2009 Season Trail Work Winners

The Intermountain Cup Mountain Bike Racing Series (ICup) sponsors trailwork by its racers, overseen by the Utah chapter of the International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA). Individual racers can earn 30 points toward the season standings by doing four hours of trailwork. Teams can apply up to 100 points toward their season standing, one point per hour worked by a team member. The team that puts in the most hours of trail building or trail improvement gets to keep the IMBA Trailwork Trophy (at left) for the next year. The "trailwork year" starts after the last race of the previous season. UtahMountainBiking.com has won the trailwork trophy every year since the team trophy program was started, including for the 2009 season!

Every year, a section of the Deer Creek South Fork trail in American Fork Canyon is a rutted swamp until mid-summer. URMB (Utah Rocky Mountain Bikers) has adopted this trail. This work day cleared a bypass section, with a plan to bring in gravel to harden the trail after assessing the trail wetness in the spring. This work day counts for 2009, because it came after the 2008 season championship race.

The new trail is clear of trees and brush along the flagged route.

The new Draper Maple Hollow Trail moved down the mountain during 2008. This October work day counts for the 2009 season, as Bruce joined the WAFTA work party to widen some problem spots on the trail and install a tabletop jump. (Earlier in the year, the UMB race team helped dig out a long side-hill section of the trail as part of our 2008 work hours.) 

A test ride. Soaring across the table jump a few minutes after installation.

The private property inholding in the center of Lambert Park was suddenly fenced off in late November, cutting off the Ziggy, Poppy, and upper Zag trails. Bruce headed out with shovel and Pulaski excavator to replace the cut-off section Poppy. Next he built a new Ziggy-Poppy-Connector,. With help from other Alpine residents, he dug a new upper Ziggy from the top of Corkscrew down to the remaining lower section of Corkscrew. The next project was to move a portion of Wildcat that was messing up Black Dog and extend it down to High Bench. (Wildcat was built by others along the south border of the city property line.) 

The routes in red were built in response to the trail closures. That's a mile of trail.

A look at a few spots along the replacement section of the Poppy Trail on the day the trail opened. Bruce hauled gravel by wheelbarrow to harden the softer dirt in the oak brush sections.

Winter is the best time to move dirt, so it can settle and harden for the spring riding season. Bruce and Derek bermed turns on several trails, fixed a few trouble spots, and serviced the jumps on the Ruin Trail. The new trails and trail re-routes needed marking. Bruce installed 2x4 posts with trail names.

This is a rollover stunt on an alternate line on lower Wildcat. The stumps rise up out of a sharp dip. Looks tough but it's a piece of cake. Bruce and Derek made sure every jump and stunt had a solid secure base, and added dirt where necessary to smooth and pack surfaces on the jumps.

After the city installed a new water intake for pressurized irrigation downstream, rocks began filling the channel of the creek, backing up to the lower Rodeo Down bridge. The creek overflowed the bridge and buried it in rocks and silt. The bridge was pulled out of the rubble, re-installed 18 inches higher, and the approaches were backfilled with about 30 wheelbarrow loads of dirt.

The lower Rodeo Down bridge. Several cubic yards of dirt fill were needed to raise this section high above the water line.

The upper High Bench Trail bridge was knocked off its footing and became a dam, sending water washing down the trail. We built new rock footers, and reset the bridge with better clearance above the water, then filled in the washed-out trail and backfilled the approaches to the bridge.

A few weeks later, other trail washouts further down the trail were filled in, along with other trail repair on High Bench.

The High Bench bridge. Where I'm standing, there was an 12-inch deep water-eroded canyon in the trail.

The project to decrease thistle density is in its 3rd year. (The first year, we hit only the northern 1/4 of the park.) The northern zone, the western strip with High Bench and River, and the southern end now have very few thistle, but the central area has a large zone of extremely dense thistle (as much as one per foot), capable of re-seeding the entire park. Long and miserable work, pulling up every blooming thistle, but it's what has to be done to keep Lambert Park an enjoyable spot to ride.

Ryan, Joel, Brayden, Shawn, and Sydney take a watermelon break served up by Joel's wife after attacking musk thistle and scottish thistle late in the thistle season.

The Perry Canyon Trail is about 3/4 mile short of its destination on Grizzly Peak. The going is slower now, because it's about seven steep miles from the trailhead to the work area. Darren and Jason rode up and dug the trail further up the slope.

Digging the new trail northbound...

Jake uses pulaski and pry-bar to dig monster rocks.

Derek begins excavating a trench to support his anti-truck wall.

June 20, 2009. Team members Jake Weber, Derek Ransom, and Bruce Argyle, with support from Steve Winters.

After guys in trucks again dismantled the barriers designed to keep them out of this closed-to-motorized-vehicles route, we are making the truck-stoppers more substantial. We built a trench-bump-trench barrier at the bottom and created a "naturalized zone" to disguise the path. We added to the barriers at the top, and created a "riding line" along the path, filling the non-riding areas with dead branches and rock.

The trail. Now we need some adventurous seeds to sprout in the non-trail sections.

June 27, 2009. Team members Shane Horton, Bill Becker, Bruce Argyle

This new trail in Draper will be a bicycle-preferred downhill-only trail of around 3.5 miles, extending from the top of Clarks to the Silica Pit. (As a bicycle-preferred trail, horses are banned. Hikers are welcome, but will be made aware that the trail is designed for, and will be heavily used by bicycles -- so they can pick another route or be prepared to dive for cover.) This was the first day of digging, as we got a good start with about 90 yards through the most dense maple thicket of the entire route. Lots of stumps and roots to dig out.

Shane digs out a stump while his son supervises.

Aligning the lumber with the prepared trail base.
The initial dig was done last fall, organized by URMB.

The project takes shape. Roadbase fabric underlies the gravel.
More gravel will be hauled to the trail in coming weeks.