more trail work

Saturday and Monday saw me doing a couple of big working bee's on the new trail.  I have marked it out totally, roughed it in totally and done most of the construction .  About 150m of trail work is needed to finish it and then a few jobs that need two people, mainly some benching for about 100m or so (in total) where I will need Toni's help.

I hope to have it 100% rideable and 95% finished tomorrow !

One of the areas that needs benching

Sweet little drop off and into the creek, tricky to climb

Small rock garden cum creek crossing partly constructed

What it looks like before I get stuck in !

The plan is to ride it tomorrow to see if any areas need "tweaking" or re-aligning slightly, one of the areas I have a concern with is this hair-pin corner

Right Angled corner around a huge Spotted Gum

I deliberately made sure the trail went up from both sides to get to the turn, to slow the riders down as it is a a right angled turn.  To realign the downhill side I would need to come out to make the angle of the turn less acute but to do that I will need to remove two small trees, something I am reluctant to do unless absolutely necessary.

Another area that might need some more work is this gravity drop "A" line for the descent, you would not bother trying to climb this as it;s way to steep in the other direction !

Gravity Drop on the "A" line

The proof of the pudding will be in the eating, well, riding in this case, on these two and a couple other areas that might be a concern,  I will report back after tomorrows ride !

Roughed out trail

One of the advantages of most of the terrain I am working with is that I can rough it out and then ride it later, just to double check.  Like in the picture below, I can ride though for the ultimate test before committing to this exact line.  I often find I tweak the line a little, someone I could never do on some other projects I have worked on as the terrain is way to rough and the trail basically  stays where it is, regardless

Roughed out trail

The blue flagging tape on the trees is  used to mark the corridor prior to roughing it, it's at that stage I use the clino etc to make sure the grades are acceptable.  I collect the tape for recycling after the project is finished,  it's plastic so it only photo-degrades (UV breaks it down) and ends up as microscopic pieces of plastic in the environment, eaten by smaller animals ending up in the food chain, or washed down waterways when it rains to end up in the rivers and eventually the Ocean becoming plastic soup !.  The other option of course is to use biodegradable tape and just leave it there but anyone using flagging tape, for the sake of the environment, please collect it,  pontification over with !