MTB Trailcare

We did something today we never thought would happen.  We closed two good trails; Pete's and Brett's.  

The media has been rating big by broadcasting all the wet weather again this week.  150-200mm fell on Nerang NP since Friday.  With Pete's and Brett's already vulnerable after two months of heavy rain on new trailwork, this latest weather event followed by the inevitable subsoil water movement was going to sink all our work.  Opening Pete's and Brett's has become far less important than facing QPWS saying we have failed to do what they asked at the last inspection.

Over the last few weeks we have barely been able to keep pace with weather and rider damage to the new works.  We risk going backwards; hardly a great face to present to QPWS rangers.  We have tried to pass the word to the Gold Coast MTB community by word of mouth, the GCMTB club, internet sites and this website, but riders continue to put all our work at risk.  

We get it.  Some of these new works look and ride great.  Some of the old trail bed does too, but that's because no-one sees the hundreds of hours of subtle work put in rainy day after rainy day to make it stable.  We want to ride it too, but it is just superficial beauty waiting to be scarred.  Scars created out of love have been known as abuse for a long time.  

The rest of this post is presented in the following categories:  Water flow and subsoil springs, Trail closures, Terrible trail, Marginal trail and Good trail.  For happy snaps you should check out the new Gallery photos.  There's always something cool in the park, especially after a deluge.  

On to the story; starting with Water and Springs

Ok, so it rained a lot.  In some places that was pretty obvious.  We were really happy to see beautiful, clear water flowing all over the park

What flows below the surface is our big problem though and you can see the effect of it in the rest of this post.  Nerang NP is full of subsoil springs of all kinds

The reason we were out today was to close Pete's and Brett's.  Here are some pics of Pete's from the section above Casuarina.  We put tape and signs on every entrance to both trails and at intervals across the trail, where they could be seen by riders from the fire roads and "if" on the trail - no need to show them all

The next pic shows a bit of some armouring we did about a month ago in a really wet spot.  We were a bit disappointed about having to do that work.  If riders had just stayed away in and after wet weather...  What you see in the pic is exactly how hundreds of metres of Pete's looks today.  Totally boggy, unable to drain into the saturated soil below.  To armour the entire trail like this, we would need months, plus imported material, not an option we have 

Look close and you will see moto tyre imprints.  We talked to these guys.  They rode all of Pete's and all of Brett's.  We asked them why they were on MTB trail and they said they saw no signs, other than one we placed above the next section of Pete's (not yet open) and avoided that bit of trail.  They were OK guys and we had watched them ride quite a distance of trail gently and with repect for the trail before we stopped them.  While it is pretty clear they left their marks on the trails as per many pics to follow, the imprint of their tyres was fortunately limted.  Nevertheless, we bet most MTB riders would be offended by motos on the trail.  It's a pitty MTB riders don't see what they do in the same light.

Two last closure pics, the first showing fire road damage from the rain.  This fire road was dozed more recently than lower Pete's trail was opened.  Keep that in mind when you view the pics to follow.  The second is a section of reclaimed trail, closed some time ago.  Check the green and healthy grasses growing back

Let's get prematurely mushy and leave the examples of good trail to later.  The reason we had to close the two trails was worsening damage in places QPWS had already identified as borderline or unacceptable.  There's no way around it, there are sections of Terrible Trail, despite lots of hard volunteer effort.  Photos cannot show how soft trail really is, so let's put it in prespective with a pic taken on Centre Fire Road.  

This is a road made of road base and bulldozed in the last few months.  If you can step into quicksand on these roads, then what hope does new trailwork have, especially in very wet areas? Some places will not recover without being left alone.  That means not only no riding, but no trailcare either.  Even footprints can destroy a lot of trail at the moment.  Here are some examples

What was made in hope of trail respect, has been smashed by riders.  Here is a spot you saw in recent trail news.  All the contours of the drain have been turned into edges and all that silt has moved down the creek.  It can only get worse without rest.  When motos bypass the trail (look below the saplings), you know there is a problem

Here are a few different examples of Terrible Trail.  One is a classic Nerang trailbuilding method on Brett's - logs and other debris left on the downslope, preventing drainage.  I didn't get a pic before Ash started to move the log and drain the water.  The puddle was nearly 15cm deep and twice as large

Another example of Terrible Trail shows what happens when there is no decent riding line.  "Don't make it like Daisy Hill."  "Make sure you leave some technical stuff."  We hear this all the time.  Here you go boys; a good example of technical (= falline and eroded) trail and what riders think of it.  With no alternate line, trail widening is the result

Finally, a controversial example.  For years Nerang has been plagued by so-called "rock drains" and they still have their supporters, based on "they always worked before".  Sorry, they didn't then and still don't.  Why?  There's no such thing as a rock drain, unless you mean a rolling grade dip embedded with stone - like next to motorways.  Otherwise embedded rock is either armouring, a water bar or a future nuisance.  I have heard that these "drains" work well, draining water ages after rain as evidenced by the ground always being damp near them.  No, that means they are a failure - drains are meant to be dry except when draining!

Check this example of an old "rock drain"

Forget that a shovel drain has been dug between the tree and the embedded rocks - that was done well after this feature started to fail.  What you see here, even with the little shovel drain, is exposed stone failing to stop water flowing down the trail, focussing tyre damage into limited lines, creating an unecessary stutter and waiting to erode out into a larger rut.  It's time this sort of work ended.  How many times have we been back to Three Hills and Casuarina to repair and make more of these little disasters?  There must be hundreds on Casuarina alone.  Not one of them works.

We have seen Terrible Trail.  Let's see some Marginal trail from today.  Places where work has offered a chance for  trail hardening, given a rest from riding.  These pics show soft trail, but trail that is coping after fairly recent works

In other places, the question is whether the trail will survive without work.  A good, general rule is that trail should not stay wet after the rain stops in Nerang.  If it does, you are crossing a creek with the potential to do damage, or water was not taken off the trail effectively, allowing it to accumulate

Our volunteers have put a lot of effort into getting Pete's and Brett's up to standard.  It can be done as shown in the following pics of Good trail.  It does not require some miracle feature, or dredging up old, failed techniches.  All that is needed is time for the soil to drain, time for the trail to rest, time for us to tamp down soft areas and modify drainages that were underestimated before 700mm of rain fell in two months.  Remember, these pics were taken hours after a 150mm rainfall ceased.

This is what we want you to be able to ride.  This is what we want to ride.  If you have been watching this website, you may have seen this section under water in the past.  We changed it a while back and now it is good

A few more pics

One last from Barney's.  We worked here before the first of the massive rains this year.  It was worth doing

So, it was a day of very mixed feelings.  Closing trail and keeping riders away does not sit well, but if we cannot prove our ability to manage Pete's and Brett's trails, then what do we say about moving farther out into the park?  It's not like we have a choice; those other trails must also undergo works to reach the standards set by Gillian Duncan's trail audit, as well as those set by QPWS.  

Right now Pete's and Brett's are closed.  However, we know it will not be for long and in the meantime there are many trails that have not had work done during this wet period.  If riders must come out in such extreme conditions (could you play golf, cricket or mow your lawn this weekend???), then Bailey's, Neverending, B&B's, Happy Valley, Roys, Three Hills and Exit trails are capable of handling it.  

Happy trails (soon)  

Louis