Fourth of July fireworks
2008 Cityfolk Festival
Spotted at the Cityfolk Festival
Commentary
Ken McCall: Mountain bike trails will vary in difficulty, but all are set in beautiful terrain
Friday, April 06, 2007
I walk on a newly constructed trail along a creek in the 80-acre woods just north of Ohio 4 in Huffman MetroPark.
I pass pallets of limestone, cross a pretty little stream where some of the limestone slabs have been imbedded to prevent erosion, and climb up a newly installed switchback.
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It's Tuesday, a beautiful spring morning, and I'm looking for Greg Brumitt, the driving force behind the new mountain bike trails that are budding here in the early spring woods.
I find the outdoor recreation manager for Five Rivers MetroParks carrying an earth-tamping tool and sipping from a water pouch. He and several others have been building the trail with hand tools since early morning and have worked up a sweat.
He pulls out a map and shows me where we are on the 6.9 miles of singletrack that have been laid out with the help of experts from the International Mountain Biking Association.
We're standing on a 1.7-mile beginner's loop that they're calling the Yellow Brick Road. It's a relatively easy ride without steep climbs or big rocks and roots through this beautiful woods along the creek.
Farther in, he says, there will be three intermediate loops, and at the farthest end from the trail head on Union Schoolhouse Road, the advanced section.
Brumitt's eyes light up as he describes it.
"Right in here," he says, pointing to the red lines on the map, "they took all the dirt out to build the dam. So you ride along this cliff here we call the Spiral. It was man-made back in the teens I guess.
"But what's really cool is they opened up all this rock. So unlike any other place in Ohio, we've got all this exposed rock that you usually only find out West."
As we hike on, the trail is a couple feet wide and weaves gently through the woods, mostly along the side of the hill with slight dips and climbs.
It's done that way intentionally, Brumitt says, not only because it makes the trail more fun to ride, but also because the undulations help drain the water from the trail. Water, it turns out, is the No. 1 enemy of every trail, and trail design is the key to keeping the water off.
We round a bend to find Dewayne Buratti, owner of Talon Trail Systems, and volunteer Doug Hamilton on the new 30-foot section of trail. "This was just done an hour ago," said Buratti, from Austin, Texas, who has been hired to help oversee trail construction. "It took about an hour to do it. It's ready to be used, and it's sustainable. It will last with minimal maintenance, minimal wear."
Buratti says the high content of clay in the soil makes for great trail-building. Brumitt and company have laid out a "good system," he says, that all levels of riders will enjoy. He estimates it'll provide good riders about 80 minutes of fun.
And Buratti likes what he sees in the advanced section.
"You've got some rock structures that are going to be really, really nice," he says.
Brumitt hopes to have the trail finished by Labor Day. To do that, though, he's going to need some help. Five Rivers Outdoors has scheduled two work days a month until the trails are finished. The next is this Saturday at 10 a.m. For more information call (937) 277-4374 or visit www.metroparks.org.
They have 32 trained volunteers, Brumitt says, but they need more.
"It's a beautiful piece of land — mixed terrain, quality woods, lots of creeks," he says with a smile. "But we have a lot of work to do out here."
