The Trail: Now with More Bike!

I recently added an annex to my fitness trail in the woods. The idea was to open an alternative entrance which does not pass through old barbed wire fencing, so that I can ride my bike more easily.

I’ve been working on this trail system for about three years. I only have hand tools: ax, camp ax, tree saws, limb loppers, shovels and machetes. This past December I corrected some bad routing and got a usable, maintainable loop running some 1.5 miles over hilly terrain, mostly wooded. You can get some idea of by using either Google Maps or Google Earth. Cut and paste the follow address into the search bar:

13501 se 29th, choctaw, ok

Select the satellite view. While you won’t get much idea of the relief, you can see the scale of things. This address will be the center of our trailer park. Slide north a bit and you’ll see some of a 150 acre wood and grass area. Near as I can tell, this satellite image comes from April 2010, when the trail was mostly finished. Along the right side are a series of ponds, and I don’t go anywhere near them.

So if you slide north, you’ll see immediately someone attempted to plow down a street layout for development. This was not less than six years ago, probably more like ten. We don’t know what caused development to stop, but that was a far as it went. There are two straight cuts east to west, with a long curving cut running back down to the ponds, which are the lowest elevation. In fact, three of them are kept filled merely by the water table. That long curving road is what I call “the draw” because it follows a fold in the elevation. Either side is higher ground, with the trailer park on high ground (the wester loop, at least).

Farther north, colored as exposed soil, is a long branch with a separate bulldozer path. That long east-west branch farthest north is actually a cut into the hill side, which I call “the canyon.” It’s a six-foot drop in places, and washout has made it deeper than the bulldozer cut. As you examine this whole thing, you may be able to detect well worn paths, slender threads here and there.

The trail begins near the western loop of the trailer park. On the northwest corner of this loop is an open field. You can barely pick out a trail hugging the treeline on the eastern edge of this field, running northerly into the woods. The woodline coincides with the barbed wire fence (east-west). The trail runs a jagged path north to the first cut, crosses and appears to run down that cut eastward, down to the draw, meandering back up the other side. Near the end of the cut, it sharply turns north into the woods.

Wandering through that wooded section, it pops out into that shorter cut to the north right near the end, and heads back into the woods. That path comes to a steep drop back down to the long curving draw. The path cut down the draw is no longer clear, so ignore that. Near the bottom of the draw, where it turns east, you can just barely make out the trail again in the open. Depending on how good your resolution is, you may also see running back up the draw, not a trail, but a drainage ditch I cut to keep the seasonal rains from flooding that part of the draw. It was originally swampy with several bog terraces, but I dug a trench to direct the flow back into the lowest part of the woodland. You may be able to detect a dark line alongside the old trail down the draw.

My trail cuts across the draw, runs through a field northward, and back into some thin woods. I can see the trail peeking out here and there. Eventually it comes out the north side and sweeps around near the canyon, then back south into the woods. But before it gets too far, I cut back west to cross the other curving cut which runs south from the canyon. My trail cuts southwesterly, then along the woodline, peeking out again south of there. Then it’s back into the woods and crossing the same cut again where it bends around westerly. What looks like a trail along that cut was made by four-wheeler RVs. They haven’t been out there in the past year since then.

The trail drops southerly through the woods, which is now slowly uphill. It zig-zags across the next cut, and back into the woods, rejoining the trail where it first runs along the southern cut.

The annex finished yesterday is back on the far eastern end of that cut. If you go back to the trailer park, the farthest north trailer on the eastern loop sits very near where my new entrance cuts into the woods. At the edge of the mowed yard on that northerly edge is what appears to be an open grassy area (dark brown), which is right about where I head into the woods.

The soil throughout his area is sandy, covered with leaves. The older trail loop has seen quite a bit of foot traffic and just a few passes on my mountain bike. It’s pretty well packed. My new trail is not much packed at all, and easily bogs down my mountain bike, particularly in sharp turns. Today I made two runs back and forth, but it wore me out, because that little bit is not packed at all. Perhaps if a few neighborhood kids notice the trail it will get some more traffic, but it will be at least a month of regular use before I can get out of A-2 gear.

The other thing I noticed after today’s ride were about six places where I really must take down a sapling or two on the larger loop, because a few corners are simply impossible to navigate. I don’t mind passing between two trees close enough to scape both elbows at the same time, as long as the handlebars fit through without stopping. But being forced off the trail by dodging a tree on the inside of a sharp bend is simply too risky. The whole point is my knees have been giving me a lot of trouble lately, even if I limit myself to just walking the loop once. Riding, so far, doesn’t hurt my knees, even if I have to stand on the pedals some.