Quimper Trails

I managed to get out twice this weekend to flag and map the final section of the Connector Trail, that is on ORM land. Now this section, is mapped, we are ready to sit at the table with DNR and ORM, to sign all the paperwork. Hopefully it won’t take too long. I want to start building.

This is an exciting section that starts in the County Park. It has a strong climb thru older forest up onto a ridge. It looks like there is some rock up here to use and there should be a Cascade view on a clear day. After a small section of old, overgrown logging road it dives back into dark young trees. Think easy building. There is one main wetland crossing with a large old log that spans the whole way. Then back into the young forest with a couple of nice switch-backs. Another small section of logging road, before the final climb to the top. I imagine it’s about a 500 foot climb in a mile, but I’m not certain. The highest point is 800 ft. Then the long decent towards Anderson Lake begins. Should be fairly easy building for a while as it’s mostly younger forest, with no under growth.

This weekend the boys got out for some much needed bridge maintenance. A couple of our bridges at Andersons are made from old pallets and were considered a temporary measure three years ago when they were put in. Needless to say some of the boards are starting to break. For now we patched the holes with some old treated 2×4, but we do have bigger plans. Gary did a great job of ripping an old cedar log which will be layed end to end to create the new wetland crossing.

Meanwhile, Craig put together a new small bridge using some of the left over two by, to cross a mud problem.

Inspired by Pimp my Trail, I mined rock with John to fill in some of the other mud holes.

We had a meeting with Wayne from D.N.R. about the connector trail. We walked most of the trail and talked about the future of the trail.

We will enter into an ” adopt a trail ” agreement. That means that we will agree to build a well built trail, and also maintain the trail.  We will also be talking to O.R.M. about building more trail between the current trail on D.N.R. land, and Gibbs Lake park. The future of our new trail is looking very good.

I also want to thank all the people that have helped us with this trail project. Trails don’t build themselves. Because of some great workers,we built 2 miles of trail in about 6 months.

Jim
 

Trail work has been put on hold at the Anderson/ Gibbs Connector trail, while we negotiate with DNR. So, far we have 2 miles of trail in, terminating at a great view point over Discovery Bay. The last hundred yards or so are a little rough, but it really is worth a look.

Stu

We are planning a Mt. Muller bike ride on Sunday 9/09/07.

Some of us will be camping near the trail on Saturday night,others will drive up on Sunday morning.  If you would like to go please e-mail me at   quimpertrails@hotmail.com.

Thanks ……..Jim

For those who don’t know, we have a work party every wednesday. Meet at the trail anytime between 4pm and dusk.

We’re making great progress, with several hundred feet of trail getting roughed in every week. Last night we reached a milestone. We’re out of the woods and back into the clearcut. No more pulling ferns, for a month or so at least. Next week we will reach the viewpoint. If you haven’t seen this view yet, you have to come and check it out. Watch the sun set, out over Discovery Bay with Protection Island and Canada in the distance. There’s talk of building a couple of benches here.

Smell that cedar? Gary, Jim and I finished off the wetland crossing as well.

A special thanks to all the new faces, that have been showing up to help lately. We really appreciate it.

Stu

The crew has been hard at work and there’s more elevated trail than ever on the new connector. The bridge Gary and Stuart started Sunday is done, we bolted things together and planked it off Wed. night. With the trail reaching all the way to the fire road, you can link a enough gravel road to the 1.5 miles of trail to make for a decent 1 hr ride, and the roads lead to some excellent views.

I got a small video of Jeff taking the first ride across the bridge, it’s a pretty small .avi file. You can download it here.

Gary took some video of me on Friday, he has a fancy new camera which also takes fairly high res video. The links below are of a more compressed version, only a couple Megs download (Thanks Stuart). In most browsers, clicking the link will open the movie in a browser window; Rt-click the link and select “Save target as ..” or “Save link as…” to download a copy of the file outside of your browser.

This is the long log at the top of the clear-cut. The stall on the hump was not intentional!

Download “Log1.MOV”

This is a beautifully done log to ramp in the trees just above the clear-cut. It’s hard to tell in the video, but the transition from log to ramp is at least 4′ in the air, it definitely gets your attention.

Download “Log2.MOV” .

And of course, there are some standard pictures. Here are a few views of finishing up the entrance ramp on Wednesday, this is the same bridge Jeff is riding in the video above.

Cheers, cc

A good days work

We’ve still got to do some fine tuning, but it’s ridable, through to the first forest road.

Here’s an interesting picture I found.

This is on Vashon Island and you can read more about it on The Museum of Hoaxes, but it’s not a hoax.

Pic via Arborsmith