Busy little bees

We have been beavering away busily, making new trail, new trail features and clearing lantana for the trail corridor.  We went out for a ride this morning and took a couple photos showing off the new trail

Riding the new log crossing

We made the log crossing smaller then initially intended, thinking it might be too intimidating, now I regret it and we should have kept it as we originally planned as it's a little easy.  It is "nifty" though !  We just used a convenient dead tree and our trusty chainsaw to fill in the gaps between an already fallen tree, no live trees were killed during this construction :)

Me on the same crossing

Here's what it looked like before

Before

This crossing is a little further along

Another crossing, after.

Before 

and the current end of the trail

Current end of the trail

The trail winds through the grove of trees in the background, right where the large log on the ground can be seen.  Need the crowbar to move that sucker aside !  We can ride out to our properties driveway where we are, so it allows us to nicely link back onto the "Footbone" section of the northern trail network.

More southern trail work

We have been hard at it with many working bees on the southern trail.  This area is particularly heavily infested with lantana, so the going is slow but there is the added benefit of clearing the lantana as we go.  We hope to have the property totally cleared of the stuff one day, what a joyous day THAT will be but enough of the day dreamin' .  I have been out working on the trail nearly every day, with Toni helping out when she can.  I had a day off to go race mountain bikes in Grafton at the Bom Bom BOMB , a great event thanks to the awesome work of the guys doing the trails there and to Sue and Trev from Graftons iconic bike shop, Grafton City Cycles

Built Trail
Some of the trail has been built but it's still virgin, not having been ridden at all, we plan to ride tomorrow morning hopefully !

Log crossing near the trail head

Trail winding through the forest

A log crossing - after

and here's what it looked like before the trail was built but after the lantana was cleared

Log crossing - before !

The area is very heavily wooded, making it great to ride through but often tricky to build, follow IMBA Trail building principles and miss all the trees !

Coming out of a corner, between a Stringy Bark (L)
and a TallowWood (R)

A problem ? or an opportunity !
This presented me with an opportunity to do something different.

Trev's Trapezoidal log obstacle (I hope !), "B" line on the left

 I am going to try some chain saw "architecture" and use a large fallen tree, cut to suitable lengths to fill in the gaps between these logs.  Hopefully I will be making it a trapezoidal shape, something like below albeit with easier approach and departure angles then shown in the image

We will be able to ride over, made out of logs, about thigh high.

We'll see how it goes !

Speaking of Lantana
I was saying how thick it is, here's a photo, I tell no lies !

Lantana to be cleared !