EFF-9108-40A6-90FA-BD18D6039A5C.jpeg
 
I have had success packing pits with crush and then some mineral soil on top. Though it’s a little difficult when they are full of water, even if you bail the puddle out first, too easy to liquify the surrounding area.
 
  • Like
Reactions: don
Some of the course markings at Nesh are definitely hard to follow and I can imagine are confusing to noobs to those trails. I know they were confusing to me as I was learning the "standard single speed loop"...
 
stb222 said:
View attachment 205814
Race course comes from the fork on the left. Instead of walking 1 min from an access point you can drive to via a gravel road and putting tape where I am standing, let’s spray an arrow you probably won’t even see during the race 🤡
Click to expand...
Raced at Neshaminy many times over the years. Don't think I've ever followed a painted arrow on a tree instead of course tape or official race day arrows. For me personally, I've found that I see course markings better if they're no higher than waist to chest level.
 
But regarding paint on trees, it seems to be a common method of marking trails. The trails at French Creek have had colored hash-marks on trees for as long as I have been riding there - over 25 years. They're pretty innocuous - maybe the size of your hand. I seem to remember markings at the Wissahickon were similar until they started installing the posts some years ago.

Posts would be nice at Nesh, but besides needing a million of them, with the rogue dirt bikes and quads, would probably be a maintenance nightmare...
 
Going to add something regarding trimming branches since I have seen two seperate instances of this lately. Don’t cut branches, regardless of how small, and leave them laying in the trail. I get missing a few small ones, but for goodness sake, either use two hands and toss the branches off trail or sweep them off the trail with your foot.

Reasons: branches get caught in bike drivetrain/spokes, trail becomes less obvious, drainage negatively affected, tripping hazard.
 
stb222 said:
View attachment 205814
Race course comes from the fork on the left. Instead of walking 1 min from an access point you can drive to via a gravel road and putting tape where I am standing, let’s spray an arrow you probably won’t even see during the race 🤡
Click to expand...

Thats as bad as the person painting random roots on the Wharton trails with day-glo paint. 🤡 WTF?
 
Kaleidopete said:
Like the Westwood Cycle race in 2018 at Wawayanda.
I had to clean it up because I was embarrassed to be riding a bike there after the event.
The locals had to look at this for days.

View attachment 207439View attachment 207440
Click to expand...

Even when they use chalk spray, the sprayed marks linger in the forest like a cheeseburger fart in a Walmart aisle. They must've used a full rattle can, maybe more, to mark three trail miles of roots at WSF.
 
JDurk said:
Similar to the time when a well know SJ tri-club spray painted just about every tree of a trail run route at Ceres Park with PINK spray paint.
Click to expand...
There is recent mention of this happening at the Port Republic trails too. With someone freelancing their own trail markings by spraying three different colors of paint on a lot of trees. SMH.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom