Category: making things

This afternoon Pete and I headed out to River Bends to add a final bit of polish to the new half-mile segment of single track that’s been in development for the last month: line trimming grasses and raking it. Pete ran the trimmer and I followed behind with a leaf rake clearing away debris. Since some portions of the trail pass through stands of grass, this is necessary to mark the trail and scorch the earth so the trail will take hold. The photo above shows one such segment which should now establish itself as bare dirt trail, ready for bikes, hikers, runners, etc.

After we finished this segment of trail Pete left and I headed back out to walk the rest of the trail and clear up things as I could. I ended up removing a number (3 or 4?) trees that had fallen across the trail, with most of them needing to be sawed into pieces before the pieces could be cleared. Unfortunately I also found that a number of segments of the trail is a muddy mess, but that’s no surprise given the recent rains.

I also came across the stakes that Shelby Township appears to be using to mark a new asphalt path that’ll connect the park with downtown Utica. While the construction of this project will impact a good deal of the existing single track in the park, I look forward to it as it’ll make the area considerably more accessible and provided one of the missing-link connectors between Stony Creek and Metro Beach Metroparks.

Today some folks and I headed out to River Bends to do some more work on the new segment of trail, and now it’s open and ridable. There’s still a bit of line trimming needed and the park has to cut out a few trees, but it’s otherwise ready to go.

An Eagle Scout candidate, Spencer Wood, is also doing some work on the trails as part of his project. While we were out working on the trails today he had a crew of people installing these footings for a trail head kiosk which will hold a trail map and other relevant park info. Once this is done, the trail is ridable, and a bit more signage is in place this is going to be quite a nice little trail system.

If you’d like to see the new route, the most recent version of the map can be found here: River_Bends_17-Apr-2011.pdf.

Yesterday I’d expected to do a bit of trail work with some friends, but after posting publicly on the MMBA Forum an unexpectedly large group of volunteers showed up to help out with a new segment of trail that I’d flagged. The result of this was that most of the new trail was roughed in, accomplishing roughly 75% of the work needed to finish this new half-mile segment of trail.

A lingering piece of this trail’s construction was a bridge over a narrow (but very wet) area, and today Mark Senyk picked up the wood for it, and he and I were able to place it this evening. With a few more evenings worth of work I may be able to finish up this segment of trail and get it ridable. One end of the bridge still needs more dirt to further bury it and there’s a bit of raking / vine clearing / brush clearing to be done, but it won’t be very long until this segment can be opened.