Brushing out a log section at the MN River Bottoms

My blog post last week about a tree down on the MN River Bottoms trail got a comment from MORC member Don Youngdahl when I added a photo to the forum.

MORC should encourage more riders to carry a 6 inch folding chain saw (cost about $30) in their pocket or pack. Clearing this would take me between 5 and 10 minutes. Griff, this is not a personal jab at you. Just an opportunity to make a point about fostering the volunteer ethic in riders. Our sport was built on volunteers, authorized or not in the old days, and it continues to depend on volunteers.

Good suggestion! So I brought a hand saw with me on my early morning ride at the MN River Bottoms last Saturday, starting from the Hwy 169 Bloomington Ferry Bridge. I didn’t get far when I noticed that the buckthorn was greening up and infesting this great log section that I blogged about back in Feb.

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Besides clearing all the low hanging branches and the buckthorn edging close to the main trail, I opened up an additional route through the small trees (right photo above) to make the approach to the big log more manageable for those who can’t hop their front wheel.

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I also cleared out most of the brush around all four of the logs (numbered in red, right photo) on the other side. There’s one more area to clean out (yellow arrow) but I ran out of time.