Trail Building: A primer for building novice friendly sustainable trails in Peck Forest

"What's the hold up?".... "They're still building the trail!"

Here is a section of trail that has had the very top layer of leaves and debris removed.

Moved the log and cleaned out the debris and cut a channel to rest the log in... There are not many rocks to contend with and it does make working by hand easier.  Using organic material such as this log in place of rock is not preferred, but is the only option if a small berm is desired.

Log fitted.. It's really critical to remove all loose, soft and spongy organic material.
Digging down to the soil, dirt, provides a solid surface to work.

Started cutting down through the root layer and turned up some of the loam.
Notice how the color of the dirt is changing. 

Here I've used an eight pound tamper to pack the bottom layer
and to get a feel for the dirt and a base.

Deeper and wider second tamping. Tamping thin layers of dirt by hand provides a layered trail that will improve sustainability. It's easier to compress a thin layer than a thicker layer. 

After cutting down the next section to below the roots, pulled more dirt downhill.

Raked out the dirt and removed any loose debris and small roots. filled in along the log...

Tamped... and tamped some more...

I crested the small rise and cut down the crown.
Then pulled dirt both ways (after clearing the other side).

Tamped and raked.. some more. Getting all the stray loose leaf material and small roots out.

Final tamping... the soil here has proven to an almost ideal mixture of loam, sand and maybe some clay. It compresses well providing a firm surface that has held up well to multi use traffic. The trails also appear to drain and dry exceptionally. No restrictions have been placed on access due to muddy trails and have been ridden during and after heavy rainfall. In other areas some drains have been dug in on the downslope by a well meaning user which also helps. Twelve hours after a recent substantial rainfall the trails had drained. 

Let's ride!