Category: <span>Trail work</span>

With a big assist from the City of Northfield Public Works staff, the CROCT MTB skills park in Northfield’s Sechler Park got some improvements this year. Workers brought in several truckloads of dirt to improve six of the seven beginner and intermediate jumps in the main jump line and expand the launch mound. In addition, they moved the giant boulder lurking along the park’s swampy edge and reinstalled the kiosk next to the launch mound. Slideshow:

CROCT (Cannon River Offroad Cycling and Trails), our local mountain bike club in Rice County, has partnered with the City of Northfield to have a multi-purpose trail in the City’s Sechler Park since the club was founded in 2014. I’m one of the CROCT volunteers who helps to maintain the skills park.

Organizations Trail work

I published a post yesterday to my local mtb club’s blog titled, CROCT’s Sechler Skills Park continues to evolve.

The skills park is my primary responsibility as one of CROCT’s many volunteer trail workers. My motivation to work on it?

  • Our in-town Sechler Park MTB Trail is a river bottoms trail and doesn’t have a lot of challenging terrain. So having a skills park in the middle of it is way for local riders to practice their skills and challenge themselves
  • It’s handy to have a local skills park for instructional clinics. Kids who live in town can ride their bikes to the park via the local network of paved trails
  • I’m always working on my own riding skills and being able to construct features that are appropriate for my own development is a treat

Last summer, my interest in learning to jump via Ryan Leech’s Jumping with Confidence online course (affiliate link) spurred me to learn how to build beginner and intermediate level table top jumps. I had the full-time use a tractor with a bucket, free street reclamation dirt from the City of Northfield, a budget from CROCT to have it hauled in, and labor from other trail worker volunteers to help me shape, learn, test, and rebuild the jumps until we got them ‘good enough.’

By the end of the season, I’d gotten to where I could consider myself solid at beginner-level tabletops. Here’s a 1-minute video clip of me riding the 7 jumps that we built:

And the jumps proved to be a hit with kids and adventuresome adults, of course.

In addition to the 7 tabletop jumps (6 beginner-level, 1 intermediate-level), the skills park also now has:

  • 3 berms (1 large wood berm, 2 dirt berms)
  • 2 wood drops (1 beginner-level, 1 intermediate-level)
  • 2 large log piles
  • 1 line of 8 small rollers
  • 1 log skinny/logover obstacle, configured for several levels of difficulty
  • 2 railroad ties configured for uphill steps
  • 1 large boulder
  • Several skinnies (intermediate-expert) with changing configurations

We’ll be adding more features to the skills park this year.

Trail work

https://www.instagram.com/p/BJ-UNQNgRSV/

Trail work

This past summer, fellow mountain biker and uber volunteer Bill Nelson used his Ford Tractor to help CROCT, our local mountain bike club, fashion various obstacles in our new skills park area along our Sechler Park mountain bike trail. I soon became his apprentice operator and it inspired me to take on the role of skills park ‘dirt boss’ for the trail. More details and skills park photos in this CROCT blog post.

Bill Nelson, Ford tractor Griff Wigley, Bill Nelson

Equipment Trail work

Over three dozen trail workers (including 15+ kids) showed up at Rice County’s Caron Park on Saturday (National Trails Day) to work on the first segment of a CROCT mountain bike trail there (I’m a board member). The weather was gorgeous and the bugs were non-existent. Under the direction of trail steward and CROCT board prez Marty Larson, the crew worked from 9 am to noon.

The results? Amazing!

CROCT loop 1 Caron Park CROCT loop 1 Caron Park CROCT loop 1 Caron Park

We don’t yet know the mileage on the new intermediate-level segment that we’re currently calling Loop 1, but it’s significant and it’s going to be a blast to ride. (If you stay connected via the CROCT Facebook page, Twitter feed, email newsletter, or Google Group discussion list we’ll alert you when the trail officially is open to ride.)

We broke for lunch and beverages at noon. Milltown Cycles in Faribault donated and served the hot dogs, brats and pop. Bauers Southside Liquor in Faribault donated and served a great selection of beer:

CROCT membership picnic 2015 - Caron Park CROCT membership picnic 2015 - Caron Park CROCT membership picnic 2015 - Caron Park

After lunch, we raffled off some swag donated by Milltown Cycles to CROCT members in attendance. John Ebling and Kevin Keane won helmets and Jeff Kreis won a jersey. Four others got 3-packs of cycling socks: 

Advocacy Events Fundraiser Trail work

I’m a member of the CROCT Board here in Rice County MN and after witnessing the speed of vehicle traffic on the recently reopened Sechler Road (it’s closed to vehicles during the winter months), we made a quick decision last week to remove the ditch crossing bridge that we installed recently and reroute the trail directly over the creek prior to the gate at the north entrance to the park, keeping riders completely away from the road/pavement.

The creek crossing required a bigger bridge than the one we used for the ditch so the two bridges that a crew of CROCT volunteers fashioned from the wood of the old Mill Towns Trail bridge were put into service:

 

Last Tuesday, CROCT member John Ebling used his tractor to transport the bridges to the shoulder of Sechler Road near the creek crossings:

Organizations Photo album Trail work

Maintenance People Trail work

I’ve been seeing the Fatties on the Bottoms threads in the Group Rides section of the MORC forums for a year now and decided to see what the fuss/fun was all about today. Ride leader Jonathan Bistodeau posted this in the forum:

This week, we will be starting at the usual location (Bloomington Ferry) and plan on riding to Cedar Bridge and back. As of now there appears to be a 50% chance of rain on Saturday which equals no ride. Keep an eye on the weather and this post for details.

Group rides Trail work

Hansi Johnson on Piedmont MTB trail Hansi Johnson observing the reconstruction of Haines Road Hansi Johnson's salute to the 'side effects' of the reconstruction of Haines Road

The day after my solo stint at Spirit, I met up with IMBA Midwest Regional Director Hansi Johnson for a ride on the COGGS Piedmont trail over to the new Brewer Park trail under construction. On way, we encountered MNDOT’s reconstruction of Haines Road which was wiped out by last year’s flood. For some reason, MNDOT has take down a huge chunk of the hill/cliff overlooking a section of the road and with it, a large section of the Piedmont trail. If you look closely at the photo of Hansi on the right, you can see how he feels about this.

Hansi Johnson, Adam Harju Hansi Johnson, Larry Sampson Brad Miller, Hansi Johnson

After making our way around the, um, destruction, we came upon a COGGS trail building crew working on the new Brewer Park trail, led by Adam Harju and Brad Miller, with assistance from Larry Sampson, Duluth Maintenance Supervisor for the Superior Hiking Trail Association. Here’s some background from a COGGS blog post:

Along with the work funded by the Legacy grant, COGGS also has it’s own mechanized trail building crew. Thanks to a $10,000 grant from Specialized Bicycles, COGGS was able to purchase a Bobcat 418 mini-excavator and a CanyCom mechanized wheel barrow. To operate this equipment we hired Adam Harju, Brad Miller and Pete Leutgeb.

Their first project was building two reroutes of the existing singletrack on the east side of Amity Creek and have since turned their efforts towards building a portion of the Duluth Traverse Trail through Brewer Park. This section of land is immediately across Haines Rd west of Piedmont and has perfect terrain for mountain bike trails. This section of the DT will connect Piedmont to the State Trail and DWP, which are both off-road, multi-use trails that a rider can take all the way to Beck’s Rd in West Duluth.

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Members of the College of Saint Scholastica track team were volunteering, hauling many wheelbarrow loads of dirt to the Brewer Park MTB trail construction site a couple blocks away. Jeesh.

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“Thanks to a $10,000 grant from Specialized Bicycles, COGGS was able to purchase a Bobcat 418 mini-excavator and a CanyCom mechanized wheel barrow.”

People Trail work Trails

A crew of MORC Gravity Advocates (a sub-group of MORC) spent much of Saturday working on the Cottage Grove Bike Park.

Colin VanDerHyde Chance Glasford Mike Mullany

 

Adam Buck Andy Sinclair

I took a few photos of Adam Buck, Mark Gavin, Chance Glasford, Mike Mullany, Andy Sinclair, and Colin VanDerHyde.  Chris Braaten was there in the morning before I arrived.

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If you show up to work, you get to test and play a bit.

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Some photos of Chance (above) and Mike (below) doing both:

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See the large slideshow of all the above photos plus a dozen or so more or SLOW CLICK this small slideshow:

Photo album Trail work

Riding Section 1 at LebLast week I blogged about my technical scheme to mark up sections (alternative lines) through rock gardens. I set up two sections at Lebanon Hills later in the week, another four on Sunday, and revamped one of them yesterday after some feedback from Leb Trail Steward John Lundell.

So far, using white chalk to mark the rocks and flags to mark the entrance and exits has worked to set up the sections. It’s easy to move flags and the chalk marks can be removed by rubbing dirt on them.

I’ve not yet gotten much feedback yet to know if it’s working for riders. And it’s not rained, so I’ve not had to re-chalk.

The six videos all start with photos of the sections marked with red lines to make the alternative lines visible. Then there’s a clip of me riding the section.  I recorded the videos using my smartphone mounted on a small tripod, usually placed on the ground. Most of the sections required me to capture video from two or three different vantage points. The upshot of that? You see me cleaning everything but you don’t see a non-stop video of me cleaning entire sections from start to finish. Have I cleaned every section from start to finish? Not yet.  The videos also don’t include any of my many failed attempts and crashes.

All the videos are short, varying in length from 12-39 seconds.  Attach a comment if you’ve got questions or feedback.

Section 1:

httpv://vimeo.com/72477908

Section 2:

httpv://vimeo.com/72478391

Section 3:

httpv://vimeo.com/72616040

Section 4:

httpv://vimeo.com/72619804

Section 5:

httpv://vimeo.com/72620228

Section 6:

httpv://vimeo.com/72620498

Trail work Video