Partial Bench Cut Trail Building

*Build a Partial Bench Cut Trail*

!!!!!!Disclaimer!!!!!!!~~~~~~~Much of the information about the Angry Beaver Trail on this site was submitted anonymously through our Feedback Form. The identity of the builders remains unknown to us, although we appreciate all of their efforts, we're not sure they know what they're doing, so if you kill yourself or others building a trail, don't come cryin' to us because we warned you and we don't care anyway. We will, however, welcome the 'beavers' into the Mountainbike Militia Angry Corp of Engineers if they ever do make themselves known.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

How to Build a Trail Using the Partial Bench Cut with Cribbing
Before we go any further you might like to know what the heck we're talking about, so here's a brief explanation of what a bench cut, partial bench cut, and cribbing exactly are.
When building a trail on a slope, it's always best to run the trail across the slope, rather than up and down it, this helps prevent erosion and is usually easier to ride.
One way to achieve this is the Full Bench Cut which simply means you dig the trail out of the mountain, or in sculpture terms, remove everything that's not the trail.		According to IMBA, this will require less maintenance and shed water better because the soil is already packed hard and consistently throughout.
	An alternative to the Full Bench Cut is the Partial Bench Cut where you only dig out part of the trail and use the dirt to build up the outer edge. This is less desirable because the outside edge isn't packed as hard and usually needs to be retained with Cribbing.
Cribbing involves building a retainer for the dirt, to prevent erosion and act as a 'dirt dam'. The retainer is usually made by placing a fallen tree or branch across two growing trees on the upslope side. If there are no trees growing you'll have to use long stakes instead (this is lots of fun).

Question: Why did you idiots build your trail with the partial bench method?

Answer: It was the best solution for this particular trail. Angry Beaver Trail is about 1/8 of a mile long built on the backside of a parking lot that was illegally filled in with all kinds of debris, including various soil types, concrete chunks, railroad ties, coal slag, and just about any other kind of junk you can dump over the edge of a bank. Much of the fill is still very loose, and the grade is darn steep (that's a technical term). Combine those two factors with all the debris buried in this thing, and it would have just been impractical. On the other hand we had lots of trees, both alive and dead to work with, as well as lots of rocks and fill. It will require more maintenance, but it's easy to get to, is very short, and will probably be destroyed anyway when they fix the heavily trafficked bridge nearby, or if the Rail-Trail ever gets permission to go through.

Here's how it's done (hold mouse over pictures for more info).


Read Disclaimer on top and for real information on trail building visit IMBA.


The Bridge One Project