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Lambert Park Flood Damage Rehab Project
August 2013
The night of Thursday, August 22, a heavy rainstorm delivered over an
inch of water to the Quail Fire burn scar on the mountainside above
Alpine. Mud and rocks cascaded downhill, cutting through several of
Lambert Park's trails. Bruce headed the trail rebuild project, with help from coaches Christian Burrell and Jake Weber. Looking
west from the top of Zag. The top half of the trail lies under a foot of
mud and rock. Photo Christian Burrell on August 24, 2013. |
| Time Line: Flood Thursday night, August
22. Still raining Friday. Saturday Aug 24 inspected damage. Bruce and
Christian cleared paths
through washouts on Lambert Luge, Middle Trail. Sunday through
Tuesday: Planned trail rehab with high school race team coaches and secured city approval for
the trailwork. Wednesday Aug 28, Bruce spent 10
hours excavating washouts on Rodeo Down, upper Spring trail, Middle Spring.
These trails are ready to ride. Put flags on Zag, tweaking GPS track to dodge new ravines. Thurs Aug 29,
Bruce cut a path through the flood channel on Corkscrew and fixed the trail fork.
Moving downhill, he cleared the top three meanders of White Dog and flagged
the last White Dog crossing of the wide debris field. On Saturday Aug 31, a large team
of volunteers (including members of the UtahMountainBiking.com race team
and the Westlake, Timpanogos/Orem and Mountain View high school mountain
bike race teams) built new trail for the lower section of White Dog and the
upper half of Zag. Over 1/3 mile of brand-new trail was built in 4 hours. |
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Bruce briefs a new group of volunteers as
they arrive on
Saturday morning. The first work began at 7 am. |
Here's what you do when you can't move a rock
and can't go
around. You build a rock highway and cover it with dirt. |
Details by trail...
Upper Rodeo |
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From the Spring Trail looking south at the junction with
Rodeo
Down. Trail cut, ruts filled. Debris flow crosses from left to right. |
Looking up the Rodeo entry. Deep washout has been filled
with fresh mud and compacted by Bruce on Wednesday. |
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Bridge on Rodeo Down half-covered in mud,
rocks blocking
water path under bridge. Exit from bridge undercut. |
Approach smoothed and undercut backfilled.
Rocks repositioned
to support bridge and block erosion. Channel cleared. |
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Heavy flow across north corner of Spring.
Boulders are 18
inches. Humps and undercut bars. Absolutely not rideable. |
After cutting through bars and moving
boulders, riding line
is easily seen. 50 feet of new trail. Should ride nicely. |
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Flood channel on Spring has left two-foot
high wall. Trail
is straight ahead, buried under a foot of rock and mud. |
Flood bank cut down to level of existing
trail. Rocks placed
to protect trail, ramp backfilled to connect to trail. |
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Small stuff, too. This section of trail was
filled in with fine silt.
Cyclists have created six-inch deep ruts. |
Edges of ruts are "scalped" and the
material backfilled
into ruts and compacted. |
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Widespread flow has left 8 to 12 inches over
Middle Spring,
hiding the riding line and creating rough "cliffs" at the
sandbars. |
After cutting through the debris bars and
backfilling the
erosion trenches, we've got smooth riding. |
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A large bar of debris. 18 inches tall, with
babyhead rocks
filling the space before the next dirt and rock deposit. |
Move the babyhead rocks to trailside, cut the
edges of the
bar to smooth the riding line and use the dirt to backfill. |
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This large flow has left a wall of rock and a loose
cobble
channel through the Corkscrew Trail. |
Bruce has moved a lot of rocks, some of them huge.
On Thursday morning the trail surface is now compacted dirt. |
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You wouldn't know there's a trail turning
left here, as
Corkscrew forks down toward White Dog and Ziggy. |
Working on the fork. Further downhill
to the left, the trail
has been moved a bit north uphill to get out of the flood channel. |
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White Dog seems worth saving. Bruce cuts
through the
debris flow on the top three meanders. Meander #1 at the top. |
Meander 1 through 3 dug out on Thursday.
The last 100 yards will be saved for Saturday.. |
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Saturday morning. Jake Weber's race team gets
to work
on White Dog. The flow is over 100 yards wide. |
Looking south from the middle of the flood
area. That's
a lot of digging done already. Looks ready to ride! |
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A minor trail re-route here will help White
Dog flow
better, both uphill and down. |
Speaking of flow: Coach Christian
Burrell checks out the
berm on this turn on White Dog. Racers make fast trail. |
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Derek finds a marker flag and starts breaking
rock out
of the debris flow on Zag. It's hard work. |
And here's an "after" photo. Not
exactly sidewalk, but
you can ride your bike on it. |
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Jason and Christian test rocks as they armor a
small
ravine crossing. |
Add a whoosh of berm just in front of the
crossing, and
you've got a bike trail! |
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Bruce tests a grade reversal. For every 30
feet of trail, a
grade reversal of 8 feet is placed to reduce trail erosion. |
Christian discovers that his athletes have
fixed a washout
by adding a gap jump along with the crossing ramp. |
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Joe pushes the most important piece of
equipment: the
wheelbarrow containing the sodas. |
And here's a nice "after" photo.
Fun bike trail, with Lone Peak
looming over Lambert Park to the north. |
| Saturday, August 31: Thanks
to all the volunteers who've turned out! (We even had cyclists get off
their bikes when they reached the construction area, pick up a shovel, and
go to work with us.) The trail rebuild went faster than expected, and the
outcome is better than I'd hoped for. My estimate is that over 140 hours
of high-intensity work went into the trails over the last week. |
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Derek and Joe work on an S-turn at a high
point in the
debris field. The turn was more techy than it looked. |
Jason has excavated anchor points for the rock
crossing of
this tiny but nasty ravine, and is testing the rockwork. |
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