Your Opinions on the Heavy Trail Work

[DRaider90]

This will be an open thread for opinions/discussions on the heavy trail repairs/reroutes that have been contracted for a couple trails. The contractors started work yesterday, and their goal is to be done by labor day. Here are the main areas of focus:

Falls Dam - Trail repair/reroutes
Rocky Mountain Loop - Trail repair/reroutes, 1 bridge
Dickey Bell - 1 Bridge

Now again like the Daniel thread I am going to keep my opinion out of this and state the facts. So people can make informed opinions on the matter at hand. Please read the following section before posting.

First we must understand Trail Erosion = Obstacles/Difficulty. The trails started out as "paved" dirt roads essentially when the Forest Service bulldozer cut them out of the landscape. Over time from Erosion (tire spin/use, rain, etc) more and more rocks are uncovered and the trail difficulty goes up. Now Tellico wasn't maintained properly and the difficulty sky rocketed. If the Forest Service out there had kept up the trails properly they would have never gotten as hard as they did, and therefore that area wouldn't have been as popular as it was.

We are facing the same situation currently. Instead of the trails having been let go for 10+ years (possibly 15+) we are only looking at 4 or so years of an explosion in usage without the ability to get in enough repairs. This is why back in 2005/2006 a lot of trails were rated Easy/Moderate, now these same trails are rated Difficult. So now major repairs have to be done to the trails to bring them back to an "acceptable level". This was a decision made by the higher ups at Asheville in the Forest Service. There were other decisions made on trail placement in the years back that the Forest Service is having to fix now. I won't get into details but some trails are located too close to streams etc.

So people will say they are "paving" some areas of the trails. Keep in mind after 6 months + of rain and erosion things will be well on their way back to the way they were. Its a constant balancing process. They have to decide what level of erosion is acceptable while still allowing a level of difficulty on the trails. If they let the erosion go too far you end up with Tellico. So its a very delicate balance. And this includes every so often going back and filling in erosion issues. And again erosion issues 99 percent of the time are obstacles that have eroded over time.

So knowing the above, and as we start to see the work done in the up coming weeks what does everyone think?

 

[J.C.]

The trails started out as "paved" dirt roads essentially when the Forest Service bulldozer cut them out of the landscape.

Actually, most of the trails started as motorcycle single track trails. SFWDA volunteers led by now Vice-president Gunnar Byrd and Griff Shirley did most of the actual work establishing the trail network. Back then Gunnar had a government license through the DOD which permitted him and Griff to run the dozers on FS lands. They used one FS dozer and SFWDA rented two others to speed up the process. With FS supervision they turned the old motorcycle single track trails into multi purpose OHV trails and also created a couple of OHV trails from scratch. Just a little Uwharrie history for anyone that may be interested

Also, FWIW, I am all for maintaining the Uwharrie OHV trails in whatever manner will permit our continued usage of the area!

 

[77GreenMachine]

As much as it would suck to see most of the trails become "paved" so to speak, i understand what you mean, we have to allow regular maintanence to keep things in order and not end up like tellico. your exactly right about tellico, it was neglected for so long it got terrible with erosion and run off and now its too late. i would hate this to happen to URE, i would move if it did, i HAVE to be able to go wheeling, lol.
i support it.

 

[drkelly]

Actually, most of the trails started as motorcycle single track trails. SFWDA volunteers led by now Vice-president Gunnar Byrd and Griff Shirley did most of the actual work establishing the trail network. Back then Gunnar had a government license through the DOD which permitted him and Griff to run the dozers on FS lands. They used one FS dozer and SFWDA rented two others to speed up the process. With FS supervision they turned the old motorcycle single track trails into multi purpose OHV trails and also created a couple of OHV trails from scratch. Just a little Uwharrie history for anyone that may be interested

Also, FWIW, I am all for maintaining the Uwharrie OHV trails in whatever manner will permit our continued usage of the area!

What year did that happen? Very interesting.

I wonder when and who created the original motorcycle trails?