Workdays...03.01.08 and 03.02.08

Since we had to cancel our Heartland races for the weekend, we are going to work at Swope instead.

Our main objective right now is to clear corridor...meaning clearing a 6 ft swath thru the woods, so we can start bench cutting and tweaking lines. This is a great way for inexperienced trail workers to get dirty. It's a lot of cutting branches/logs and moving them out of the way. We hope to have most of the corridor cleared for this 1st phase done by the end of the weekend.

The Plan:

Saturday
9am-noon
Meet at Swope Camp Lake of the Woods area. See map.

Sunday
1:30p-4:00p
Meet at Swope Camp Lake of the Woods area. See map.




Tools, Etc:
Bring yourself and and chainsaws, handsaws, loppers, and clippers. If you don't have such tools, we should have extras. Also, bring water and snacks...Scott gets hungry when he's workin' and might steal yours given the chance...so bring extra.


Phase 1 trail layout:

It's a GO!

We had our walk thru today.

Scott and I, like 2 little nervous school girls, arrived 45 minutes early so we could have on more once-over on the trails before the walk-thru. We tweaked, we primped, we prayed. We had a quiet assurance that we nailed the layout.

The many hours staring at our blank slate, walking, hiking, running lines for flow, flagging, yelling at each other, whining, negotiating, re-flagging, talking flow, talking philosophy, falling on our butts, screaming, yelling for joy, "running out of adjectives", re-flagging more, and generally having a great time was all about to be tested.

President of ERTA, Dave Smith showed up a few minutes early. We gave him the scoop. Shortly thereafter, park personnel arrived. We gave a quick overview of the plan and started hiking. Everything went exceptionally well. Scott did an excellent job explaining our layout process and addressing potential issues. Everyone in the group had a perma-grin about halfway thru the hike. Towards the end of the hike we were asked when we'd be starting. I replied, "Scott, see you at 7:30am tomorrow morning."

So with that...IT'S A GO! Scott and I will be doing some rough corridor work this weekend. We will look at our schedule this weekend and post upcoming workdays. With the Heartland Sports Promotions schedule starting next weekend, we will need to work around our promotion schedule. But, basically, if we aren't putting a race on, we will be at Swope Park building trail.

This first phase is short. But we should be able to have the loop done in a couple months to get traffic flowing on the trails. The beauty of this area of the park is all the mature growth trees with very little scrub brush undergrowth. We should be able to build through out the year.

We are truly blessed with some great topography and great park personnel to work with. It is a breath of fresh air to work with park people who "get it".

Update and teaser pics

We finished up marking Sunday afternoon. This week, I'll be pin-flagging the line. After that, our next step is a walk-thru this Friday.

Here's for hoping it goes well.

Some teaser pics...

02.14.08 Update

Scott and I are hoping that by the end of the weekend we will have enough trail laid out to get approval and start building.

If everything goes as we plan, we could be building in just a couple weeks.

We hope to have an update with preliminary maps and pics after the weekend.

Trail Day Cancelled

With the new plan for Swope, and just starting laying out the new trails, we are cancelling the work day for this weekend. Go work or play at one of the other great trails in the city.

We'll post information when we have something ready to go.