Cut your own trails?

[Marc]

Has anyone ever cut their own MTB trails before? I made one a long time ago, when I was in high school, and I actually cut about a 1/2 mile worth and started losing interest.

I'm thinking about trying again, now that I've seen more trails, know more about them and what makes trails fun and interesting. The wooded area around my parents' house is a great place for it, rolling land with very interesting terrain.

And I already have a rake, pulaski and chainsaw... just because... why would you every want to be without those?

[marcski]

We're building a whole bunch of new singletrack in the local woods that we ride in. There are a bunch of really old trails and some old dirt, rocky roads. We only use a rack and our hands. There are lots of huge slick rocked boulders in these woods. So we look for those and scope out the terrain leading to them and find interesting, technical, routes over the rocks, around trees and through whatever rock gardens we can find. Of course, we've also been throwing in your log rolls every once in a while. Rode them this morning before work. Sweet! Rake away, Marc.

[Marc]

Awesome! I'm glad you're having success.

There are some parts of my parent's land I could do with just the metal rake but most places there's a lot of topsoil, loam and leaf mold. To get a trail to last in those areas I find you have to take about 4" of that black soil off the top, and the pulaski is perfect for that job, as well as cutting roots and clearing weeds.

You should take some pics of your trails and post em here, so we can see the fruits of your labor-

[Talisman]

I cut short sections of trails and improve deer trails so I can bike them. The sections of trails I cut are usually to avoid wet areas or large fallen trees that can't be easily sawn. The challenge is to keep the trails cleared enough so they remain rideable as the briars, pucker brush, wild rose bushes and fallen limbs are relentless.

[Marc]

Originally Posted by Talisman

I cut short sections of trails and improve deer trails so I can bike them. The sections of trails I cut are usually to avoid wet areas or large fallen trees that can't be easily sawn. The challenge is to keep the trails cleared enough so they remain rideable as the briars, pucker brush, wild rose bushes and fallen limbs are relentless.

Totally unrelated obscure factoid... the wild rose bushes are most often not "wild" at all, most of them were transplanted here by the farmers of New England back in the 50's as a part of the "natural fence" program. All multifloral rose bushes. And then the took over everywhere. What a pita when cutting a trail.

[RIDEr]

http://www.imba.com/resources/trail_building/index.html

Are you guys looking at all possible aspects of building a trail, going by experience or thinking that would be a great line and then build it? I have been thinking about building a few trails and began some research on the IMBA website (above).

[Marc]

Yeah, I saw that when I googled the subject... Not a whole lot there if you ask me. I mean, maybe some of it may pertain to terrain other people build on, but I am in a predominately dry, mixed soft and hard wood area with not a lot of ground cover and brush except for some rather annoying firebush.

The biggest challenge is the thick layer of dead leaves and leaf mold. Those woods are a fire waiting to happen...