Rocking Grizzly Gulch
This blog has moved to:
http://henry-w-coe-bike-patrol.blogspot.com/
I slept until 8:30am this Sunday; tired from the Saturday bike patrol ride. Thought I would ride in Henry W Coe and do a little trail maintenance. I needed to inspect my bike closely in the morning. Towards the end of Saturday it wasn't running right. I notice one of the two main pins that hold the derailleur parallelogram together had almost backed out completely.
Well that sucks! Probably lucky I finished the ride yesterday. At least I have a new XTR derailleur for the bike already. But I want to rebuild the whole bike again. It needs love. So I just went to do trail work alone. It was good not to bring a bike, in the end, because the trail work took all the time I had.
I got to the Canada Station just before noon. Opened the gate, and I drove into the park and parked at the turn-around at the bottom of Spike Jones. Libby's GMC Jimmy was there too. (It was gone when I left.) I hiked up Grizzly Gulch Trail, across the creek, and then stopped just above the rock culvert.
My tools: mcleod, d-handle spade shovel, light ash handle cutter mattock, polish trench spade, pin flags, chalk, level. Also took a small red cone to alert any riders coming down of something going on. Only one rider came by. It was sunny and warm; only one rider?
I knew what I wanted to do, and realized it was ambitious. I kept at it, and made rapid progress, jogging around instead of walking when I needed to fetch something, and just went to town.
Looking down.
Looking up:
Upon inspection I determined that the main problem was from water delivered to this section from a very effective drain on the next section of trail above. I would have to divert this drain water before I left. I ended doing that hastily in the near dark at the end of the day. The drained water had smoothed down the grass and made it look like people or deer had been shortcutting the trail. But it was just storm run-off that did it. The run-off was hosing this fragile section of trail. (Note to self: consider downhill consequences of drains.)
The drain from the switchback above:
The drainage ditch diversion:
[This drainage diversion ditch is not a "final solution" and represents a disappointment and a compromise. It will silt up in one season. There's a lot of history behind the work in this area of the trail. I continue to learn a lot from the school of hard knocks, I hope. A tremendous amount of water barrels down from the stacked turn above and the hillside above during episodic downpours of rain. What I propose for the future is to direct this drainage to inside of the trail and right into the throat of the the upper stone culvert. This would make a natural flow. But right now, the rest of the section still needs fine tuning and testing for durability.]
The work at hand immediately was to fix the erosion gutter and make the trail better. I set out to restore and close the straight-line descent bike line first. Now I had to finish something. Then I prepared to build a retaining wall to support a mildly insloped berm to support a wider arcing tread of a shallow turn. This was the hardest part. I carried a lot of rock and placed as carefully and swiftly as I could.
The retaining wall-berm, came out pretty good. If that wasn't ambitious enough, the next to do was fix the drainage gutter so that you could ride and hike across it. I wanted to make another variation on the rock culvert theme. It was getting towards dark soon as I was nearing completion of this piece of work. I was forced to improvise quickly.
That's the last photo I took. Another thing I did, which isn't in the photo, on a part of the trail in the last photo, is the bottom left area. Here there is grass growing out of a heavily rock armored section (installed like six years ago by me) which was supposed to be a place to descend on a bike. It was used for a while, but as soon as the straight-line run was enabled, this crescent went unused. I hoed the grass down and raked all the detritus up and threw it up on the hillside where I had harvested the soil for the berm. I also widened the trail above the original rock culvert on the uphill side to suggest a crescent to turn on. You can see the flags indicating this idea in some of the earlier photos. I pulled all the flags and took them home, except for some marking the entrance to this section, to let riders know that something has changed here.
Well, I think it looks a little better than before. It should hold up in a rain okay for a while. It should be fun to ride. It takes skill to go fast, and locking the rear brake is a dumb thing to do here. one thing for certain, it is much better to walk up and down now. I wanted to put in some steps just above the new rock culvert on the downslope side, but I ran out of time. Seeing how the original rock culvert is still standing strong, emboldened me to build another one. Time will tell. At least there a lot of rock to work with for future repairs.
Yes, we've considered rerouting the trail to the downslope side to reduce grade. The reason why I've not done this before the rock culvert, was that technically it would need permissions, it would bring the edge of the trail closer to the cliff, it would skirt just above an active landslide and it's days would be numbered, the steep section is a valuable challenge on this downhill for riders, the steep section is quicker for hikers, the trail is already located here, it is fun to see what you can do here with trail work.
I look forward to the chance to check out my work!
Comments (2)
Comments:
#2Re: Rocking Grizzly Gulch
You've had that 2nd rock culvert on your mind for at least a year, must be satisfying to finally complete it.
///Charlie
Comment by Skyline35 on Tuesday, January 18, 2011 at 07:08 AM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#1Re: Rocking Grizzly Gulch
Looks awesome. That's a lot of work to excavate and place all of those rocks. Looking forward to checking it out!
-D
Comment by Diesel~ on Monday, January 17, 2011 at 06:53 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment