in Volunteer Opportunities

The pump track is rideable! With your help, we can keep it that way until the snows are over, giving us all some much needed riding space until the single track is open!

There will certainly be at least a little more snow this season. The key to keeping the pump track open with minimal effort is to get out during or shortly after a snow event and simply sweep it off. A shop broom works best. What we don’t want to have happen is a bunch of snow sitting there through freeze-thaw cycles, which will yield us a really not-fun-to-ride (and very difficult to clear off) sheet of ice.

So, if you find yourself with 30 minutes to an hour after the next snow, please consider going out and doing some sweeping. I’m looking into getting a shop broom that can live out there permanently.

We can use this thread to coordinate.

I just cleared all of the loose snow off of the pump track. There is still a thin veneer of ice from the recent ice storm. My guess is it will likely melt and become rideable yet this weekend given the forecast. Some observations.

• The number of varying rodentia that seemingly die and get buried in the snow is more than I would have thought (if I had thought about it at all).
• The amount of snow that fell toward the south side of Madison in the last few days is ~3 inches.
• The amount of time it takes one 37 year-old male of moderate fitness to clear that snow with a shop broom is ~1h10m.
• The amount of calories burned during the course of that activity is ~600.
• The amount of incident solar radiation that fresh fallen snow reflects is ~90% (ok, thats not an observation, I just googled it).

This is all to say that if I can clear it solo in the space of about an hour, a small handful of people putting in just a few minutes after the snow stops falling would be enough to keep things in good shape. Just 20 or so minutes of direct sunlight onto an area where the top layer of snow has been cleared results in a rideable surface. Per point (5) above, there is basically no amount of <40 degree days that will get the surface rideable without our help. Worse yet, intermittent freeze-thaw will net us the same situation a bunch of us spent hours chipping away (literally) at a few weeks ago. Help keep this rideable! Per point 4 above, you can have several beers afterwards...

To facilitate some more volunteering, I left my shop broom out there for anyone to use (its sticking out of one of the big blue-green pvc pipes in the thicket of trees over by the shelter where all the wheel barrows are).

Thanks, Randy.  You do good work!

Thanks to Matt and Alex who helped scrape ice on Friday. A bunch of us road yesterday although it was not quite ideal (still stubborn ice on some spots that require you to reroute on to the top - or take your chances with ice in a corner...). Today's forecast is looking quite warm. My guess is it will be in quite good shape by this afternoon.

Tool update: a shop broom and a sidewalk scraper now live over in the brush with the wheel barrows. Feel free to use them, but be careful with the sidewalk scraper - keep it at a pretty low angle to the riding surface to maximize prying potential and avoid any damage to the asphalt.

Classic Wisconsin March... dumping snow right now, 40 degrees and full sun tomorrow. Any amount of volunteering to remove snow from the pump track today would be most helpful. Clear the surface as best we can and the sun will take care of the rest. If it sits there we'll end up with freeze-thaw ice later this week.

Pump track is in good shape and the forecast is looking clear!