MTB Trailcare

We feel like we are making progress.  Rain would be good to assist settling the trail and to see where it will be an issue in the future.  Rain will come.

This trail news is going to have a lot of pics, because everyone likes pics.  In case you don't know, if you click on a thumbnail, it will take you to the image gallery and you can use the arrows to see the photos in a larger and more detailed format.  Clicking on the first pic in any trail news and then scrolling back to #1 will show what happened over time (usually).

This week we made some metres uphill, made adjustments to existing trail, improved sightlines, brought down a second hang-up completely and changed the position of another, larger hangup.  After all the BS above, I actually have no pics of the first bit.  

First thing today was improving sightlines below the jump made a month ago and removing a fallen, dead tree  It was hung up on another over the trail.  We were going to cut it like the larger one pictured later in this trail news when Doug grabbed the uphill end of the trunk, lifted it and walked farther uphill and dropped it several times.  It didn't break and nor did he.  Seriously strong stuff.  It got cut and removed.

Next on the agenda was a big, fallen, angled tree forcing us to make the trail climb steeply unless it could be moved

Doug runs the show in these situations and the following pics show where the cut was made, how it started horizontal and then angled downward and finally past vertical.  A wedge was hammered in and after completing the main cut,  Ash removed the lower handle allowing the big saw to be pulled free.  Doug then used the hand saw to cut the remaining bridge of timber from below.  It fell as planned, still angled against the live tree and now below the ideal trail line.  That bit was caught on video

Finally, the hand saw

To make it fall like this - good onya Doug, that cut's the one, good onya Doug

After the big tree, there was a small, dead tree to remove.  It may have looked small, but it tortured Ash and Doug in the removal.  While I remodelled the bench we started last trail news, they worked on this stubborn tree.  It took a long time cutting, digging, hammering a pry bar through roots and then snapping it off

So this is how things looked where we finished the last trail news

Here's how things look now starting lower down and "riding" uphill with a swivel-neck

Next we go past the black stumps

and finalise the line below the cut tree.  There will be more of this - again

More to come.  We feel like the second hill is starting to surrender to the trail we want to finish ASAP