Category: outdoors

First Fall of the Year: Tree Farm Pump Track

Published May 26, 2011

Tuesday’s wonderful weather prompted me to head out to the Tree Farm (aka Novi’s Lakeshore Park) for a ride on the El Mariachi. It was a great ride, and I’m finding that I really like the Specialized Comp shoes (as shown above). Now that the top of the tongue and area around the heel has slightly broken in they Just Fit, and seem to have a better overall feel than my previous (and likely very worn) old SIDIs.

I was quite happy that I was able to hang on with the faster group of folks at the front, especially when riding a completely rigid single speed. At one point while riding the pump track (and doing what I thought was a good job) I waffled on whether to exit the track or keep riding, and in doing so washed out my front wheel and fell. Save for some scrapes on my arm and knee I wasn’t hurt at all, so there’s my first fall of the year. I guess it’s a good way to start.

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Permanent Trail Marking for a One-Day Race

Published May 21, 2011

Apparantly the promoters of the Back To The Beach Half Marathon and 5K see fit to apply permanent spray paint to rocks, roots, and ruts along the route of a trail race. Yes, this one-day race has now caused much of the two track trail at Stony Creek to have nearly every mildly exposed non-dirt element on the trail to become a blaze orange eyesore.

The photo above was taken this morning when Pete, Mark, Bill, and I headed out to The Pines in Stony Creek to fix up a bunch of the muddy holes that developed during this especially wet spring. Using a mix of park-provided gravel, fill rocks, and a small amount of cement (as a light binder) we scraped out the mud holes, added fill, mixed in the scraped out mud, topped it with a light dusting of cement, raked it together, then tamped it firm. After settings up for a few hours these segments are now dry and hard-pack dirt, and should be much more resistant to washing away / turning to peanut butter in the coming years’ spring rains.

After the trail work I headed home and washed the Titus, then set back out on it towards Stony Creek to meet up with an old friend and coworker Jeff, who was there for the day with his son. The two of us rode a lap around Stony Creek’s main road, then ended up at West Branch Lot C, where Danielle (and a bunch of other friends) were at (or running) the Michigan DNRE’s Becoming an Outdoors Woman mountain bike class. After hanging around there for a while we retired to Rochester Mills Brewery, which I accessed by way of a bunch of single track, including The Pines to check out the sections we’d worked on this morning. I’m quite happy with how they came out, and I think they’ll go a long ways towards making the trail year-round ridable.

After Rochester Mills I headed towards home, racing the front that brought tonight’s rain. All said, this was a 39.75 mile ride over 2:47:22, for a moving average of 14.25 MPH. This is my fastest average time of the year, and the earliest ride last year of similar length and average speed didn’t happen until June, and had much more of it’s route along the relatively flat Paint Creek Trail.

UPDATE: Turns out that this may be spray chalk, but as I couldn’t rub it off a rock with my foot I’m hesitant to believe that. Or maybe it’s a long-lasting chalk. If this gets cleaned up / goes away within a couple weeks I’ll feel a lot better about it and take back harsh statements made about the use of long-term marking for a one-day event, but if markings I’ve seen other places in previous years are any indication this stuff will be visible for months.

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Heritage Park Bridge

Published May 14, 2011

Yesterday while hurriedly riding around before the rain I happened over to Utica‘s Heritage Park to check out the new bridge. My last post about this showed just some bare concrete footings, but now there is a quite nice, wide bridge. Once Shelby Township has finished with the asphalt path through River Bends there will be a solid, safe route from Stony Creek all the way to Metro Beach. There’s still a bit of work that will be needed on a frequently flooded crossing under Van Dyke, but everything takes time.

Here is another photo of the bridge as seen from one of the approaches, and this amusing pipe that’s been in place long enough for a tree to grow around it.

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MOT on Mother’s Day

Published May 8, 2011

This morning, to visit my mom on Mother’s Day, I hopped on my bike and headed out the Macomb Orchard Trail to Richmond. Danielle later met me there with the car and bike rack and after visiting for a while we headed back to my place.

This ride was the first time that I rode the MOT the whole way through Armada and didn’t use 33 Mile Road as a bypass around the gravel part of the trail. Previously I’d been unwilling to ride on the loose, poorly chosen gravel lining the path but this year it seems to have packed down into two tracks of something mostly ridable. Unfortunately horse hoof prints (essentially 1″ deep pock marks) were left all over much of this hard packed area turning the surface into washboard, thus the choice was to ride on rough but hard gravel or sink into soft gravel. Had I been on a bike with a suspension fork and a more forgiving frame it probably wouldn’t have been so bad. Today’s weather was also outstanding, save for a ~12 MPH wind out of the northeast.

The photo above was taken in Armada along a loading platform at what appears to be an old train depot. Upon rolling into Armada I was most struck by how similar it looks to Dryden along the Polly Ann Trail, specifically the buildings along the old rail route. In both places the rail trail spills out into a larger gravel area, along which lies a long white building with a loading dock on it, a grain silo, and some access roads.

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River Bends Line Trimming

Published April 30, 2011

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.

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Another Half-Mile of Trail…

Published April 17, 2011

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.

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…and then there was a bridge!

Published April 11, 2011

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.

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…An Axe To Grind…

Published April 9, 2011

This is the Pulaski that was used to chop out most of the roots on the single track at River Bends. I’m heading out tomorrow to do some more trail work, so tonight I set to sharpening the axe side with a file. The adze side is quite dull, but that’s acceptable for trail work as it’s mostly used for bench cutting. There isn’t a great edge on the axe side, but as this edge sees most use being plunged into roots buried in dirt it should be acceptable. After another four hours of trail work it will likely be rounded over and quite nicked up.

With the weather turning nice I took a look at River Bends’ current trail layout and found an area where roughly half a mile of trail could really add to the system, and now that a nice route through it has been identified it’s time to get building. If things go according to plan this will expand the single track by roughly half a mile using relatively flat land on a somewhat-plateau above the paved paths and may even offer nice opportunities for log piles and other trail obstacles. I flagged the route tonight, so as long as the tape flags aren’t pulled down by noon tomorrow we should be able to make good headway on this piece of trail.

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New Trail Work Saws

Published April 6, 2011

Last year I purchased this bypass lopper from Corona and I’ve been very happy with it, so when it was time to purchase a small(er) hand saw I went with one of their models. This afternoon two new tools arrived, the Razor Tooth Raker Tooth Saw – 21 in (RS 7160) (seen above) for serious trail-work sawing and the Razor Tooth Folding Saw – 6 1/2 in (RS 4040) (Photo) to keep in my backpack for small jobs. These were purchased as a replacement for the Sven-Saw which I left behind on the trail after Erik, Nick, and I cleared some serious post-storm deadfall from River Bends.

I’d considered buying another Sven-Saw as it was quite convenient to carry in my backpack and only pull out when needed, but the setup/teardown made it a little difficult to use, and the cut depth limitations inherent in a bow saw occasionally caused problems. I’m hoping that this saw, particularly with its raker teeth, will be perfect for most of the trail-side sawing that I have to do.

Since the 21″ Raker Tooth saw doesn’t come with a sheath and its blade is quite pointy I decided to make one out of some salvaged Coroplast. While not as durable as a dedicated holder, it should suffice to keep things safe from it in the trunk of the car and keep me from cutting myself while carrying it.

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Free Coroplast!

Published April 6, 2011

Coroplast, or corrugated plastic, is a very handy material, but it’s often hard to find small pieces whenever one needs them. After purchasing a new hand saw via Amazon a few nights back I realized I’d need to build a cover for the blade to make carrying it easy and thought that Coroplast would do the trick. So, I stopped by the best source of free Coroplast: a busy intersection.

In this area (and I presume many other parts of the country where cars are the preferred method of conveyance) companies will often place signs on the corners of intersections and leave them until they are taken or they blow away. These typically sit just below line of sight for car drivers and do little but serve as visual clutter. In the past if walking by them I’ve taken them down and thrown them away, but this time I took a couple for reuse.

So, thanks Kennedy & Ide Complete Home Remodeling and Crown Moldings ‘N More for the free Coroplast. Just like the unsold condo dealers, pyramid schemers, and personal ad sites before you I’m sure you’ll continue to do your best to ensure that our neighborhoods are littered with your advertisements. While taking them down and throwing them away is somewhat satisfying, reusing them is even better. Still, it’d be even better if you’d refrain from the suburban equivalent of flyposting.

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