Trail Maintenance and Building a new Trail

Building a New Trail

This weekend I decided to do some trail maintenance and build a new trail. The recent had blocked one trail and a couple have been blocked since last spring.

My chainsaw has a bad ignition module so I borrowed my Dad’s chainsaw. His starts and runs much better than mine.

We began by cutting down a tree that was leaning across the trial we call Wedgie. This trail drops into a huge V notch and then makes a steep climb. We also opened up the top of the trail so that the off camber turn over a tree root is optional.

This trail has given Jenny’s Jeep a challenge in the past but now on her new 33” tires she made it across the V notch easily. On the return trip dropping into the notch from the steep side, she did tag her bumper into the opposite bank but she pulled through easily.

Next we reopened the loop off the campsite that goes to the far corner of the property. This trail has been blocked by two fallen pine trees for a while. We sliced a couple of cuts in the logs wide enough to get the Jeep through.

Next we worked on a new trail. This one includes the steepest hill climb we could find. We call this trail Slickery because in the wet leaves it was very slick. On the opposite side of the hill there is a large tree root at the base that makes the beginning of the climb interesting. We left a small log across the trail for an additional challenge.

On Jenny’s first run back up the hill, she spun in the leaves and dug in. She got sideways enough that she could not back down due to a tree. So we used Scuffy’s winch to get her to the top of the hill. On her next run, she carried a bit more speed at the bottom of the hill and made it up easily.

Now we have to work on naming all the trails so we know where we are talking about. Then we will have to put a GPS in a Jeep and make an accurate map.

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