tranquility north fort st trail is beta

Thanks to Aaron, Chris, Dale, Greg, and Paul, the out and back trail corridor along the Big Papio is cleared. Little tread work - though rideable, it's not necessarily enjoyable - consider it a beta release. Sod cutting the tread will wait for another workday, probably next Spring.

 
The trail circled in pink is what we worked on yesterday and today - about 20 hrs. About 20 hrs were spent on the ground walking, envisioning, and flagging prior to this weekend.
 
The trail circled in blue at the top is a double track going around a built wetlands in order to mitigate wetlands lost from the soccer fields south of Fort St and the new cement trail around Standing Bear Lake.
 
The trail on the west boundary will be worked on over the winter, weather permitting. This entails clearing deadfall and dead undercanopy in the trail corridor.
 
Greg brought out his stihl saw with color coordinated stihl chaps -- very professional, should have snapped a pic!
 
Chris putted around with his walk behind weedeater to clear parts of the tread along the trees down to the dirt.
 
I ended up putting about 8 hrs on Tigger. She worked hard making a preliminary pass through at 5" and a follow up cut at 3.5". The air cooling screen was plugged several times from all the cut grass thrown upwind. Though she has some minor groundings with the blades, the worst was running up over an unseen railroad tie when finishing up in the dark about 6 pm. Stopped the blades and stalled the engine - ouch! In 1 hour, Tigger does what use to take us about 4 hrs to push. Thus those 8 hrs this weekend saved us at least another 24 hours of mowing by hand.
 
Besides weedeating, clearing branches, and some hoe work, Aaron and Paul set bridges in place over the Fort St bridge erosion ruts.
 
I found out Friday at 1830 that Melinda, director of Omaha Parks, and Dennis, Park Planner had given us the "Notice to Proceed" with construction of the proposed trail. This time of year, there are few weekends amicable for trailwork.
 
I thank God for moving Melinda and Dennis to ok the proposal, for providing Chris, Paul, Greg, and Aaron to interact with the design and construction, and I'm grateful to God for giving me the desire, eyes, and hands to help paint a mtb trail on his canvas.

mowed north tp return route

Talked with Chris who was out doing some lopping. Decided not to rent sod cutter for tomorrow's trailday, we will just work on clearing and mowing the trail corridor on the Big Papio. Mowing the grass will allow the frost to melt more quickly next Spring when the sod cutter can be put to work.

This is looking south on the return route towards the Fort St bridge.

This is looking back up the return route towards the north baseball parking lot.

Though difficult to see, this is one of those half inch diameter scrub brush that has a 10' root starting back at the head of the rogue hoe.

tranquility trailday this sunday 11.21

Thank you, Omaha Parks, for approving the trail extension!

Trailday this Sunday noon – 3pm.
Meet north of Fort St in east lot between front and back baseball complexes.
Will work on parallel out and back trails along Big Papio.


I will walk for obstacles, flag, and mow as much trail corridor as possible with Tigger on Saturday.

Work for Sunday:
- Mow tread low on Tigger prepped trail corridor
- Run sod cutters over tread line
- Saw, trim branches in trail corridor along creek
- Weedwack non Tigger tread
- Put in bridges under bridge

Tools provided.

We need 6 or so workers to rsvp in order to rent two sod machines.
Assumes:
- Tigger can prepare the trail corridors on Saturday
- Frost is not in ground already

With bitter cold weather forecasted and trail corridor mowed to ground, frost will set in before another trailday can be run, so as much sod cutting/treadwork must be done this Sunday as possible, or it will have to wait till Spring, in my opinion. If low number of workers are available, will leave sawing/trimming till after frost in order to concentrate on sod cutting tread.

Please let me know if you plan to work on the trail Sunday - tpmbt at cox dot net

Dale

TV Shoot Date changed to Tues 11/16 due to weather

Iowa Public Television's new recreation and conservation series, Iowa Outdoors wants to feature mountain biking around Council Bluffs in a future episode in late Spring/Summer 2011 and particularly the courses at Lewis and Clark Monument and Lake Manawa.

They plan on being here on 11/16 to video riders on trail. We need riders to be at L&C and ready to ride at 11am sharp. Please let me know if you can participate.

The bigger benefit is they want to feature THOR as well and that may be shot on the same day or in the spring during an actual trail day.

It should only take an hour or so. Come on out and show off our trails!

Contact me ASAP if you can attend. roxzanne dot abbott at gmail dot com

Thanks, Roxy

Thank you THOR Volunteers!

Seriously, people. What other sport on this planet has it's competitors and enthusiasts taking care of the very playground they play in? MTB volunteers have got to be the most selfless and passionate people I have ever met.

Just want to say thank you to Tom Winfield and Steve Dickey for organizing and orchestrating two successful days at Lake Manawa.  A huge shout out to the guys from Extreme Wheels who came out and took care of business.

Steve says: Perfect crew along with perfect weather let 11 workers get a total of 33 hours in to make Manawa ridable in all sections except east sidewider which has two areas and very muddy in a few sections. Use caution if you haven't riden here lately, there is some muddy spots in low areas under leaves.We ended the day with pizza and some even went out for a ride after that. To all who helped get manawa ridable since the last flood you are AWESOME!

Great turnout for TTD

Thanks to the 15 people that came out to tranq this afternoon and helped put the finishing touches on the fall cleanup. The water bars were cleaned up and tuned, as well as some problem muddy areas being adjusted. We also cleaned up the canopy of deadfall. This should have us ready to go come spring...

Big props to the long haulers that worked Manawa this morning, then blasted to Tranquility to work some more.

Thanks to everyone that pitched in all year. We couldn't do it without ya!

Manawa Trail Day 11/3, 11/6

Manawa Needs You This Week!

Nov. 3, Wed. Meet in parking lot at 3:45 and start work at 4. This is a very short work night before it gets dark. Extreme Wheels has a crew that wants to help out. Bring your light to ride after we work. The work will include moving branches off trail in no second chance and along the entire trail by the levy to power plant. We will have two saws that night to use we just need you to help clear the trail.

Nov. 6, Sat. Meet in parking lot at 9 am. And start work at 9:15. We have two chain saws and we will be splitting up in crews with them and finish up cutting any fallen trees to get more sections ridable. Cut a few more trees in a few other sections.  We do have a few sections that need to be benched!

12:00 noon meet in parking lot for pizza provided for your hard work. Bring your own drinks, no glass. Anyone who wants to work after we eat we will be running one more crew. 

The goal by the end of the work day sat. Is to have all trees at least cut that need to be.
Hope to see ya Wed. Or Sat.
Things to bring is your favorite non-gas tool, warm clothing, gloves, ear plugs, and your bike.

Tranquility Trail Day Sat Nov 6th @ 1pm

We are looking for a small group to come help finish up the fall cleanup. Meet at the Fort St trail head at 1pm.