Trail Care Rears It's Ugly, Eroded Head

Saturday morning saw a return to "Trail Care" activities after a somewhat well earned rest. The target today was one of the iconic trails in Daisy Hill Forest, "Nirvana".

This trail has a bit of everything. Being on a steep, shaded slope this trail throws up riding challenges as well as visual pleasures and is a personal favourite. Some photos were included in this post from last year.

Unfortunately there has been no love shown to this (or any other) trail for a few years and several parts of it are becoming badly eroded.

While still challenging and fun to ride, it gives the land managers the opportunity to equate mountain bikers with trail degredation. To redress this balance, LCTA (with some prodding) has stepped in to address some of the more ..erm....fecked-up parts of the trail.

Three cubic metres(yards) of rock and three cubic metres of road base were ordered for the job. The method of moving the material was a couple of wheel barrows and a heap of sweat. It is amazing how out of control you can get with a heavily loaded barrow on steep, narrow single track! Oh for a brake on that little wheel!

So, most of the gear ended up at the work site with only the odd huge stone rolling down the hillside. Unfortunately I missed a golden photo opportunity when a few of the guys retrieved a runaway, much to their discomfort.

With just 2.5 metres of rock and about tha same of road base, we went from nasty exposed roots to two huge rock step-offs in about five hours. Not at all to the IMBA standard at 30% slope, but it will stand the test of time and shows that you don't need to have boring IMBA McTrails if you have the proper materials and some volunteers to fix(or build) it right. With some more volunteers we could have achieved an even better outcome on the day....

Huge props to the small, but talented and good looking team that turned out this morning ;-)

While Andrew was the designated test rider this morning, I managed to take a quick spin over just before dark to sample the works for myself.

The verdict? It rolls so well that the average rider probably won't even notice it. It will become a part of the pleasure that is "Nirvana".

And thats good enough for me.