Flat Holler
Posted: Thu Sep 05, 2013 5:39 pm
Admittedly, I have been on the fence lately about the way we clear out 6 foot wide trails on trail day. Is a more conservative approach better and all that? I understand the desire to keep the natural landscape so maybe there is some middle ground that is being overlooked. So on Saturday, when the heat and mank killed my proj sending hopes I had the opportunity to walk the trails of flat holler. It was truly a pleasent experince as we have several years of data all within a mile or so of hiking. You can actually walk along the rough developers trails then on to the most recent excavation points, then on to the areas from last year, and finally the trails I personally helped to develop from 3 JATD's ago. I remember leaving 2 years ago and the fresh cut trail looked very similar to those created a few weeks ago.
Now that I have seen all three, I am stuck feeling kind of silly. We live in one the areas that may actually benefit from global climate change and the vegitation growth rate is stellar. 2 years after creating these seldome used trails, they were perfect, plenty of ground cover but no painful eye gougers or toe stubby tree stumps. Nothing but solid trail, even the 1 year old trail looked great, just not as full. There will always be improvement possibilities as some sections of trail are just hard to figure out (like the creek crossing area, please don't start whining about that, it is obviously a dificult section and time will tell if it is completed) but I am sold on our current method of trail building. I encourage everyone to check those trail sections out if you are uncertain of our impact or just want to see some good progress in action.
We have some heavy lifing ahead of us to finish flat holler and miller fork, I hope that more people will help independant of trail days. I encourage people to attend the rocktobefest trail building seminar.
Now that I have seen all three, I am stuck feeling kind of silly. We live in one the areas that may actually benefit from global climate change and the vegitation growth rate is stellar. 2 years after creating these seldome used trails, they were perfect, plenty of ground cover but no painful eye gougers or toe stubby tree stumps. Nothing but solid trail, even the 1 year old trail looked great, just not as full. There will always be improvement possibilities as some sections of trail are just hard to figure out (like the creek crossing area, please don't start whining about that, it is obviously a dificult section and time will tell if it is completed) but I am sold on our current method of trail building. I encourage everyone to check those trail sections out if you are uncertain of our impact or just want to see some good progress in action.
We have some heavy lifing ahead of us to finish flat holler and miller fork, I hope that more people will help independant of trail days. I encourage people to attend the rocktobefest trail building seminar.
