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Should trails be leaf blown?

  • Blow those leaves off

    Votes: 11 17.2%
  • let them lay

    Votes: 35 54.7%
  • depending on trail(explain in comments)

    Votes: 18 28.1%
61 - 67 of 67 Posts
As a trail builder and maintainer, except for a few rare exceptions, you want compacted dirt as the top layer of a trail, to prevent ingress of plants, to prevent erosion, to prevent all sorts of bad conditions. This is literally the opposite of having leaves on the trail. The reason the part of the woods without a trail is like that is due to the fact that you let the leaves and everything just fall in place. Again, I'm not advocating for blowing out leaves with a leave-blower, but you are trying to remove plat matter decay and organics from the trail surface as a trail builder. Letting that stuff pile up the opposite of what you want. Not to make the trail easier or harder, but to keep the surface in a compacted dirt condition that sheds water. This is very dependent on location, some locations drop leaves all year and it's not really a thing to have them in mass. Some places drop enough so you are deep in it. That stuff starts decaying almost immediately.
I understand the need to remove leaves for many circumstances but it's really not practical to blow them from any trail systems I'm familiar with,my local trail does get raked for safety concerns In dangerous section and of course if navigation becomes impossible.
But geeze what's next,pads on trees,I jest of course 😆
 
As a trail builder and maintainer, except for a few rare exceptions, you want compacted dirt as the top layer of a trail, to prevent ingress of plants, to prevent erosion, to prevent all sorts of bad conditions. This is literally the opposite of having leaves on the trail.
Where I live the leaves are compacted in a few short weeks and act as a water barrier. It doesn't decay into a thick mass or anything here.
 
I have trails I would never blow, and trails I clear every year. It depends on the soil and terrain, but much more the level of traffic. If there is minimal traffic - like the trails I have on my own property, which see maybe 100 rides per year (mostly me), I blow them off. They would just disappear if I didn’t.

For heavily-trafficked trails which get the leaves pulverized by traffic as they fall, I tend to let them lay. The exception are trails made of clay, which are rare here but do stay much drier without the leaves, and some very heavily sculpted flow/jump trail.

Pre-COVID, we used to blow a bunch of local parks because there was such a high ratio of trail miles to riders. Last year we didn’t have to touch a thing. All the new riders and hikers smashed them down, and I got to spend my trail work days bench-cutting and digging drainage.
 
In north FL we have two falls. One near Christmas, and one from March through April. I'm not sure what specific species are responsible (some types of oak) but it makes for an almost back to back leaf fest for ~5 months of the year.
I never heard of trails being blown clear, until I rode one in a rather well-to-do area. I couldn't believe it. I laughed most of the ride but did appreciate that I could enjoy railing the corners as usual instead of only the occasional corner that has been cleared due to heavy traffic.
 
The trail I built and manage gets the leaves blown off 1-2 times a year in the late Fall. We just did all 9 1/2 miles about a month ago in about 3 hours. 10 dudes with 10 back pack leaf blowers made short work of it. We decided to wait later in the season to do it so we only had to do it once. Then whatever falls off the trees after that just get scattered off the trail. If we didn't blow them off we'd have several inches of nice wet, soggy organic material keep our red clay muddy.
 
61 - 67 of 67 Posts
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