MTB Trailcare

Two weeks without working on the trails is an unusual event, but with all the wet weather, we had no choice.  This afternoon, we went out to confirm what we thought would be the case.  The vulnerable bits of Pete's were boggy and trail widenings were developing.  

Until recently we would have been pretty angry and vocal about this (*good story, see later in this post), but since then we decided that the wet, late Summer we have been seeing is going to happen again and again.  More and more riders are going to ride the Nerang trails regardless of the weather.  There is no point getting angry or hoping riders will stay home when trails are vulnerable, or that everyone who rides Nerang will come and help maintain our trails.  All we can do is make sure that we get all the trails we work on to a standard capable of facing the facts....

In the low-altitude parts of the Nerang National Park, heavy rains and vigorous growth of seasonal vegetation create fairly deep, organic soils on the gently sloping terrain.  That creates a combination of poor runoff and drainage.  Superficial tree roots, which often follow rocky terrain to access adjacent soil bring subsurface water into conflict with these dense, organic layers.  The result is deeply wet soil.  Wet soil does not handle impacts from above.  Remember what happens when you step on wet sand at the beach?  Water comes up.  At the beach it also flows away back to the water table, but in dense, organic soil, it cannot.  Result - unless the trail sits unused until everything dries out, you end up with sloppy trail almost regardless of building technique.  This effects Happy Valley, Roys, Exit, Brett's, Explosions and Pete's trails.

The only way to secure Pete's lower section is to get gravel and small stones into all the soft sections.  That is about 25% of lower Pete's  Trouble is, we don't have those stones, so we need to find them.  At this stage we are not able to access supplies of stone from outside the park.....

You want pics.  Here we go, starting with what you can do with a boggy section of trail, given time, effort and available materials.  The result is the sound, but very short section of trail in these pics.  If you check previous trail news posts, you can see how totally boggy this seasonal creek line on deep soil was before being armoured

Whilst we were away, revegetation was at play

Back to the trail, where every section lacking dominant rock in the tread was soft to sloppy, probably slow and miserable to ride (!!) and drains were working poorly due to wheel ruts.

The outsloped trail and drains in these pics have worked - there's silt in them, but the wheel ruts stop new surface water draining, adding to the damage caused by water backing-up below the surface

In some places it may recover as riders compact the tread (again).  In others, trail widening may require extra attention.  We have plans for spots like this, so don't worry.  Do help though - see the trailcare calendar before you leave this website

We like stones, but they just don't pop up everywhere

Sometimes we have to collect stone and embed it into soft trail.  It is especially important where subsoil water flows into and under the tread.  The next pics are of trail completed in the last month, the most recent of all trail in this post, yet it looks and is sound due to effective drains and added stones.  

A rider was coming down towards us as we reached this spot.  "He" stopped really suddenly about 40m away, turned around and trotted uptrail pushing his bike.  He never said a word and never came down again.  Maybe we have been so cranky about riders on unstable trail that some fear our wrath for riding trail, even if it is open?  It's funny, because the section he bolted off is actually good to go

Best efforts are not always successful.  Some of the new upper lower Pete's trail was not good.  Sometimes you just need more rocks.  We will find them and make all of Pete's solid for future riders

I will post pics of today's work in another trail news.  We transported soil from the pile near new Pete's back up to old Pete's to make water bars, fill over exposed roots and encourage new growth on the 200m section of old Pete's replaced by the newer 1km section (some sadly being boggy).  There's more to do to complete the closure and it was raining and too dark to take meaningful pics at the end of the day.  We also added a new sign for riders who come up (or down) the North Street fire road looking for Pete's trail

Trail guardian was not only OK after all the rain, but getting more firey.  Maybe downhill dude saw him, not us??

Trailwork days are being posted again, starting Saturday.  Check the Calendar.  Lots to be done.

Cheers

Louis