in Blue Mound (Moderator: Walt Hougas)

Kevin Swenson reviewed our proposed reroute of the first segment of the beginner section. We have his approval to go ahead with the work.

Gary and I will be there this Saturday, Oct 18th from 8AM to 4PM. We will be trenching and filling mostly. There's some black silt to get through, same as the original trail, just less of it. We could use some help.

I will bring the brats from the BBB event that got rained out and provide them for lunch. Beer for the afternoon survivors.

Walt

This is great news and should go a long way towards more open days next season.

Great news indeed.  Should be able to make it out for at least the first part of the work day.

We had an amazing turnout on Saturday. My humble thanks to everyone who gave up what turned out to be a nice fall day tohelp out with a last minute work session.

Brian, Rick, Mark, Rich, Jin, Garrett, and Will put together a very nice reroute out of some rather chaotic instructions from Gary and me.

The reroute is not open as of today, but it's very close to punched through and will be ridable very soon.

The next step will be to talk with the park manager to nail down what the new benchmark will be to determine when the the trail will be open. As soon as we can close the old trail (mud hole).

Almost forgot: A huge thanks to Gary for everything he did and put up with to make this vital reroute happen. More than anyone else, this is his creation. Great job Gary!

Update for Sunday October 19th:

I got out for several hours today. The turn where Jin, Garrett, and Will stopped on Saturday is now raked off. This is truly rake-and-ride terrain. The reroute is now connected back into the old trail just past the first gravel road crossing, Pleasure Valley trail.

We're also redoing the first ravine crossing north of Pleasure Valley trail. Today I cut the bench down to the crossing. Then I spent about an hour scratching my head, trying to come up with a good spot to cross. I had a crossing that was 90% rideable, except there was one rock in the way about the size of a large coffee table and about 6" thick. If it had been laying flat, it would have been really nice, but it was upright, in the way, and I couldn't get it to budge with a rock bar.

In the end, what worked was to whack it with a sledge hammer many times, really hard. Lucky for me I needed to break off less than a foot of the rock, I was running out of steam fast.

Putting in the new crossing will allow us to use the original crossing, backward, for outbound bike traffic. Connecting the new crossing into the original trail will allow us to close two sections of fall line trail. We're getting a lot of return on our effort with the new reroute.

Gary and his family showed up as I was leaving. He helped me pull two rocks that were outside my limit. Peter brought out his rake to help with the trail work.

We have about 50 yards left to go.

I called the office and left a message saying Over Lode should be open.

Walt

Saturday was a real eye opener for some of the issues at Blue Mounds.  The old beginner section was very soggy and muddy, but even the freshly exposed soil of the new line was significantly dryer so that alone is going to be a big improvement.  More importantly, as Walt has pointed out, getting the park management to find a better measuring tool for trail conditions would be an enormous step forward towards staying open on more day.  I was able to make a trip around the whole system and aside from a handful of extremely isolated spots, the overwhelming majority of the trail was bone dry, but the park uses the (old) beginner section as the benchmark which is a terrible representation of the rest of the trail. 

Changing their perception might be an annoying exercise but I'm very optimistic that it's going to pay off.  Even if they continue to use the beginner section as the test then the vastly improved reroute will be a much better gauge. Good stuff all around.

The beginner section reroute is open.

Gary and I punched through about 6:30 tonight. I closed off the fall-line section of trail, then used the leaf blower back to the trail head. Gary cleaned up the entrance just below the trail head.

The original trail between the trail head and the first gravel road crossing is now closed. Please do not ride it.

The next step is to confirm that the trail will no longer be closed by the park management based on the condition of the old trail. I tried to get to Blue Mound before the office closed today to discuss the matter, but I wasn't able to get out of work early enough to catch Kevin before quitting time.

We're done building trail for 2014, hope to ride it now until there's enough snow to ski. Then we turn it over to the fat bikers.

Gary will be at Blue Mound on Saturday to start leaf blowing.

Walt

Edit/ I have neglected to add a huge thanks to Gary Schweisthal for instigating this reroute and pushing it along at numerous key points. We have provided the park management with a compelling reason to open the trails immediately, and to open them much more quickly after a rain. I will continue to push and prod until we get a positive response. /Edit

Wow.  So much for that 2nd trail day to finish things up.  Good job you guys on finishing that up.  Can't wait to ride it soon once the park gives the all clear.

Update: The park manager is gone until next week. I spoke with one of the rangers (Brian) and emphasized that the new reroute is open, and the old trail is now closed. And that I want them to evaluate the new trail for deciding to open the trail after rain. I would not be surprised if it takes several calls to get everyone on the same page.

Unfortunately, there's rain in the forecast for today.

G: I appreciate very much your offer to come back next week to finish up the trail. Gary and I decided to hammer on it and get it open as quickly as possible. I want people to get familiar with the reroute before the end of the season. I want the park staff to get away from thinking the trail has to be closed for days after every rain. My guess is that it's going to take some time and effort to get everyone to go along and the sooner we get going on it the better.

Walt

Update: The reroute is connected through. It's now rideable from end to end, and cleared of leaves. Note that we redirected a short section of bike trail north of Pleasure Valley ski/hike trail. It is completely obvious that the ride direction has been reversed, no tricky navigation required. We will install signs in the next week or so. I ordered UV-resistant ink for my printer last week, but the shipment got delayed.

We will be doing additional tread improvements next spring as needed. Some of the new trail is routed over black organic silt dirt, the same stuff that caused so much grief in the area we routed around. After a lot of spirited discussion, we decided to go ahead with busting through the new trail quickly this fall because:

 1) There was little chance of getting the park manager to re-open the bike trails this fall given the sorry state of the original beginner trail.
 2) The amount of manual labor it would take to trench and fill the silty areas of the new trail was prohibitive. The silt goes down roughly 18". Which doesn't sound too bad until you factor in that a decent tread width for a beginner trail is at least 30". That adds up to 3.75 cubic feet of dirt to be shoveled out for every linear foot of trail! And the soil, although mostly rock free, is riddled with tree roots that have to be chopped out.
 3) The reroute appears to have better drainage than the original trail. We can't know for sure until we see it with a ridden-in tread and rained on, but there's a fair chance the reroute will work OK for a while without all the tread improvements I'd like to do.
 4) I'm working on developing relationships to get financial support. I'm working on fulfilling the paperwork requirements to get authorization to operate machinery. At some point, we will be able to build excellent trail without doing everything by hand.

I don't like to do less than our best, but the beginner reroute is an exceptional case that has significant immediate benefit, and there is a high probability that we will be in a position very soon to go back and fix potential problems with less work than it would take to do the job right at this time. I'm committed to making Blue Mound an outstanding bike trail, but sometimes compromise is required to get to the bigger goal, and I'm reasonably certain we have made the correct decision.

Gary and I closed off the first segment of the beginner trail with brush and branches, please stay off of it. Sorry for the loss of cool rock features, but that's the deal with the park manager.

As of Saturday October 25th the trails are open. Gary and I will be gearing up for a ride Sunday at 1:30. Please think of joining Nick at Seminole first. I'm taking a badly needed break from trail work, what's your excuse?

Walt

I had a few minutes yesterday after leaf blowing to improve two streambed crossings. The sharpest "V" got made into more of a "U", and I cut a endo-inducing root on a second one.

Walt