East Tiger Mountain Week 4

It has been a little over a month since we constructed new tread for the new East Tiger Mountain Bike Trail.  We spent most of November in the lowlands planting plants, removing blackberry bushes and invasive plant species.  Yesterday's hike up Little Si was a preconditioning for the next three days as we hike up towards the new bike trail and get started right where we left off.  It's going to be nice to be surrounded by trees and calmness.  We'll also see how the new trail we dug out held up through the rainstorms.  A base layer of clothing is a must as we move from near sea level up to around 2700 ft in elevation.

These two photos show our problem spot that we left alone last month.  There was a dead, decomposing old growth log that went right across the new trail.  After removing buckets and buckets of the chunked up log we ran into a root-y problem; the decomposing log provided rich, nutritious minerals to the surrounding live trees.  So what's left is a hug hole in the ground with tangled roots.  Let us pull out pictures from a previous blog post to remind us of the mess.

Where dumped most of the decomposing log

How are we going to fix a gaping hole on the trail? A retaining wall! We found lots of rocks and had a green log ready to go.  A green log is a freshly cut live tree.  Using dead or decay logs compromises the longevity of the trail.

And, after countless hours of rock collecting and careful placing the trail is covered in mineral soil.  That is a fine looking trail.

 What ever the excavator cannot reach, the trail becomes manually made. 

This section is pretty rough.  The photo above has orange flagging tied on it and that signifies the bottom edge of the trail. Time for duff removal.

 

The old growth left a huge taproot that went straight down into earth. 

After hacking away and digging out we are left with two stubborn roots about eight inches in diameter.  Until next time,  we leave with another hole in the ground.