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.