Trail work weekend, day one. Lots of tread work, mostly digging water bars. Pretty happy with this huge one I made to start the day. Took about 4 hours. Ground is perfect after recent rains for digging and shaping.
@jds Interesting you are doing two mccloud's wide trails there. I was taught in a Trail Boss class that it's usually one... is that because it's a busy trail or because the trail maintenance cycle is longer up there?
@ai6yr we do 18 inches minimum for the trail itself, then grade the entire out slope to shed water (no outside berms that keep water flowing down trail).
But we go bigger. We do everything bigger than needed for multiple reasons. First it’s also an equestrian / pack animal trail. Then because it’s all fairly remote and we’re not many people, maintaining a lot of miles. We need the “five year mentality” that it has to last. We can’t come back and maintain this same section again next year, there’s other problems.
@ai6yr yeah, accounting for trail animals is a lot. It’s interesting. We always have to look up, imagine someone riding on a horse, and cut branches a lot higher than expected.
@jds Ah, good point on that one! The trails behind my house are rarely maintained (I think it's on a 10 year cycle) so I frequently do "unsanctioned" trail maintenance to keep things from going overgrown. There's a horse owner that uses the trails too who I notice takes out some trimmers EXACTLY for that reason--very high branches riders will hit but us hikers never get close to.
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