-
Posts
-
-
There’s a lot of work that goes into building a mountain bike trail.
Brad Gerlach would know. As of Thursday, he was in the middle of a 12-day stretch of 12-hour days, building "bench cut trails" into the sides of hills in Antrim County. The trail he and local township officials are building, the Glacial Hills Pathway, winds through a 763-acre parcel, owned by Forest Home Township and Antrim County near Bellaire.
Gerlach, a volunteer stewardship coordinator for the Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy offers something few other properties in Northern Michigan does: a sustainable biking trail.
The work began because officials in Forest Home Township wanted to open the parcel to more people.
"So many of these big parcels we’ve protected, but they don’t have recreation most people can access," said Gerlach. "Lots of hunters use them … but you often have to bushwhack. Local units don’t have the money or expertise to tackle a big trail system."
The impulse of the township officials was to make trails throughout the parcel on the old logging roads. But the logging roads would not sustain use by mountain bikers.
"The difference is that they aren’t very interesting when you make a hiking/biking trail," said Dean Crandall, who sits on the township board. "By (following logging roads), you end up with not a very challenging hike. If you actually go by hand, using a rogue hoe and a McLeod tool — and ton of volunteers — you end up making an extremely interesting trail that winds out on the fingers of hills, just below their peaks, and down through valleys."
Read more here: http://www.petoskeynews.com/sports/outd … 5686.story
-
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.