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White Ranch Trail Work - anyone seen this?

823 Views 2 Replies 3 Participants Last post by  daveM
Okay, sorry if this is old news, but I'm a consumate lurker and hadn't noticed it. Check out the "park vision" for White Ranch:

http://www.co.jefferson.co.us/ext/dpt/comm_res/openspac/whiteRanchTrailNotice.pdf

The skinny is they're adding a trail from the bottom of Longhorn to Belcher (more options seems like a good thing, though Longhorn's not super exciting IMO). Then they're closing the bottom of Mustang "Due to hazardous conditions natural resource damage, and maintenance problems." Okay, that trail does errode. And yeah, it's probably tough to ride a horse on it. But it seems to me that once a crappy trail is made and it starts erroding, closing it down ain't gonna stop anything. I see nothing in the plan that says they're going to revegetate it so it'll just continue to wash out regardless of whether or not anyone is on it. So... if they're just closing it (this Fall) for safety reasons (is that a correct interpretation of "harzardous conditions"), why not make this one of those 1 way down bike trails? Step 3 for Jeffco is to rebuild (many here might say sanitize) the upper section of Mustang, though they assert that "technical sections will remain technical." Though I wonder what the hell "trail hardening techniques" are...

Anyone heard about this stuff?

While I'm up on my high horse, DWF was seemingly surprised to learn in another thread that Jeffco hadn't heard of bike people asking for bike only trails. I brought this up above so I thought it relevant. I'll say that while I think bike only trails would be swell, I'd hate so see 'em come at the expense of trail variety. Being realistic, I don't think they're going to build a bike only trail for in addition to everything else, and so I worry that if I request a bike only trail, it may come at the expense of other things closing to bikes. So I was a bit hesistant to offer my suggestion above about maybe not closing the bottom of Mustang.
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http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?t=36299

got my comments in it too....

I do imagine they will revegitate/erase lower mustang. Like I said before, ride it while ya can.
Trail 'hardening'...

Or 'armoring', refers to the removal of soft soil or sand, and the substitution of harder, more durable material, usually rock, that can better sustain trail traffic. This is usually done only in specific 'problem' areas, i.e. sandy washes, or mud pits. It's alot of work!

Ceran St. Vrain has some recent armoring in a section crossed by a seasonal drainage, and atleast one section of the rock garden at Hall Ranch also has some recent armoring. I also noticed ALOT of armoring on the east side of Moore Fun in Fruita, when I was over there this past spring. Those guys do tons (literally) of trail work over there!
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