November 19 Trail Build ~ The Spring Creek Crossing

A great day for the Trail Build effort yesterday. Wonderful cold morning around the fire, discussing the day led us out to the new section.  Today was to be about completing the rough cut from the trail end, across Spring Creek, all the way to the connection with the original loop below Mjr. Tom.

Here the guys get at it old school style, carving the final run into the crossing.  At this point, we thought we'd not need the big stones, as the crossing was on bedrock and likely to be stable enough to allow a sustainable crossing.

Once the hand build was going strong, I brought the machine up from where we were going to bring up rocks for the crossing culvert.  This is the rough work by the machine, awaiting hand finishing.

Here we are hand finishing the section above.  This leads across an old drainage ditch and down some fast turns to the crossing.  By this point most of the trail carving has been done and we're starting to look long and hard at the Spring Creek crossing.  Even though we'd put in our hours at this point, few of us wanted to leave the crossing to ride.  So the hardy crew pushed on, went back the the rock pile and started to haul the biggest rocks we could find.

We decided that the creek banks would not withstand repeated crossing so we're building a bridge.  Here we're hauling 400lb rocks up to the crossing to build a culvert across the creek.  

End of the day, the hand built technical section is connected to the machine built sweeps with our best bridge yet.  Made of just 3 bid stones, this crossing is easy on Spring Creek, allowing full flow with room to spare and overflow capacity for floods.  This will ensure water quality, spare the creek banks from repeated treads. It will be a great technical test for riders of all skill levels, easy enough for the moderate rider to cross with comfort while being a real challenge at speed.  Best of all, it is a beautiful example of skilled people working together to blend sustainability, recreation, and craft.  Thanks guys!

Update: Here is a .gps track of my day.  About 5 miles of running around.