Short Log Ride

The short log ride is found in a draw on the northern section of the trail. At one time there was this old, dead tree blocking the trail route. Below is a little map of where this is and that of the reroute that Tom and I did last weekend.


To give you some perspective of what we did to this section last weekend I have quite a few before shots. The first three were obviously taken last winter. Where I decided to run the trail there was an old tree down next to some boulders and blocking the route of where I wanted to run the trail. To the left it was too wet (year round) and to the right too steep.

In the picture below, you are looking back up (North) the proposed route of the trail and you can see how this part is kind of a draw. Down the center of the draw is an intermittent stream so the proposed trail sticks to the sides of the draw and cuts diagonally across just once.

Come spring, Tom came through with his chain saw and cut the tree blocking where the trail would go. Apparently he got one good cut at the top of the tree and was in the middle of cutting the top part to clear the trail but ran out of gas.

Tom and I came back two weeks later to finish what he started. After finishing the second cut we carefully maneuvered the log into position so that it was abutting one of the boulders.

As you can sort of see, the rock that the log abuts is angled and creates a ramp. A perfect beginning for a log ride. Call it a beginner's stunt.



So, here are some shots of the work that we did last weekend. This section needed to be benched because it was just and open slope. We pulled out two really big rocks from the treadway. One was used on the southern section of the log ride and acts as a ramp. The other one was used in creating the ramp on the top part of the stunt.



Below is the rock we pulled out that was blocking part of the treadway. It must have weighed over 500 pounds. We were able to move it into place at the end of the stunt to create a nice ramp.

Another rather large rock was pulled out near the treadway and was used to create a ramp up to the rock before the log. It took a few tries and different combinations of the rocks to get the ramp just right.