trail work

As most all know I have been spending the summer in the Missouri Ozarks working on and maintaining the Ozark Trail.

I am wrapping up my last week here with a trip down south near the Arkansas border. The past two evenings were spent in Eminance, MO on the Jack's Fork River. Absolutely beautiful. The whole area reminded me a lot of the Smokey Mountains, especially when we went up to a ridge and watched a rainstorm come in to the valley last night. Very very cool.

This is an area we worked on last week while Aaron Browning, Landahl Trail Manager, was here. Too bad there's no pic of me on the mini skid-steer I got to play on :) We built a little turnpike to get through a boggy, horsed up area.



For those interested, basically we lined both sides of the trail with large boulders then laid down some strips of geofabrication in the boggy soil to help firm it up and hold everything in place. We used a smalle culvert pipe to direct water drainage, then a layer of gravel/sand (local creek bed dredge), then a layer of geofabric with 2 ends out on either side as to fold it over. More gravel, "sausage" the geofabric, then more gravel/sand on top and soil if you can find any around to sprinkle/mix in on the very top. Doing it this way builds the trail surface up 1-2 feet, so excavation isn't needed. It is fairly easy to do if materials are readily available and looks pretty cool when done.

As of my count today, I have 325+ hours working and 82 miles of trail trimmed since I've been here. Throw in a few days of creek crossing building and bench cutting and it's been a great summer for learning tons about trail building and maintenance. Hopefully it will pay off with Roanoke this fall. I am looking forward to it.

My last week here will be spend at working down south some more and staying at Big Springs National Rec Area in the Ozark National Scenic Riverways. We already dropped camp there before having to come back to Potosi for another worker (hence why you get a rando blog post) and will be making the long drive back tonight as soon as he gets here. I plan on not a lot of sleep this week between work, and hopefully a few rides and at least one float on the Current River.

peace and riding!