MTB Trailcare

But, boy will it ride faster than that!!!

Today was a planned ride day, but when rain came we decided to dig instead.  Lucky for me I got to ride yesterday between family do's - Merry Christmas to me (and my tyres which got re-slimed for Chrissy).

6 hours x 2 volunteers = 12 hours for 12m of new trail and it rained and we went home hungry with nappy rash from the humidity.  It was worth it though.  The following pics show three jobs we worked on today.

The first was removing the remnants of a large and spikey stump and re-aligning a corner back up trail.  We liked the tight corner, but everyone exited late, trying to avoid the stump and there was concern the next high point would be beaten down on the outslope and fail over time.  Here's the before and afters.

The second job was covering the remains of the tree we felled cupla days ago (and creating new beginner to shredder lines past that point) by building a contour mound.  It covers the remaining stump with a metre of stone and fill.  We used all the stone we stored (see a previous trail news and note the standing, dead tree)

and layered it with the shale and clay loam harvested from below the previous jump.  We also used some of the soil we stored next to the stones, but by the end of today we had perhaps increased that pile by 50%.  We don't have somewhere to put it yet, but we've said that before.

Here's how it started today (without the sun)

and how things changed

The third job was the alternate ascending and descending lines past the next large trees.  We like the way it looks, but chose to leave the section between the features unbuilt for two reasons - we were knackered and out of water and second, the most important trailbuilding tool was not with us today - the bike; although we had a couple of poachers who rode while we watched.

There's about 50m of critical trail below this point before we can relax and start building more straightforward trail to join all the way through to the Casuarina Loop.  More to come.  

Oh - we also seem to have another trail mascot.  He turned up very close to where one of his clan bit me on the arm a week ago.  Meet Atom the Ninja Ant