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This is what we did

Jm_

sled dog's bollocks
Jan 14, 2002
20,314
10,811
AK
Well, one of the trails we did this summer. This is the more "natural" trail, without berms and big launches, the one we dug out from the mess of organics and left the roots and stuff in. Worked out pretty well. All of our trails are now open! This one is "Dig Deep".

 

canadmos

Cake Tease
May 29, 2011
22,150
21,723
Canaderp
Natural trail for the win. That second trail is long. Looks fun.

And looks much better than how one of our local trail clubs digs new trail. They love their 3-4 foot wide bench cuts and they also love to not provide any support for the outer edges of said bench cuts. They usually turn into sandy washout messes....
 

Jm_

sled dog's bollocks
Jan 14, 2002
20,314
10,811
AK
Natural trail for the win. That second trail is long. Looks fun.

And looks much better than how one of our local trail clubs digs new trail. They love their 3-4 foot wide bench cuts and they also love to not provide any support for the outer edges of said bench cuts. They usually turn into sandy washout messes....
Both are longer than shown. Natural trail has another upper section that is even more "natural" with some good natural drops and jumps. The portion running along the ravine though that you did see was a major PITA to cut in. Took many work days due to the mess of organics. Everything grows on top here and goes out laterally, because going down gets frozen much of the year, so always crazy root-balls and stuff to cut out, but we did and leading many of the parties I tried to impress how nature is going to reclaim the sides anyway, go see my picture in the McLeods thread to get an idea. Same trail, the Gnome statue is at 3:14. Right now it looks like a wildfire went through, but it'll grow back to the jungle it was and our yearly task of fighting that stuff back will start. IME, for bench cuts and much of the trail, you have to make it a few feet wider than you intend the trail to be run, for pungi sticks, pedal catchers, the support you are talking about, etc. Given a bit of time, vegetation grows back and the riding keeps stuff in the compacted tread from growing and then it looks like your "typical" 1-2" wide trail. There are plenty of narrow passages and parts where this doesn't apply, but I find in general you make it a foot or two wider on each side than you intend the tread, which has the effect if giving the support and the rest takes care of itself. Lots of work though. Then there's the back-slope angles, front side angles and all of that jazz. We are pretty good at making sure all that stuff happens. Again, the top of the trail is much more twisty and steeper (more elevation loss), even though the camera doesn't do justice to the rooty steep sections in what I showed. Not crazy hard, but enough to slow the champion XC racer (the guy that literally wins all the races) to a crawl relatively :), and he doesn't suck at tech, he's just on an XC race rig.

We built:

Dig Deep: The natural trail, the last few hundred feet is machine built, but the top section and most of the bottom were all hand-hacked over several months. Roots were left in for the most part, creating a lot of steep short chute sections.

Eh-Line: Has some great big jumps, mostly a flow trail, but the last third or so is back to at least semi-natural, gets a lot more twisty and some natural chutes towards the end (vs. open "flow"). A few nice big tables and bumps you can case on when your eyes water. One of our final projects I helped with was putting in cedar fencing in between this and the existing XC ski trail. There are maybe two wooden features.

Gower Power: Mostly a flow jump-line trail, only comes down the riding area about 2/3rds of the way.

Ticket to Ride: One way climbing trail at the end of Dig Deep and Eh-Line, intersects the end of Gower Power and connects with existing trail system, to reach top of all of these.

Jeff's Whoop Whoop Trail: Probably has the biggest features and is the longest. Flow type trail, definitely a blast to ride though and fun hip, step-ups, just everything. Some features that are a bit more like the stuff on Rainmaker at Trestle (but not the representative table-top-only feature of RM). You can hit the berms hard and blast off. Does have a flat section 1/3rd of the way down, but not bad.

All of these are one-way in the summer except Ticket to Ride, the climbing trail is both-ways. This finally gives us some legit terrain to ride some bigger bikes though and really open it up. So happy the city let us build them and everyone hung in there.
 

Jm_

sled dog's bollocks
Jan 14, 2002
20,314
10,811
AK
This one is Eh-Line.

I finally did one of those "look at my fork moving!" videos. The only problem is you have to watch it through my crotch.

I worked on the mid and lower section of this one, in addition to installing cedar fences in a few places on the left with two other people. It butts up against a ski-trail so we want to keep on-lookers off.