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Best Place to ride after a rain storm?


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Why all the bitching about wet trails, puddles of mud and slick rocks?  If you love riding mountain bikes in Central Texas on a perfect January day after tons of rain, then suck it up, go for a drive, and find some granite. I rode 3 hours yesterday at Reveille Peak and would’ve done a lot more if NFL playoffs weren’t on. 

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14 hours ago, Kyle said:

City park is totally destroyed right now.  There are dozens and dozens of big deep puddles everywhere.  Every single corner that you'd hit at >3mph has a deep puddle the whole way around.  

I guess you could technically ride it, but it'll be slow and crappy.

I think I mentioned that it would be wet. But since riding it wet does not damage the trail - it can be ridden.

But "dirt" trails - please stay off of them so your ride does not rut out the trail.

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My perception was at the trail actually has been profoundly damaged, and now it's full of deep ruts that hold water all over the place.

It has never been the way it is after this wet winter in the five years I've been riding there anyway. 

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5 hours ago, Kyle said:

My perception was at the trail actually has been profoundly damaged, and now it's full of deep ruts that hold water all over the place.

It has never been the way it is after this wet winter in the five years I've been riding there anyway. 

I suspect you have been confused by events that don't show up here. After a number of issues, ARR no longer does "treadwork" on that trail. The moto guys think we are screwing up the trail by filling holes and creating drainage. So now we leave the trail tread to them.

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15 hours ago, cxagent said:

I suspect you have been confused by events that don't show up here. After a number of issues, ARR no longer does "treadwork" on that trail. The moto guys think we are screwing up the trail by filling holes and creating drainage. So now we leave the trail tread to them.

Huh.  That could explain it.  I wonder what's going to become of the trail now.

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1 hour ago, Kyle said:

Huh.  That could explain it.  I wonder what's going to become of the trail now.

Considering how Emma Long has been a motorcycle trail for decades longer than it was used as a MTB trail, probably not much. Other than the lines will revert to being preferable for a motorcycle, and maintenance work applied by that user group will further reflect this bias, as those trails were specifically designated for motorcycle use when the park was donated to the city.

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Like RidenFool said - I don't expect much change. Berms will develop on corners and trap water on the trail. The standing water will soften the trail tread below the water. The next wheel on it will make the hole  little deeper. That little bit of the trail tread will end up on the water dam (berm). The puddle will get deeper and longer. Repeat. And repeat. And repeat again.

At first we knocked the berms down. The moto guys complained about that. So we started creating drainage "cuts" and left the berm. The moto guys complained about that. Without going thru all the iterations - we leave the trail tread to them.

I was cleaning out old emails over the holiday and found quite a few of those emails from the moto guys complaining about screwing up the trail. Interesting how you can watch exactly what you said would happen - actually happens. Eventually I expect we will have to create drainage and fill holes again. But not until there has been trouble.

BTW - I am an old motocross / enduro (real enduro with motors) / hare scrambles / etc rider. I still have a couple of dirt bikes that are worth more to me than I could sell them for. So every couple of years I pull one out and ride. And I like to ride with one or both wheel "loose" 😉 My bike may have two wheels but I only use one at a time. Mountain bikes will do NOTHING to a wet trail like a dirt bike will.

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Huh.  That could explain it.  I wonder what's going to become of the trail now.


As long as the City or BCCP doesn’t shut the place down, the trails will be there for another 50 years.

Myself and others have been doing a lot of maintenance work out there in an effort to maintain drainage during this incredibly wet season. Many of the methods that cxagent mentioned are actually employed by the moto guys, just depends on the specific location.

This season I’ve spent a lot of time mainly filling low spots with on site aggregate and installing a drain through the berm, also filled with aggregate. That method preserves the berms and acts as an under drain, while also keeping sediments from running off. It has been working pretty well. There are about five main areas on the short list to be addressed at the moment. As with all our riding areas there is always a need for ongoing maintenance, especially during these wet winters.

The rains this season have been much more intense than seasons past, and more regular. City Park is well known to dry quickly, but when you have rain every few days it keeps things pretty wet.

Feel free to ping me if you have specific concerns. :-)

Ride on!


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On a different but similar note, in years past the direction of the main loop at City Park was reversed every couple of years.  Since the City established a permanent trail direction with the trail markers they installed we’ve been seeing an increase in maintenance efforts.  Reversing the trail direction out there from time to time helps give the trail some relief in many areas.

I’ve been in communication with the City Parks Depatment about getting back to altering direction every couple of years.  I’m hoping maybe to get a green light to make that happen this year.  I’ve just recently completed a survey of all the markers that will need to be changed.  There are a lot!  Much more involved than years past when we simply flipped the tree hangers around.

Thoughts?

 

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On 1/7/2019 at 9:43 AM, Ridenfool said:

Considering how Emma Long has been a motorcycle trail for decades longer than it was used as a MTB trail, probably not much. Other than the lines will revert to being preferable for a motorcycle, and maintenance work applied by that user group will further reflect this bias, as those trails were specifically designated for motorcycle use when the park was donated to the city.

Just to try to address some rumors before they develop a life again...

The entire ~1100 acre Emma Long Park was PURCHASED by the City of Austin in about 1939. Emma Long was attending UT at the time it was purchased. As most college students, she was "of modest means" who was not donating anything of major value such as real estate.  The park WAS NOT donated by Emma Long. Attached to this post is the deed where the purchase was documented. You can Google "Emma Long Austin Texas" and find as much as you want to know about her.

The motorcycle trails that we MTBr's ride were built by the Kapitol Katz Motorcycle club. They got permission to built those first trails in 1970. They were opened to the public in 1971. More trails were added after the first trails to spread the impact over a larger area. When the BCP was formed in 1996, the Motorcycle Park was NOT part of the BCP acreage. It appears to have been added in 1997 when it was reported that Golden-cheeked Warbler were found on the "motorcycle trails". This point has generated a lot of confusion / discussion because there is historical documentation showing it is in the BCP and it is not in the BCP. At this point it almost does not matter if it was originally in the BCP or not. It would be hard to change and having it in the BCP actually works to our advantage.

I have never seen motocross on the Motorcycle Park at Emma Long. At the time those trails were built motocross looked like this video - https://www.facebook.com/Legends.Yamaha.enduros/videos/1034275256624411/ You can find more recent videos of actual motocross. To help the BCP staff understand the difference between motocross and off- road motorcycling, I told them it was like referring to the Golden-cheeked Warbler as a Golden Eagle. They seemed to understand there were substantial differences between those birds.

I'm not sure what to tell mtbr's to help keep off-road motorcycles separate from motocross.  Since MTBr's have some how confused the term "enduro" with mtb, there may not be anything to prevent confusion. Enduro was already a  term defined for decades to mean motorcycles like this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8U2YXo5xhKc . I may have missed it, but I didn't see a single bicycle or pedal in that video. Please point it out if I missed it.

CP Deed.pdf

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14 minutes ago, cxagent said:

 I may have missed it, but I didn't see a single bicycle or pedal in that video. Please point it out if I missed it.

If you look closely, you might see a brake pedal. Does that count?  :classic_wink:

Thanks for the clarification on the origin of the park, and of the trails. Quite a diversion from the lore I'd heard for years.

The first time I rode there was in the early 80's on an RM400. It was a grunt then. My buddy broke a case cover on his bike and we never went back. It was at least twenty years before I finally returned on a MTB. Still a grunt.

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My first ride of City Park was on a 1978 RM 125. Yes, I was still racing motocross on it at the time. I heard there was a "motocross trail" there and I had to go ride it. Since I started on enduro (real ones, with a motor) it was kind of fun. Just keep the rear wheel spinning or it would fall out of the power band. Once out of the power band it would not climb anything. I didn't go back for a long time either. I wanted a real motocross track.

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  • 2 weeks later...

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.

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I hiked it today between Cedar Breaks and Cedar Hollow.  There are some miserably muddy sections with standing water (flat areas of course)


It just the usual nastiness from Cedar Breaks to the first stone mile marker from hiker traffic? Usually gets narrower and less muddy after that point.


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