Blazing

I got an email from Woody the Forestry Guy about trail blazes. Bike trails are blazed with a 4″ circle at 5 feet off the ground. Once I get the trail paralleling Redrock Road done, I’ll start some blazing. I’m not sure what color yet, I’m waiting on recommendations from the forestry people. Barbara wants me to get the Boy Scouts involved which would be nice but I worry about the paint being oil based and creating a huge mess. The Boy Scouts blazed parts of the Jackson and Juniper Creek trails so maybe they are more experienced than I am.

Green

I had planned on going to Oak Mountain this weekend but the weather was bad on Saturday so I stayed in town. I roped Dale and Ed into going to Blackwater on Sunday to do some laps and check things out after being away for two weeks. My how things have grown. The trail has an amazing amount of growth on it and the forest is really green now. I guess those oak trees we cut don’t give up easily. We did three laps, two slow and one fast lap the other direction, so maybe we’ve re staked our claim on the trail.  It was nice to be back out there and I’m ready to get some more trail cut. Dale rescued a turtle off of Munson Highway and my Toyota got a strange vibration in it. Coincidence?

Vacation

I was on vacation for the last two weeks so I haven’t been doing any trail work. Next weekend I hope to go to Oak Mountain and the weekend after that is the MS Ride. I definitely want to get some more trail work done before it gets blazing hot but time is growing short. Has anyone been riding the loop?

2 Hours and 2 Loops

I took Barbara to work so I went up to the trail. I worked on the new section for two hours and got pretty far. Lots of termites out for some reason. Afterwards I did two loops at about 25 minutes each. The new skinny I built last weekend was fun, I did it both laps. Then I rode down to the bridge to check the water level since we had so much rain yesterday. It was about a foot from the bottom of the bridge but it had been over the top. The Lupine are blooming like crazy.

It’s a Fun and Challenging Ride

I built a temporary bridge out of a 2×12 plus some bracing for the erosional ditch. It’s about 10 feet long and maybe 50 lbs, more than I wanted to carry through the woods. David volunteered to help me haul it so I strapped it on the roof of the 4Runner, grabbed the bike, picked up David and headed to Blackwater. Luck was on our side since I knew the combination to the first gate and the second gate was unlocked. We managed to drive within maybe 100 yards of the ditch. We dragged it through the woods and had it installed within an hour. I didn’t stake it in the ground because I don’t know if it will pass the safety test. Then David did some hole filling while I debated on whether to cut out the little oak tree or leave it. I left it and cut a small trail around it. The tree is a little to high for me to hop over but I bet someone could. We were back at the truck and doing laps by 11:00. We did a lap just to check out the trail, then 2 consecutive laps at a good pace. Then we had a quick lunch followed by another slow lap. I was tired by the end of the day. David and I got in 2 hours each.

When we were getting ready to eat lunch, a tractor came driving down the dirt road followed by four dogs. When the lady saw us, she whipped it around like she was running away but she stopped. She was just out collecting pine straw for her garden. She came by to talk to us and it turns out she works with Mike G. She also owns the donkey I’ve heard braying along with an alpaca. She seemed nice but it wouldn’t surprise me to find donkey and alpaca footprints on the trail soon. Some signs will be posted shortly after.

The phase 1 section of trail has gotten much faster, even the sections I was going to work on are now doable. The leaf litter makes it slightly slippery but I was able to keep my speed almost the whole 1.5 miles. The phase 2 portion is not so easy which is what I wanted. It’s up hill for quite a ways with several momentum killers thrown in. It flattens out a little but then after the bridge it’s back up hill again. I had to stand to climb due to the roughness killing my speed. There’s one more uphill section that winds through a pine forest that’s also kinda tough but once it flattens out, it’s fast. There’s one log crossing then it’s a shortcut back to the dirt road. It’s on this shortcut that I built a skinny out of a fallen pine tree. That was my project for today along with smoothing a bad section on phase 1. The shortcut is only temporary so the skinny wasn’t built to last and it probably won’t since it was mostly rotten but I think it will work for a few months. When I got done smoothing the rough spots, I collected pin flags along the established sections of phase 1. These I used to pin flag the trail along Redrock Road. I got about 2000 feet flagged but I need to go back through it to check some tortoise holes.

Something that’s amazing to me is that here in town, everything is starting to leaf out and the dogwoods are in full bloom. Up there in the forest, it’s still stark and leafless an the dogwoods are just starting to bloom. It’s hard to believe there is that much difference in climate. The schnauzer and I got 4 hours.

First Ride

I finally got to ride the loop yesterday. I had a meeting scheduled with Woody at 3:00 so my plan was to get there an hour early to do a couple of loops. I also had to attend a meeting at noon that my friend Christian was giving. Christian wanted to ride the trail also so it was going to work out good. Well, the meeting ran a little late so we only got to do one lap but the cool thing was that Christian has met Woody in the past and they knew a lot of the same people. That kinda helped break the ice. I guess over in Point Washington near Destin they have a bike trail that the forestry people built and maintain and Woody was one of those guys. So we talked about the trail some and he was ok with us bridging over the little ditch although he forgot to check if the pile o’ timbers was still available for our use. He also suggested we start thinking about blazing the trail and building kiosks. I think paint for the blazing would be the best so he was going to check on the specifications and color suggestions and I would do the labor. The kiosk might take a while but he definitely wants to start using the Juniper Creek parking area as the spot to park instead of the gate where I have been parking. That just means I have to build that northern section of the trail next. Out of the blue he started talking about day use fees. He said it would only be $1 to use the area but it kinda caught me off guard. I suggested that the club, having built the trail and are going to be maintaining it, would be exempt from the fee and he thought that was fair but he would have to run it by the bosses. That might also help with club membership. I think now is the time we need to create an MOU just to define some responsibilities and such. Anyway, we had a nice ride and I think the trail will be fun to ride although it’s still a little rough. I need to spend a few hours riding the loop and working out some lines. Hopefully next weekend.

3.2 Mile Loop

The Schnauzer and I got the loop done except for a couple of obstacles that I plan on building in the next few weeks. There are still some holes that need to be filled and maybe a few banked turns built. I haven’t gotten it approved by the people in charge but I don’t think they will have any issues. 5 hours.

It’s Getting Warmer

I’ve missed two weekends for various reasons I can’t remember but I finally made it up today. Yesterday was taken up with the Lumberjack Festival in Milton. Barbara and I were in the tree give away booth from 9:00 am until 3:00 pm. I was whooped when I got home but it was worth it. We probably gave away 6000-7000 trees. If half the people who got trees plant them and half of those trees survive, that’s quite a few trees being introduced to the environment. At the Festival I ran into Lesley who helped out on the trail back in the fall. She had her friend Jackson with her who I met at a party several weekends ago. They both wanted to help on the trail so I gave them my number. This morning as I was getting off the Interstate, Jackson gives me a call so I stopped by to pick him up and we headed for the woods. We started at 2050 with me flagging and him lopping. I flagged to 2064 and we cleared several hundred feet and rough cut several hundred more. It’s nice and open so it should go quickly next weekend. Once I get this small loop done, I want to hit 2335 to 2357 which parallels Redrock Road. That would make a nice addition if you parked at the wooden bridges on Redrock. That would be pretty close to a six mile ride and maybe four miles of single track. Maybe I can get that done before it gets to hot. It was 70 degerees today so I may not have much time. We got in 4 hours each so 8 hours total.

This is February?

It’s been unseasonably warm for February, probably mid sixties today. I hope summer is tolerable. Chris and David helped out again today and we got 1200 feet of trail rideable. They have been a big help the last two weekends. We started at 2038 and recleared the 300 feet I did last Sunday plus rough cut, widened and raked all the way to point 2050. This looks like a fun section to ride as it’s mostly an open area with some tight pieces through thickets. I haven’t scoped out the next 1400 feet but I hope it goes as fast as the last several sections. We got in 4.5 hours each for a total of 13.5 hours. I made them listen to Amy Winehouse on the way home. It may have scared them off. Tomorrow is going to be taken up with yard work, a bike ride and rain. Also, two huge cargo planes flew over, either a c5a or a c17, I can’t be sure. They lumbered over barely moving. Pretty impressive.

Volunteers

Saturday, David D. and Chris P. volunteered to help out. That meant the schnauzer got to stay home. David and Chris rode phase 1 while I hauled all the tools and two lunch boxes to the beginning of phase 2. Phase 2 is mostly up hill and with the trailer fully loaded, it was quite a haul. I set them up with lopping and cutting while I pin flagged as much as I could. We managed to knock out a whopping 1000 feet of rideable trail by day’s end. The only thing lacking was a good raking to finish it off. If I had more pin flags we probably could have rough cut another 1000 feet but I was using what I had. Lovely sandwiches were provided by Barbara and the weather was very spring-like.

Sunday was a day of a small hangover from the party we attended Saturday evening. At least I hope it was a hangover and not the beginnings of the flu that’s going around. I loaded up the schnauzer and we hit Home Depot for some more pin flags. We finished yesterday at point 2038 so I went back and raked up to that point and that’s where I started pin flagging. I got to 2051 and then went back and started lopping. There is a section around point 2041 that is full of small trees about 1″ in diameter. Trying to figure out a fun and easy way to get through that was beyond me today so I quit lopping and came back through with the ax and chopped out stumps. I was tired but my head had quit hurting. The schnauzer hurt his paw at some point so we called it a day and headed to the creek. All in all it was a block buster weekend with 15 hours on Saturday and 3 hours today for a killer 18 hours. If I could get two people out the next two weekends, we could finish up the short loop.