MTB Trailcare

Over the last few weeks the coast has had enough rain to really make it look great in the forest.  The grey gums up high are almost fully stripped of bark and bright orange

Last week we were here

On Saturday Doug and I had help from Keith and Michael who ride in Nerang and live in Brisbane.  They helped us start the most basic excavations along a flat section below the hollow log.  It looked like this on Saturday evening 

They raised all manner of trailbuilding concepts and observations.  It was interesting talking about techniques, but also difficult to give them a specific task on this job.  Thing was they arrived as we discovered a large number of old, dead roots below the surface.  

There are three old stumps in a row on this flat.  They have remnants burned to ground level and must have died a long time ago.  The dead roots were beautiful red timber and very hard to cut, break, or dig out..  We encountered this in a couple of places lower down.  You have to get rid of the old timber as subsoil water flows along it, damaging overlying trail.  Eventually it rots and then impairs drainages in another way.

The decaying timber was all in a spot ideally suited to a long high-point.  Scratch that idea!  So what the guys helped us do was expose the soil over 30m of preliminary trail line.  There was little joy in it for me.  Reducing percentages of stone and increasing depths to find the stony layer on a gentle sideslope (10-12%) where you have to turn up the falline to the next section is a bad combination.  

So today Doug and I put in two low-point seep drains (wide and gentle, but seriously outsloped) where we originally hoped to have a high point.  We had to dig out a lot of spoil so it would not interfere with drainage.  We mixed it with organic matter to spread or pile below the trail.  There's still some work to be done there in the final clean-up.  Pics going uphill first

Luckily there are some seams of stone and not just fragile, powdery soil ahead

Now a couple of pics coming down the trail line

We also added the first of a few corrals that will be needed on this section

We are looking forward to getting up to the hollow log.  Hopefully next week.

Something else we have been puzzling about for a while is the line on Three Hills Singletrack through the trees about 40m above the Centre Fire Road access opposite Barney's Trail.  Felled tree trunks and saplings create a narrow line on stoney tread.  It was OK a couple of years ago when everyone had narrow bars.  Now it is not adequate and when the saplings grow it will become quite unsafe.  

Removing a standing dead tree and a sapling on the left (as seen descending) was our recurring thought.  Now I think pushing the felled trunk away to the right just a bit (20cm) and removing the following eucalypt sapling on the right, plus the Casuarina after it, will keep this bit of trail safe and interesting into the future.  Try to picture it in the following pics and note that riders descending have some pace coming into this choke