S&S Trails Blog
Apr. 10, 2010 Timberlane Maintenance
Mar. 30, 2010 PTBA Annual Conference
Feb. 23, 2010 2010 DORBA/Lone Star Trail Building School
Jan. 11, 2010 Excruciation Time!!
Dec. 3, 2009 Senna Hills, Austin, Tx
Dec. 3, 2009 S&S Trails Excruciation Exam Flyer!
Oct. 26, 2009 Senna Hills Trails, Austin, Tx
Oct. 26, 2009 Pedernales Falls Equestrian Trails
Aug. 31, 2009 Sandy Basin Project
Aug. 13, 2009 Southeastern Equestrian Trails Conference follow-up report
Timberlane Maintenance
Posted by Ryan Spates in S&S Trails Blog on Apr. 10, 2010 - 12:02 pm
March 29-31 Timberlane Utility District maintenance
At the end of March, S&S Trails took a quick trip to Spring to work for our good friend Bud Gessel at TLUD. Some of the crushed granite trails needed a little resurfacing due to erosion, so we called up our local co-worker Chuck and got busy laying down more material. We also used our little dozer (affectionately named Sam) to do some drainage work to prevent future erosion problems, in addition to using her to load crushed granite into the dump buggy to carry it out to the trouble spots.
PTBA Annual Conference
Posted by Ryan Spates in S&S Trails Blog on Mar. 30, 2010 - 12:50 pm
March 22-27 PTBA Conference
S&S Trails traveled to Eureka Springs, Arkansas to participate in the first members-only conference for the Professional Trail Builders Association (PTBA). In the past a conference was held every year that was open to the public and governmental agencies, in addition to the professional trail contractors that comprise the association. As a member of the board of directors, Susan was involved with discussions to change the conference format to an every other year event that would alternate with the National Trails Symposium and IMBA biennial summits. Because those two conferences occur on even-number years, the large PTBA conference that’s open to the public will occur in odd-number years starting with 2011.
2010 DORBA/Lone Star Trail Building School
Posted by Ryan Spates in S&S Trails Blog on Feb. 23, 2010 - 8:27 am
February 20 and 21 Ryan and Susan returned to Sid Richardson Boy Scout Ranch in Runaway Bay (about 1 hour northwest of Fort Worth) to teach our annual trail building school to Dallas Off Road Bicycling Association (DORBA) trail stewards and regional land managers. On our way there, we stopped at Purtis Creek State Park on Friday the 19th to do a trail assessment and provide some consultation services at the park manager’s request.
The DORBA school is organized by Rick Buckley, a dedicated member of DORBA and organizer of the local IMBA National Mountain Bike Patrol program. Through his relationship with the Boy Scouts of America organization, he facilitates access to the scout ranch property which provides an excellent training environment for beginner and advanced trail builders alike.
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Excruciation Time!!
Posted by Ryan Spates in S&S Trails Blog on Jan. 11, 2010 - 4:10 pm
On January 2nd, S&S Trail Services hosted the 6th Excruciation Exam. We had a record 146 competitors on the 81 mile course. Unfortunately, wet weather caused us to have to take out a few sections of trail, namely The Wall at Rocky Hill and The Palisades at Bluff Creek Ranch.
Scott Henry (Team Hammerhead Bicycles) won the mens’ race in 5:12:51. Henry was in a lead group of 7 riders on the roads over to Rocky Hill and barely slowed going through the checkpoint going into the 21 mile lap. Tristan Uhl (Southern Elite/Sun & Ski, (5:23:34) was the closest chaser, keeping Henry almost in sight through Uhl’s home course of Rocky Hill before hitting the road with a 3 minute deficit. Uhl admitted to slowing down into the headwind on the way back and thought that he might get caught by Chad Hardt (5:25:30).
The womens race was won by Shae Rainer (Trek VW). Shae went into the singletrack at Warda in 1st and never relented the lead. She was followed by Claire McKenna (Hammerhead).
We appreciate everyones participation. We even had a few racers thank us saying that the race was their favorite and they look forward to it every year.
Senna Hills, Austin, Tx
Posted by Ryan Spates in S&S Project Gallery, S&S Trails Blog on Dec. 3, 2009 - 1:29 pm
S&S Trail Services recently completed the first natural surface trail system in the Senna Hills community on Bee Cave Road in west Austin. The project development followed a convoluted path and came about in part due to a referral from our former business partner, who was unavailable to complete the project himself when the opportunity arose. Last spring several members of the board of directors for the homeowner’s association (HOA) decided that a trail would be a nice amenity for the neighborhood. The Senna Hills community is near the Barton Creek West neighborhood, which has trails that were developed many years ago and our company has performed maintenance work on over the past few years. Apparently homeowners in Senna Hills would sometimes venture over to Barton Creek West to utilize the trail system, as they had no trails available in their own back yard. The HOA board members knew that a nice parcel of land owned by the community was not going to be utilized for building new homes, and would therefore be available as protected green space that could have a trail built on it to allow the homeowners to walk and bicycle in the woods.
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S&S Trails Excruciation Exam Flyer!
Posted by Ryan Spates in S&S Trails Blog on Dec. 3, 2009 - 1:00 pm
Senna Hills Trails, Austin, Tx
Posted by Ryan Spates in S&S Trails Blog on Oct. 26, 2009 - 2:56 pm
So, we’ve started a new project out at Senna Hills with the cooperation of the Homeowners Association, and the MUD, that will be a 2.5 mile long system initially. The project, located just west of Austin, is a high end neighborhood with rolling hill country terrain surrounding it. We’ve only begun the project a week ago and made some pretty good progress, despite all the rain. We even had a pretty successful volunteer workday this past Saturday. Its great when the neighbors all get behind a project! The board even offered for us to use volunteers in this case, as we were planning on strictly a turn key project.
Pictures and progress reports to follow soon!
Pedernales Falls Equestrian Trails
Posted by Ryan Spates in S&S Project Gallery, S&S Trails Blog on Oct. 26, 2009 - 2:51 pm
So, September kept S&S Trails busy with reroutes on the horse trails at Pedernales Falls State Park, and with exploring some contract opportunities for the coming months. We were able to finish about half of the work that needed to be done at the state park. The rest will be finished in November, when the funding is complete.
We used a couple of new to us techniques that really helped make the project go well. We were rerouting trails that were fall line, and putting in contour trail. This also meant we needed to close down the old sections of trail. We wanted to rehab the trails as best we could. This meant that the hard packed earth had to be dealt with. Typically, this would involve scoring the ground somehow, but the trails had eroded down to bedrock in many locations, making scarification almost impossible. Also, we had this issue of all this top soil we were removing from the new sections of trail, that would just get moved downhill. Our solution came in the form of a Bradco Tilt Attach. We used our blade to get the bench cuts started and a second machine equipped with the tilt attach to scoop up the spoils. We then deposited the spoils on the old trail tread, filling it as well as we could. This helped in a number of ways, the largest is it all but eliminated the hand work that needed to be done on the new sections of trail. True, there were still track marks to get rid of and some masking to do, but not the large amount of labor intensive dirt raking.
Sandy Basin Project
Posted by Ryan Spates in S&S Trails Blog on Aug. 31, 2009 - 2:42 pm
August 24-25 we worked on the Sandy Basin project near Mt. Hood, Oregon as subcontractors for IMBA. Earlier in the month we had ridden the Umpqua River Trail with our friends Jill and Chris (formerly of the IMBA Trail Care Crew) so they knew we were in town and available to work. Jason Wells of IMBA Trail Solutions is the on-site project manager and asked if we could help out by doing some hand tool construction and supervising a small crew of BLM staff in charge of bench-cutting while he ran the mini-excavator on a road-to-trail conversion. We helped Jason design the trail around the road he was working on, trying to get rid of a straight fall line shot. We were happy to oblige, and enjoyed working with everyone on the project. The land is beautiful, forested with stands of enormous pine trees and almost no underbrush. The soil was great to work in too, though after cutting bench by hand on 50% sideslopes, we were reminded of why we like mechanized construction to knock out the bulk of the work before finishing up the trail with hand tools. We also helped construct a 12 foot long, 3 foot high retaining wall to cover a VERY large rock that was unearthed in the main line of the trail. We also used a come-a-long to winch out a large tree stump that was in the way. Ahh, levereage!
We always enjoy partnering with IMBA on projects, and it’s a nice way to include some work in our summer vacations so we can write off some travel expenses. Hopefully we will get to do the same next year, as the BLM project manager has plans for a 15-mile trail expansion on the site. Many thanks go to IMBA for keeping us employed and having fun in the process.
Southeastern Equestrian Trails Conference follow-up report
Posted by Ryan Spates in S&S Trails Blog on Aug. 13, 2009 - 3:52 pm
Susan flew back to her home state of Florida from July 9-12 to attend SETC 2009 at the Paramount Plaza Hotel in Gainesville. The invitation to do a presentation came about as a result of meeting conference chair Helen Koehler at the 2008 National Trails Symposium in Little Rock, Arkansas during an equestrian trail user’s summit. When Helen learned of Susan’s psychology and trail building background, she requested a talk focused on those areas with an additional sustainability component as that was central to the 2009 conference theme.
SETC 2009 was a resounding success, with over 200 participants and a packed schedule of presenters and vendors. In addition to the focus on environmental and social sustainability of equestrian trails, the Florida Cracker Horse was also featured prominently as a breed of horse whose heritage and bloodlines are in need of protection. The Florida State Parks System keeps a wild herd of the horses on state land, and uses another string of trained horses to help patrol and do work in the parks. One of these equine “state park employees” was even used during a conference session to help demonstrate what facilities are needed to make equestrian trailheads and parking lots easily accessible to trail users.
Susan also had the opportunity to renew her acquaintances with many friends and colleagues in the equestrian trail community, including Jan Hancock (author of “Guidebook for Equestrian Trailhead Design”), Deb Balliet of the Equestrian Land Conservation Resource, Alex Weiss from Florida Office of Greenways and Trails and United States Pony Club, Bobby and Joanne Mitchell from Southern Appalachian Back Country Horsemen of America, and Stephanie McCommon of the American Quarter Horse Association. Susan also met several new folks representing groups such as the American Horse Council, Pennsylvania Equine Council, and Sustainable Stables.
Overall it was an enjoyable and productive trip. In addition to the opportunities for company marketing and professional development, Susan also had the pleasure of visiting with her parents John and Nancy who drove up from Venice to attend her talk. To learn more about SETC, please visit their website at:
http://www.southeasternequestriantrails.com/
