cxagent

DAMN! I have some work for you creating similar responses to questions.

I try something that shows them just how silly that comment is. Note I didn't say it was the correct response or that it always worked. "Great point! Let's go ride down the runway at Bergstrom - that is public property. After that we can go build a trail on the Capitol grounds that is public property too. Oh wait, there are limits to what the public can do on public property???" You can throw in something close by and well known, it seems to help. Something like "Let's go to ____ and get in without paying the entry fee - that is public property." Note I didn't say it helped. As First Blood posted some people are already defensive and not listening. Others are self righteous assholes.

Let's try the open/closed signs. I expect there will be all kinds of complaints about "the trail should be open" and my perennial favorite "It's public land - I can do anything I want". If the open/closed sign is next to the kiosk, let's put in the kiosk a small description of why the trail should NOT be ridden when it is wet.

I suspect the MTB trail is closed due to the rain.

Just for reference - Slaughter Creek Trail is closed due to rain / wet conditions. I expect it will need a few days to dry.

Damn! I was just getting set up to take you goats to Walnut Creek for a Poison Ivy dinner.

There has been some trouble with the Slaughter Creek Trail gate malfunctioning. We got notice a little after noon today that the gate was closed when the social media status said it was open. I was there about 1:30 and found it closed. I opened it manually. I ran a bunch of diagnostics and never get anything to act up. I will check it in the morning to see if it opened on Wednesday morning. (I have to check to see if the trail got the rain that is predicted over night and if the trail is still allowed to be open.) Please report anytime the social media says the gate is not in the proper position (closed when it should be open). I have dumped my Facebook account so I no longer see that status.

The manager of Reimer's Ranch just informed us that they will be doing a prescribed burn there on Wednesday 1/23/2019. They will light the fire in the morning and it will burn until it goes out - probably hours later. The burn is not intended to include the MTB trail. So the plan is the MTB trail will stay open but might be a bit smokey. With any type of burn, if there is trouble they may have to close things unexpectedly. That includes the road and/or the MTB trail. You know, things like the fire goes a different direction and crosses the road or trail. The Travis County staff at Reimer's are doing their best to let us know in a timely manner. Burns like this frequently as not scheduled until the day before. That way they get the best possible weather forecast.

Slaughter Creek Trail opened about 11:30 today.

You are replaceable. The bike is not. It is the same with BFs or GFs.

The moto guys have been doing trail work to fix the trail problems at City Park. They have noticed that mountain bike tracks in particular are going around the rocks they used to fill in the holes. Just like puddles, ride *OVER* the rocks. Not around them. Do NOT widen the trail. This area is in the BCP. DO NOT give them a reason to close this trail. If you are riding City Park, you should have no trouble riding over rocks the size of golf balls to baseballs. If you cannot ride those rocks, you should not be riding City Park.

He seems to be taking the comments well. Most people don't take it so well. Especially when people are piling on. I suggest we don't keep adding comments on that ride. If he posts another mud ride then start commenting again.

Slaughter Creek Trails is a VERY special situation. First, it was already fenced. The public was NEVER supposed to be allowed there. ARR worked absolute magic in getting it opened for trails. (I had nothing to do with that but I appreciate the amount of time and effort that was required.) The work that ARR did then is still working for the MTB community today. The WQPL manager is actually amenable to allowing more trail on other WQPL tracts. I have walked some of those tracts. We could build some really good trail on those. And this land manager understands the different levels of trail vs skill level and is OK with it. He will still want beginner trails built first but will not resist more advanced trails after the beginner trails are open. Operating the gate to Slaughter Creek Trail is covered by several people (5? 6?). Even then it can be hard to get someone there at exactly the right time. Most of the time, the timer on the gate takes care of opening and closing the gate. Wet conditions require manual intervention. That is manual to open the gate when it is dry enough and manual to close the gate and disable the timer when it is wet. And you should hear the griping and complaining when someone thinks it is dry enough but the gate is closed. Some of us have started to sending pictures of the trail or our shoes to all of the others when we check the trail and find it is still too wet. The complaints stop when they are shown a picture of puddles or 1/2" of mud on the bottom of shoes when someone checked the trail that very same day. Even then the land manager is told things like "I can ride that" or "Its public land you can't keep me out." Comments like that don't help our cause. Slaughter Creek Trail will never be a good comparison to Brushy / Walnut / BCGB / SATN / etc. The others are not fenced. They have too many entrances. They have too many "neighbors back gates". etc. I am for posting signs saying the trail is closed due to wet conditions. The signs will help some. But not even fences and locked gates seem to be enough to "inform / educate" some people. For those people game cameras and prosecution seems to the minimum required. I would prefer to not go that far. But after a nice request (Please don't ride muddy trails.), a more forceful request (I hope you will be here on Saturday to repair the damage you are doing.), a private shaming (Is this a picture of you riding a closed / wet trail???) and even a public shaming (Does anybody know the person riding this muddy trail on date/time?), there seems to be no other choice. Education of people using the trails appears to be the best solution. Or I should say I hope it is the best solution.

"What is the correct trail width???" What the land owner / land manager wants. ARR starting building single track at Pedernales Falls State Park. The land manager decided it needed to be wide enough and smooth enough for them to use their Gator on it. We stopped building trail until the definition of "single track" was worked out. LCRA wants to use some of their existing jeep road as trail. 10 to 15 feet wide is fine with them. BCP wants trails to be narrow - a few feet at most. They would absolutely stop anything that breaks the tree canopy. That is the reason they want to keep trails narrow. Most land owners will allow true single track. Narrow trails have little impact on vegetation, water flow, environment in general. They also limit speeds which the land manager sees as a problem. Most land owners balk when that single track starts to get wider. And Wider And WIDER. At some point the land owner / land manager decides something has to be done. If the trail can be restored to single track - most are happy. If the trail now has bypasses of bypasses of bypasses - many land owners decide they have to stop the damage by closing the trail. So once again - what proper width is what the land owner or land manager approves.

There is a constant conflict between what one person/group thinks is appropriate and what another person/group thinks is appropriate. There will always be those conflicts. It was my belief / hope that as people saw the consequences of their actions, they would learn and change their decisions appropriately. I know. I know. How silly and naive I was. On multiple trails the exact things I warned would happen - are happening right now. I find this very frustrating. My "solution" was to try to open new trails as fast as existing trails were closed. The trouble with that approach was discussed recently. Most new trails are required by the land owner to be 'beginner friendly'. The effect was losing more technical trails to closure and trying to replace them with 'beginner friendly' trails. That was an unintended and unexpected consequence of trying to work with both the land owner and the mtb public.

This is the kind of problem that causes trails to be closed. Land managers look at this and think that the only way to keep the "trail" under control is to keep people off of the land. There is some logic to their argument. To quote a land manager at a meeting not long ago - "There is no abuse without use". I don't think he made that up on the spot. I think that is something that is being pushed by those opposed to mtb trails.

Just an FYI - the Austin Ridge Riders web site is back up again. Apparently it has been up and down repeatedly in the recent past. If anybody notices it down again, please let me or Chardog know.

It does my heart good to see posts like Tree Magnet and AntonioGG just above. If you can, just don't ride muddy trails. Go somewhere else. Do an urban ride. Ride the trainer. Etc. But there are times when you thought the trails were GTG and find they aren't. If there is a dry line - use it. If there is no dry line, stay in the puddle so we don't widen the trail. That is not always possible. Or walk your bike thru there. Better still is you walk on rocks and carry your bike. The point is to NOT make a linear rut that holds water or worse makes a channel the directs the water into one groove that starts washing away dirt. There are times when you get caught in the rain. 2012 EB is a good example. Clear sky and no forecast for rain. We were in St Eds when the downpour started. And it POURED. At about 50 miles in the only thing we could do was press on. In the rain. In the mud. With no brakes. We stayed on the trail and tried to stay on the rocks as much as possible. Not too hard in St Eds. Not possible in Thumper. In Thumper we stayed on the trail and walked a lot. We used the rocks where we could. Where it was clay mud that stuck to everything, the best we could do was pick up the bike and walk. Its not like we could ride Thumper when the black clay on the trails was so slick you had trouble walking. And about a week later I went back to correct the damage. I spent most of that week resting and recovering. As far as using your tires to smooth out the ruts - go for it. Unless the tire is picking up mud that then gets carried away with you - it will help.

I was not part of the Cyclocross Nationals so I cannot confirm this to be fact - but I will spout off anyway. I heard there was a $100,000 insurance policy (or bond) to fix any damage. That was required by the City as a condition of allowing the race. Anybody in the construction industry is familiar with such a thing. They are required on most projects and absolutely required on all government projects. Google "performance bond".

I have wanted to down them in the mud puddles they made 😉 I appreciated you taking the time to walk the trails and let people know about the conditions. You were NOT one of the folks I wanted to drown.

Most races have to be planned months if not years in advance. You have no idea what the weather will be. People travel from all over to race. (remember the Cyclocross Nationals at Zilker?) Most races have to be held rain or shine unless it is a clear safety issue. After such a race somebody has to go clean up the mess created by racing on wet trails. Usually that is part of the agreement between the land owner and the race organizer.

As First Blood said - difference in dirt and trails. Our "soil" is mostly clay which cakes on tires, ruts badly and then washes away. Once a "line of ruts" forms where water can channel flow, the water will start and continue cutting that same line until it hits something it can't wash away. Around Austin, that is typically the rock that is just below the surface. Now the flow spreads horizontally where it keep eating away at the edges of the rut. These typically just keep getting deeper and wider once they start. Unless some body does something to clear the ruts and route the water off the trail. You don't have to look very far to find a lot of people on this forum who spend lots of their own time doing that. In other types of soils, the water is absorbed quickly and does not stick to tires or form ruts that remain until someone fixes them. Need an example? The front of Rocky Hill is mostly red clay. Trying to ride that while it is quickly cakes up your tires until they won't spin anymore. It also forms ruts that hold their shape especially after they dry. Conversely, the back parts of Rocky Hill are mostly sand. Those areas dry more quickly and rarely rut up. But because too much sand does not hold its shape, it does not take much water to cut an erosion path in the sand. If we could somehow mix the sand and the clay it would become a much better soil for trails. RPR is mostly granite sand (fine particles of granite) with a little bit of clay as a binder to hold the 'sand' together. Another big problem in our area is the rocks are generally soft limestone. Water standing on the trail will soften the limestone to the point it becomes becomes soft like clay. When dry those rocks appear very hard. Once wet, the surface is more like a clay. Water flowing across the limestone will cut through it fairly quickly. Not as fast as through dirt, but much faster than thru most rocks. The next time you are Walnut or BCGB, look at the layers of rock the creek has cut through. Both of them show 30+ feet of water cut through the limestone until the water hit a hard enough layer of limestone that it slows the erosion.

Why don't you guys PM each other???

Not a thing you couldn't get by riding down the middle of IH-35 during rush hour. Oh wait - that might be more fun.

For some strange reason, I think there should be trails for riders of all preferences. Like Lady Bird Lake kind of trails? It is there, go for it! Like Red Bull Rampage kind of trails? There are not many places like that around here but you should have some trails too. The trouble is getting permission to build or even allow that level of trail. If you find that kind of trail - don't tell anybody!!! Like something in between? That is most of what is available around CTX. And some really good stuff too.