S&S Project Gallery
Apr. 10, 2010 Purtis Creek State Park
Mar. 25, 2010 Katy Memorial Herman Hospital
Mar. 2, 2010 Pedernales Falls State Park
Feb. 11, 2010 Canyon Creek Trail Updates
Jan. 5, 2010 Video of Warda Section
Dec. 3, 2009 Senna Hills, Austin, Tx
Oct. 26, 2009 Pedernales Falls Equestrian Trails
Aug. 23, 2009 White Salmon Project
Mar. 8, 2009 Lost Pines Nature Trails
Mar. 7, 2009 Tyler State Park
Purtis Creek State Park
Posted by Ryan Spates in S&S Project Gallery on Apr. 10, 2010 - 3:27 pm
April 5-7
During the first week of April S&S Trails returned to Purtis Creek State Park to build a rerouted section of trail and a small bridge over a creek crossing. We had originally done a one-day consultation at the park back on February 19th while we were on our way to teach the DORBA school at Sid Richardson Ranch. During that consultation in February we used a clinometer to measure the hillside slope and lay out a flag line that would drop gradually down to the creek crossing and then rise back up to the existing trail. When we returned in April we used Sam the dozer to build that section, and she was also useful in ferrying out materials to build the bridge and carrying away excavated dirt to build up a low area in another section of trail.
Katy Memorial Herman Hospital
Posted by Ryan Spates in S&S Project Gallery on Mar. 25, 2010 - 12:23 pm
Several months ago S&S Trails was contacted by Terri DeLoach, the Director of Customer Experience Management at Katy Memorial Hermann hospital, to explore the possibilities for installing a crushed granite walking path for staff and employees to use. Every year the hospital sponsors an employee contribution campaign to add features that improve the environment for staff and patients alike. For example, a past project created an outdoor seating area and healing garden, complete with a beautiful rock enclosed fountain that provides a calming place for people to sit and visit or meditate. When Terri searched for Texas trail builders on the internet she found our webpage and decided that she liked what she saw and that we were relatively local, so she decided to give us a call. (Incidentally this is the first confirmed contract that we have received solely from the existence of our webpage and not from word-of-mouth advertising or a personal referral. Thanks Megan and Marty for doing such a great job with our online marketing!)
Pedernales Falls State Park
Posted by Ryan Spates in S&S Project Gallery, Uncategorized on Mar. 2, 2010 - 8:36 am
S&S Trails completed the horse trail reroutes that were begun last fall. The construction process was plagued by delays due to bad weather and some bureaucratic challenges to overcome, but fortunately we were able to work hard when we were allowed to do so and we managed to complete everything by the March 1 deadline.
The project completion deadline had to do with the fact that some of the proposed reroutes were located in golden cheeked warbler habitat, an endangered songbird that nests in the hill country region during the spring. Federal and state guidelines mandate that no mechanized equipment can be used in those habitat regions from March 1 through September to prevent interfering with the birds’ nesting and mating patterns. Therefore we were on tight schedule to get everything completed in a timely manner to comply with regulations enforced by the state park’s regional resources manger.
Canyon Creek Trail Updates
Posted by Ryan Spates in S&S Project Gallery on Feb. 11, 2010 - 5:29 pm
The beginning of this year saw S&S Trails back at Canyon Creek making some of the last improvements to be done on the trail system. These improvements include a half mile addition of trail, half that will be great for mountain biking and half that will be great for hiking. Also included in this scope of work was a rebuild of the two bridges that had been washed out by a huge rain in the past.
Video of Warda Section
Posted by Ryan Spates in S&S Project Gallery on Jan. 5, 2010 - 10:16 pm
A year ago, we built a new section of mountain bike specific trail at Warda’s Bluff Creek Ranch that we think came out pretty good. Here’s a video of it thanks to Chris Jenkins!
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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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.
White Salmon Project
Posted by Ryan Spates in S&S Project Gallery on Aug. 23, 2009 - 2:17 pm
S&S Trails worked on two short projects in the Pacific Northwest while escaping the Texas summer heat. The first was a planned one that we learned of through our membership in the Professional Trail Builders Association, while the second was a spur-of-the-moment opportunity that arose due to our collegial relationship with IMBA.
August 15-16 we worked in a small town just across the Columbia River from Hood River, Oregon. A private landowner decided to buy his wife a mountain bike trail for her birthday and he contacted the PTBA, which then posted the job listing for its members to bid on. Most of our colleagues in the industry were busy with larger projects and we had already planned to be in the area visiting friends, so it worked out well for us to go build for a couple days on this private piece of land. Our friends Scott and Rita (former Wisconsin IMBA reps) helped us out, and we four were very productive over the weekend. It also helped that birthday-girl Jeanne and her husband Steve were hard workers and wanted to be involved with the process of designing and building sustainable trail on their land.
Video Time Lapse shot by Scott at FX4.net
Lost Pines Nature Trails
Posted by Ryan Spates in S&S Project Gallery, S&S Trails Blog on Mar. 8, 2009 - 3:27 pm
S&S Trails was invited by Environmental Stewardship, a Bastrop, Texas based non-profit, to help improve 3/4 of a mile of singletrack at the Lost Pines Nature Trails site. The project included widening sections of the trail along the river, completing the corridor work along the return route, and lots of bench cutting on the steep hill slopes. The intent was to make a nice hiking and mountain biking trail.
Tyler State Park
Posted by Ryan Spates in S&S Project Gallery, S&S Trails Blog on Mar. 7, 2009 - 8:10 pm
S&S Trail Services was contacted through a volunteer organization and TPWD Resource personnel on a previous trip to Tyler to start on a master plan for Tyler State Park. There have been some ongoing erosion issues in the park, one of which required an emergency repair due to the sudden acceleration of erosion on that particular spot which led to a dangerous drop-off.
