National Trails Day is celebrated every year on the first Saturday of June to promote and inspire the public to experience the outdoors. For those of us that already spend our available moments on single track, it is an occasion to give back to the trails that enrich our daily lives. In San Francisco, we joined the SF Urban Riders and the Mount Sutro Stewards to improve the existing trails.
When we flagged this alignment a few years back, we went a bit conservative with our approach to the steep grade. In this reroute the idea was to cut out two of the tighter switchbacks in order to create a flow that was more inline with the other sections. Because there is an abundance of rock present, we’ll simply armor sections where braking ruts begin to form. And while climbing the trail will now be significantly more difficult, the plan was to add a grade dip before the steep “up” where you’ll gain about four feet of elevation or so. From a MTB view point will be challenging, but it will also serve as a technical challenge while still remaining sustainable.
With the switchbacks removed, descending speed will increase, so we focusing on opening and enlarging the radius of the final turn. The foundation of our berm was created and reinforced. Unfortunately, the project was held up by poor timing with the chainsaw work, (we all had to pause construction while the operator was at work) and while the trail is rideable, there is a bit of finish work that is needed, including building up the berm for the turn.
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- Trail building tools
