Saturday, October 25, 2008

tranquility transition

We are trying a different leadership model at Tranquility, a trail council composed of 5 people: Greg (leader, point of contact), Chris, Dale, Dave, and Paul. We figured it would take about 5 people to put in as many hours as Doug did. 8-) We hope that getting multiple perspectives and spreading the trail leader workload will have more people understanding trail leadership, improve the user experience, and not burn out trail leaders.

Our first TC meeting was a ride inspecting the trail where we came up with a worklist for a trailday in the near future.

A 100 yd long technical section has been added at the top of the south hill. Chris saw the potential and brought it to fruition. The tread was left rough with short dips to keep the difficulty higher. There are some steep climb/descents and a narrow ridge. Balance and momentum skills are tested. It is only the second blue section at Tranquility. Chris is working on some more fun stuff to be announced after we receive permission from Omaha Parks.

Finally, we decided to assign 11 names to different sections of the trail. We chose fairly intuitive names for ease of memory and to help emergency crews. Paul broke out his crayons and put this map together.

Sunday, October 5, 2008

11 October Swanson Trail Day

Hey Folks,

On behave of Frank the Trail Leader there will be Swanson Trail Day next Saturday starting at 8:30 from the parking lot.

Planned goals for the day:

1. A new trail leading up to the last installed bridge needs to be cut and the straighten leading into the bridge

2. Trail tree root maintenance needs to performed

3. Sections of the trail have grooved to a level where the sides need to be cut down and the dirt packed down into the middle and settle over the winter

4. A bridge needs to be moved from the back of Swanson to replace one of the Red clay pipe crossings up on the hill

5. The trail dip just before starting the downhill needs to be armored

6. Dirt needs to be added to the various tree jumps/log crossings

7. A couple of sign posts need to be replace and marked

8. A clear thick lacquer needs to be painted of the trial markers

Folks need to bring digging tools to this event to help with armoring some of the water crossing areas, bridge movement and repositioning and knocking the evil peddle catchin edges off some of the rutted areas.