Salem Hills/Harmon Park Trail Work 9/3/03 6:00pm

[KleinCrazy]

Hey all,

Work continues on the new singletrack trail being built in Inver Grove Heights.

This week the plan is to work on finishing a very short (<20 feet) stretch of hand built benchcut in a thick pine forest and also continue with finishing work on dingo built trails in some hardwood forest in the park.

The City would like to see these trails done and open by the winter, so we need everyone that can come out and help to show up.

Where: Salem Hills Parking Lot. Upper 55th street between hwy 52 and South Robert Trail.

http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?savedMap=1062530788


When: 6:00pm Wednesday Sept 3rd

What to Bring: Long Pants, Bug Dope, Water, and a wish to help build the first ALL NEW singletrack trail in the cities in over 10 years.

For more information / or if you have questions.
James Ford 612-207-7102
kleincrazy@attbi.com

[tmac]

Originally posted by KleinCrazy
Hey all,

Where: Salem Hills Parking Lot. Upper 55th street between hwy 52 and South Robert Trail.
http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.ad...=49&submit.y=15

For more information / or if you have questions.
James Ford 612-207-7102
kleincrazy@attbi.com

James,

Your link seems to be dead.

-Ty

[KleinCrazy]

Thanks,

It is now fixed. Sorry about having a dead link for the map to the park.

James

[Dr. Guitar]

I've been wanting to help on Harrmon for awhile now, but it's a bit of problem for me to get there when others are there.

I work in IGH, and Live in MPLS. I typically get done with work at 5, except Wednesday. That's at 4. But I don't want to use my afternoon of extra sunlight on anything other than riding. And I really don't want to waste an hour in IGH, or try to get home and back durring rush hour.

An idea... Would it be posible to reply on here, or start a section on nothing but trailbuilding? What to do, tools to use, etc. And then maybey a little section on what you are doing at each trail. That way someone like myself could contact you, get an assignment, go out on a different afternoon and increase progress.

[pwpatton]

I was just out at Harmon/Salem Hills checking things out and noticed that quite a bit of new trail was cut. Man, it looked nice!!! I was definately drooling thinking about riding the section in the field. The trail is going to be fast and fun.

With all that new trail cut we will have quite a bit of work on wed. If we could get 12 workers out there we could make some significant progress in the open field (dirt). I'm going to try and get a couple of friends out there. I'll tempt them by letting them know if they help they can ride it early. :)

Phillip

[Trevize1138]

James:

DAMMIT! I really wanted to go out and help y'alls with trail work tonight, but the wife's car is out-of-commission, so she has to use mine and I won't get hers into the shop until tomorrow. She works until 7, so I'm biking it to work and IGH is just too far away to bike for me to make trail work on time!

Sorry, dude. Really was psyched about getting out there and trail building, but looks like I'm gonna have to wait until next week :(.

[KleinCrazy]

Adam,

Trail work start time will be moving to 5:30 next week and 5:00 in the near future due to the sun going down earlier.

I don't know if it would help but you could aways ride before the trail work session. I have found 5 + miles of old motocross trails down by the river in IGH that are kinda fun, or you could test ride at harmon for us. Alot of it is already rideable, just not finished yet.

We could use you alot out at the trailwork, but due to liability issues, we have to be careful in how work is done on the trail.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

James

PS I get off work at 3:30 and am home in South St. Paul by 3:45.
If you want to get together sometime and ride let me know.

[pwpatton]

James, Trail crew,

I'm going to go to Harmon early today (web 9/3) and test ride it. I'll be at the 63 st. area at 5 today (work willing).

Anyone interested please join me.

Phillip

[TrailDale]

About riding at Salem Hills . . .

Yes, we cut a bunch of new trail yesterday (and broke the Dingo in the process - long story), however, with the Round-Up, and the disking, and the DRY weather, the entire southern end of the park is MOON DUST. :confused:

Nothing has settled or packed in yet, and it won't until it rains.

If you try to ride the newest trails, you will sink in past your nipples :shocked: and make a 4-inch deep dust rut.

We REALLY need some rain.

Dale Gundberg

[pwpatton]

Yea, I attempted to ride a bit of the unfinished (newly cut stuff) and it was clearly not ready (I didn't really expect it to be) but it did give me a feel for the lines that were decided upon during flagging. The lines appear to be great; fast and flowing, I'm really pumped!! And yes, the trail is Moon Dust (or as James called it: volcanic ash). Your absolutely right Dale, we need rain BAD!!!

The secton that we did finished work on in the field last week actually rode quite nicely. The dirt was pretty well packed down. I measured it with my computer and it's about a 1/4 mile. Not too bad for 6 or 7 people in a single night. Especially when compared to hand cutting the bench cut in the short section in the trees. :) That took us 2 sessions...

I also rode the first section out of the salem hills parking lot and a couple section near the pond. BTW: the bridges are up on the west and south side (I think it's the south) of the pond and they look fantastic. The bridge building folks did a great job.

All in all the trail is coming along but needs a lot of finish work and of course some more dingo and BOB work. In order to have a chance to finish a "main" section this year we will really need to see about twice as many people out there each wednesday (IMHO). We've had between 5 and 7 people on a regular basis and we were able to finish about 1/4 to 1/3 of a mile of the open field trails. If we could double that amount of people each week we could finish somewhere around 1/2 mile or so a week. That would really help alot.

Phillip