[L. Ron Hoover]

I'm interested in seeing your before and after pics of trail work. Post a pic of a section of trail you've worked on before and after the work with a bit of text explaining the pics. It might be cool to have a visual library of people's trail projects. I'm looking forward to seeing other people's work.

I'll start: This is a section of trail destroyed by Tropical Storm Leslie last year. The first pic is the day after the storm, the second was taken last week when I finally got to repairing that section. We removed the downed trees (130 in 5km of trail) last fall but the turfed up root plates left quite a hole which you can't really see in the first pic. I built a rock bridge to fill the hole and make it sensible to ride again. It's in the center of the second pic.

EDIT: Also, if this has already been done, I apologize. I went a good ways back and didn't see a similar thread.

Before:


After:

 

[thefriar]

Our Hurricane Irene and Superstorm Sandy before and afters would fill a book.

 

[L. Ron Hoover]

Our Hurricane Irene and Superstorm Sandy before and afters would fill a book.

Post a few!

 

[L. Ron Hoover]

*crickets*

So, no one else has any before and after pics of their trail work?

I'll go again. This is a bridge we built over a perpetual mud hole this weekend:

Before:





After:





We still need to finish armoring the entrance and exit but even now you can carry way more speed through there and into the next section. The mud hole was a real flow killer.

 

[Ridnparadise]

It's a good thread. If there was one in the past, then this replaces it. Now you have to give us time to dredge up pics

 

[Ridnparadise]

OK. Ready to play. I'll get some repairs tomorrow, but this is a before and after new trail. The last pic is taken about a year after building. The second about 6 months after.

In the before pic there is a stump to the left of the trunks centre pic. Use it as a reference. In the last pic it has a leafy hat and is touching the tree trunk just below the top of the wound.

The slope is circa 20-25%. The slope into the creek, like left of the tree in the last pic is 40 to 50 degrees - there's some math for you.

Before



After - the logs are to slow water flow and act as silt traps over layered rock and smaller stone. The tread has raised and become grippier over time, but you still get a splash if it is wet. This trail handles riding in the wet (even if we hate the idea of it)



Now you see it, now you don't

 

[thefriar]

Not hurricane related... I'll dig for those, we were busy. (links not working??)

Before:
Trumbull Project 08-11-12

After:
Trumbull Project 08-11-12

 

[robbiexor]

This looked pretty good, but since has been widened. Still looks good, though.

 

[L. Ron Hoover]

Ah wow! These are exactly what I was looking for! It's super cool to see how raw woods becomes a trail.

Thefriar: That's a hell of a bridge! :thumbsup:

 

[Cotharyus]

Picture size limits are a little squirrelly so you get to click links, because I can't be arsed to resize pictures.


Before/during berm construction on a new local project:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/24031182/maplebar1.jpg

After - not taken from exactly the same place, but it isn't hard to figure out what's going on here.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/24031182/maplebar2.jpg


I've got a lot of pictures of stuff where there's no trail, and then there is, but most of it changes perspective, and some of it you wouldn't realize is the same spot unless you'd been there.

 

[Trail Ninja]

 

[Trail Ninja]

 

[Trail Ninja]

 

[Trail Ninja]

 

[ZigaK]

A large Larch fell over the path accesible by bike/foot only. Had to carry a 5kg hand winch to drag it away.

 

[Wildfire]

Before, during, and after.

New trail project in Matanuska Greenbelt near Palmer, Alaska.

 

[Ridnparadise]

Here's one that takes a bit of explanation. When we initially flagged this area, we were intending to follow an animal (kangaroo) trail through a steep drainage slightly higher up the hill from this site. The small, orange ribbons centre of the first pic follow that line.



However, that line was going to cause issues higher up the hill. In fact, about 400m farther up, it painted us into a corner where a rapid gain in altitude was required on gentle sideslope, complicated by deeper, poorly draining soil. It was all a recipe for rule-breaking and recurrent maintenance over time. So we changed our plan and went for a higher line through this location. The result was a section of trail of about 100m or so that averages 13%. We knew it would require some attention to grade and very good sightlines, being a two-way trail.

Perspective is a strange thing. In the first pic there are 2 bent tree trunks; one to the right of the flagging and a larger one in the top, right corner. The trail now goes below the smaller one and above the one top right, making the change in grade of trail look pretty scary. Here's how things are now (before we clean the site up and finish the corner in the next pic).





The last pic shows the 2 bent tree trunks - hard to believe the final line looking at the first pic.



By the way, the jump actually controls speed because the takeoff is about 20% upslope.

 

[Ridnparadise]

I have to re-post this repair, because when I first posted it on MTBR, the response was it would fail as the small amount of stone alongside the trail up top would silt over and force water back on the trail etc etc. That was 16 months ago and it is better now than in any of these pics, so all good. The problem is pretty obvious - water running along trail and then into a 50cm deep erosion gully, down to a messy choke and onto a narrow trail that was held up by rotten timber and constantly under water in the wet.

Here's the before starting at the bottom.











Now the repairs (although a bit more drainage work was done past the top end)

 

[cmc4130]

posted and discussed already ( https://forums.mtbr.com/trail-building-advocacy/erosion-loving-purists-versus-dirt-packing-dj-freeride-rehab-842228.html ) , but relevant to the thread.


BEFORE:

AFTER:

 

[Trail Ninja]

posted and discussed already ( https://forums.mtbr.com/trail-building-advocacy/erosion-loving-purists-versus-dirt-packing-dj-freeride-rehab-842228.html ) , but relevant to the thread.


BEFORE:

AFTER:

Wait, one photo is missing. "After flash flood"