Category: outdoors

2011 Trail Work at River Bends

Published April 3, 2011

Yesterday afternoon Jon Boughner and I headed out to River Bends to do some trail work. We ended up finishing all the major points that I’d wanted to hit:

· Rerouted the return loop entrance to make it flow better and not involve any sharp downhill turns. This should also eliminate a user conflict area.
· Rerouting a quick (and blind) uphill near the seasonal loop split-off. While ridable, this hill would catch some people off guard and would likely end up full of brake bumps after a few years. the new section should flow much better.
· Moving or marking (for later cut-out) any downed trees. There were only two that we couldn’t move by hand!
· Bench cutting a few previously built sections which needed a bit more work.

While out there we also ran into Pete and Mark as they were riding through. They stopped and helped us with a bit of the initial work on the return loop entrance reroute, and then test rode it to check that it flowed sufficiently. Later on, Mark returned with his friend Brad on another ride and they were able to do a few test rides of the second reroute, but unfortunately this route was still a bit muddy and they left a significant rut through the center of the trail. Thankfully we were there to stomp this section flat before it has a chance to dry in that bad shape.

The rest of the trail is also still fairly muddy so I won’t consider it ridable until the rain stops and things can dry a bit further, but it’s definitely coming along nicely. It’s pretty much set for now, and I can begin thinking about a bit of expansion that I’m hoping to do.

Here’s some photos from yesterday:

· Jon Boughner standing on top of the new return loop entrance to River Bends.
· Mark Senyk and Brad riding through a brand-new reroute at River Bends.
· Me (Steve) standing on a reroute at River Bends which eliminates a steep, blind uphill.
· Another photo of me (Steve) on the hill-eliminating reroute.
· Pizza cutter rut left in fresh mud at River Bends.
· Detail of the fresh rut at River Bends.
· Jon Boughner standing on the new River Bends return loop entrance.

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Wormsign!

Published March 20, 2011

While taking the trash out tonight I saw worms crawling along the pavement. This is a good sign, as it means the ground is mostly thawed and thus off-road riding will be possible soon.

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Updated River Bends Map

Published March 13, 2011

After a bike ride this afternoon I decided to (finally) update the River Bends trail map so that it’s more usable. Besides adding more asphalt and a better key I cleaned some things up, added the park’s address, and changed the trail lines to dashed pieces. These dashed lines should make the map more readable when printed in black and white, and the addition of the river, railroad tracks, and more road should make it easier to tell where one is when riding along.

In the future I’m going to consider adding in the Clinton-Kalamazoo Canal and maybe tweaking the route a bit. Maybe there will even be some more single track to add by that next time, too…

Click the image above or here for a PDF of the map: River_Bends_13-Mar-2011.pdf

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Home Early and Riding

Published March 8, 2011

Today found me home from work a bit earlier than I have been lately, and with the nice weather I patched a flat on the Titus and set out for a ride. Since it was just above freezing and (yet another) big snow fall is still melting, I stuck to a paved route as best I could. Still, I couldn’t help but occasionally run into some slush or dirt left behind by the thaw, or even some mud. At one point on a small neighborhood trail I ended up leaving a few-inch deep rut, so it’ll be interesting to see how well this serves as an example of what not to do on a trail. (More information about damage caused by riding muddy trails in springtime can be seen in this flier from the MMBA.)

The route that I rode ended up on the Macomb Orchard Trail which was quite a bit less thawed than I expected. Most of the route was what’s shown above, with a thawed section in the middle full of muck with slush/snow/ice along the sides, but some portions were completely snow and ice covered. Thankfully it was compacted, almost-slushy which made it very ridable.

I’m extremely happy that the weather is taking a turn for the nice. I hope that I’m able to ride this year after work as I was last year, as being able to get outside in evenings and spend some time by myself watching nature go by is extremely relaxing and just the sort of thing I need most evenings.

(Total for the day was 23.53 miles in 1:43:51, following this general route: Home, 22 Mile, Neighborhoods to Shelby, Mound, 25 Mile, MOT West, Dequindre, School, Neighborhoods, 23 Mile, Mound, Shelby, River Bends Pavement, Home via 22 Mile and Neighborhoods.)

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Stony Creek’s SNO-MASTER 72 and TRAKORs

Published January 29, 2011

This is the grooming equipment that the park system pulls behind a snowmobile to groom the trails. This setup, two TRAKOR groomers set behind a SNO-MASTER 72, is made by Snow Groomers of Harbor Springs, MI.

With around four new inches of snow here and some time this afternoon I decided to go cross country skiing at Stony Creek. This was a really good day for it, as the trails were freshly groomed, with tracks set throughout most of the two track mountain bike trail system, even beyond the signs that read Not A Ski Trail. I was able to ski for an enjoyable 2.5 hours covering most of the mountain bike trail and the loops in the golf course without backtracking.

Skiing down one rather steep hill^† I screwed up and fell. It could have been bad, but instead I just ended up topping over forward and landing on my knee and shoulder, throwing a spray of snow on my face and head while packing a bit inside of my jacket. I tried to snowplow down a particularly smooth, trackless, steep, but short section of trail and dug one ski in a bit too much, which caused me to flop straight over on to my face. Oops. I really wish someone had seen it, though, because it must have been pretty comical.

Here is another photo taken today of my skis in tracks somewhere in the southeast corner of the mountain bike trail area.

^† For those of you that know the Stony Creek trail system (map) I was skiing down the Woohoo hill from #23 to #22, and fell on the steepest of the three climbs; the middle one. This section is commonly ridden up on a bike after the Roller Coaster when heading to the right and climbing back up to cut through the middle of the park and head towards the trail head.

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XC Skiing on MLK Day

Published January 17, 2011

Being Martin Luther King, Jr. Day I headed out to Stony Creek to do some XC skiing. While the trails weren’t groomed, there was enough of a track worn in that skiing was still fun. (Photo) I ended up skiing lots of two track, likely totaling somewhere around 8 miles.

Before leaving the house I fitted this year’s joint Metroparks / Oakland County Parks. Despite costing $48, this pass is an excellent buy for anyone who regularly goes to both organization’s parks, particularly someone like me who doesn’t live in Oakland County. While the normal price for an annual Metroparks pass is only $25, the non-resident Oakland County Parks pass is a whopping $45. Thus, by purchasing the joint pass (also known Parks Perks Pass) it’s $22 cheaper for me to get access to all the parks than it would be if I’d bought the passes separately.

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Walkies!

Published December 25, 2010

As she’d been cooped up mostly in the house for a few days I decided to take Roxie for a Christmas afternoon walk at River Bends. We walked a bit of two track, all of the non-seasonal single track, and back via the pavement. There was one tree down on the single track and a bunch of deadfall, but nothing major. I was able to break the downed tree in two then drag it off the trail, and (as typical) the rest of the deadfall was kicked or tossed aside.

The photo above shows four (or maybe it’s really five?) downed trees on the first piece of two track. There’s quite a few downed things on the two track that’ll need clearing. All are ridable / easy to step over, but the park will definitely have it’s work cut out for it.

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XC Skiing in Roscommon

Published December 19, 2010

This Saturday (yesterday) Erik, Kristi, and I headed up to cross country ski on the trails across the street from Cross Country Ski Headquarters. This ended up being a really nice location where we were able to ski ~7 miles on nicely groomed trails. There were even a few bigger (for me) hills where I got to play around with different techniques for climbing, snowplowing, and skiing down hills without tracks. It was really fun and makes me anxious for more skiable snow to fall in this area.

To split up the trip we drove to Kristi’s parents’ place in Frankenmuth on Friday night, stayed there, then drove up to Roscommon and the skiing on Saturday morning. This worked out very nicely, as it was nice to sleep in for a bit, get breakfast, and then go skiing as opposed to simply driving up and back in one day. We then headed back home-ward after eating a nice (but very filling) dinner of pasta-covered pizza (from Tiffany’s Food and Spirits), curry soup, and apple crisp with vanilla ice cream.

Here’s a few more photos from this trip:

· Riding in Kristi’s car (with Erik driving) heading up to Roscommon for XC skiing.
· Kristi and Erik looking at the wooden map for the R and L Trail Network across the street from Cross Country Ski Headquarters in Roscommon.
· Me / Steve on the Manitou loop after taking a photo of Erik and Kristi.
· Kristi showing an icicle that developed on the neoprene sleeve covering her CamelBak hose while skiing.
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XC Skiing from Home

Published December 13, 2010

Having my own cross country skis and with this weekend’s sudden snow fall frozen into hard pack I decided to see how well skiing the field next to my condo would go. Two laps (roughly a mile) later and I can say that I’m now able to have an enjoyable (albeit short and flat) ski from my house. There was even sufficient moonlight to make skiing perfectly fine without a headlight.

The snow is so firmly packed that it could be cut with a saw which allowed me to easily glide along on top of it, only occasionally sinking through recently-drifted powder. It was also deep enough that only once did I run into brush sticking through the snow and have to deviate course. Hopefully this means that the trails at Stony Creek will be open and groomed for skiing this weekend.

(Oh, and the footprints next to the ski tracks? Those are from Roxie heading out to go to the bathroom and then my fetching her deposit from the snow.)

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Manual Trail Work

Published December 5, 2010

This afternoon Erik, Nick, and I headed out to River Bends to remove the fallen tree mentioned here and to check out another reported downed tree. The other tree turned out to be this conflagration comprised of five downed trees and various broken limbs and deadfall, all in one spot. Thanks to Erik’s 4′ bow saw and his ability to quickly cut (Picture 1, Picture 2) what’s seen above was cleared in just under an hour and now looks like this.

This was a rather nice day for working outside. With the temperature just above freezing it was definitely cold, but being appropriately dressed once we got walking and working it was quite comfortable.

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