2012 Shindagin Hollow Trail Work (May 20)

[Trigger]

Save the Date! Sunday, May 20. 10am-2pm. Shindagin Hollow State Forest, main Brearly Hill Rd parking lot.

Yellow trail #1 is a main Shindagin Hollow trail system artery, leading from the Brearley Hill Road parking lot and feeding both the Yellow and the Red trail system loops. Most of the current trail is reclaimed ATV trail, with the lower 1200’ showing signs of extensive erosion and poor drainage. Cycle-CNY has proposed and received permission from the land managers to make significant improvements which would help to return this important trail section to a sustainable, robust, and fun trail access point.

This project involves these improvements to the first 1200’ of Yellow #1:
• Installing 5-6 earthen waterbars (18-32” height)
• Improving 4-5 drainage channels (2’-3’ wide)
• Closing 150’ of damaged trail, adopting/improving an existing bypass trail

Cycle-CNY will be teaming up with the Tioga County Soil and Water Conservation District and the Upper Susquehanna Coalition’s Wetland Program to add water bars, create vernal pools, and improve drainage on approximately one quarter mile of the trail. Our partners will provide a mini-excavator to accomplish some of the brute work, while our Cycle-CNY volunteers will support the mini-excavator work as well as perform all the hand tool finishing work. This project will begin in early May and culminate with a volunteer trail work day on Sunday, May 20.

Many thanks to IMBA, Ithaca Beer Company, Old Goat Gear Exchange, and Clif Bars for supporting this project. CycleCNY shirts will be for sale during the 5/20 event ($15). More info to come...

Pretty cool, eh?

[chickenrider]

This is great. That trail has needed it for a long time

[cyclesilicate]

woohoo!!!!

[Trigger]

Looks like the diggers will start work on Yellow 1 Monday, May 14. We'll reopen the trail with our volunteer work day on May 20th.

[Trigger]

This project is coming together nicely, looking forward to seeing the trail improvements starting next week. Y1 is currently full of mud and water now anyway, but will be temporarily closed from Monday the 14th - Sunday the 20th. Please use alternate routes for the next week. Signs are posted with information.

Join us on Sunday 5/20 at 10am to help finish this trail improvement work and reopen this trail! Some tools will be available, but we can always use more wheelbarrows, metal rakes, shovels, mcleods or tampers.

Freebies to volunteers, donted from some of our outstanding supporters! Cycle-CNY shirts for sale on site.

[snigs]

This is great! Can't wait to ride the improvements when I am back in August!

Thanks everyone for your hard work. Wish I could be there to help.

[Intyme]

I can bring a shovel and a garden rake, possibly some gloves too.

[Trigger]

Tomorrow looks like a great day for trail work! Come on out and see the changes that have been made to Yellow#1 and help us with finishing up a couple spots. And our event sponsors have hooked us up, so volunteers will get a little love....

[seburkhardt]

Nate, Adam, Mike, Brenda, and everyone who showed up -- just wanted to thank you guys for putting together a really nice trail day and doing some fantastic improvements on Y1. It's really obvious you guys are putting in work for the club. The difference in participation, preparation, etc is very noticeable, and i think everyone will benefit from the direction that Cycles-CNY is headed.

On the topic of free swag, my wife's kitchen scale puts the 26 x 2.25" CST Heathen at 744g incl. packaging (advertised is 710g). Not bad for an "AM" tire, and impressively close to advertised. It set up with Stan's with no problem.

And i forgot to buy a darn T-shirt again!

[juuniey]

looks good! I bet its fun to ride! 8) :mrgreen:

[BrendaSmith]

Thanks, Steve, and thanks to all who showed up to help. We think this has been our most successful trail day to date. We got a lot of work accomplished in just a few hours! The new section rides really great! A group of us rode down it yesterday afternoon. I was afraid to really let it rip b/c some spots were still pretty squishy (so be careful of that until it all settles in and packs down). It's got really interesting features with stuff that will please beginner riders and old timers.

I took down the caution tape that was closing the top of the trail... figured we didn't need that anymore, right?

[Trailbait]

Thanks to everyone who helped out at yesterday's Shindagin Hollow Trail Work Day! I was really impressed by the amount of prep that went into the work day and the creation of the vernal pools. It's going to look really cool once the vegetation starts coming back and the trail gets bedded in. Special thanks to CST for the tire donations, Clif Bar for the snacks and Ithaca Beer for the tasty beverages! It was a lot of fun and I was happy to see so many people volunteer their time

[Trigger]

Really enjoyed the Sunday trail work event, thanks to everyone who made time to come out and help. Big thanks to Mike and Chris with the Upper Sesquhanna Wetlands Coalition for the evcavator work they did last week in preparation for our Sunday trail day. The lower end of Yellow #1 has had a major transformation. I used to avoid this muddy trail, but now I'll show it off to everyone I ride with!

Thanks to CST Tire, Clif Bars, and the Ithaca Beer Company for rewarding our hard working volunteers!

Pictures don't do it justice, but here's a few before/afters...

[niteviper2k]

I finally had a chance to ride this section of trail yesterday, and i must say its doing much better than i thought it would so far.. the soil material we used during construction was very wet so we were not getting great compaction for the water bars or tread surface. everybody did a great job shaping and grading the tread surfaces that we worked on during the trail day, you will notice a little bit of softness and rutting occuring, like i said though it is much less than i expected, we originally were thinking its going to take a month or more for all this to dry out and harden up.

i think with a little more care on this stretch of trail we will have a super fast flowy and fun section. a little more work as it continues to dry out in re-dressing the tread surface by raking smooth and re-tamping will help this greatly, if we havent gotten it done by our next trail day, maybe we can have a small crew or two working on it, then as it drys out we can begin to "customize" the water bars if y'all get my meaning...

on another note, if anyone is feeling the need to get out and do some light trailwork on your own there is a ton of cleaning and clearing work that can be done, for example near the top of B6 where the raspberries grow can be cut back, and all over low hanging branches etc.. dont forget to report your work hours no matter how small so we can log it at the end of the year when we report to DEC the more hours worked we show the better our relationship gets with them.

thanks again to everybody who helps to support the trail work events and does any kind of formal or informal trail work to make shindagin a better place to ride!!
Mike

[Trigger]

The Y1 trail has hardened up nicely with the recent dry weather, really pleased with the results. One small section that needs a bit more love, but overall a fantastic improvement to this trail!