Trails Unlimited

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Consulting

Angelina National Forest in Texas, February 5 through February 19, 2006

Consulting for Existing Trails

Notice the pronounced “U” shaping of the trail. This has been caused mainly by a “fall line” design with no natural breaks in grade or manufactured reverse grade structures “rolling dips”. With a combination of soil displacement, mechanical wear, and heavy erosion due to a high quantity and velocity of water, it creates aggressive erosion and U shaping of the trail.

Taking a GPS point at a road crossing.

Analyzing standing water on the trail.

“U” shaped trail

The consulting crew with one of the Angelina’s OHV specialists.

Consulting for Proposed Trails

As you can see in the photographs, east Texas can offer a challenge to building trail due to the heavy vegetation and lack of natural grade. The primary goal of a trail builder is to get water off the trail as quickly as possible, thus reducing erosion and soil loss. The secondary goal is to give the user a sense of “flow” to the trail, which can be directly linked to water control when properly applied.

Heavy vegetation offers unique challenges in trail construction.

Heavy duff is also a factor to consider.  A prescribed burn may be ideal to thin out vegetation and duff.

An ideal bridge site location.

Hurricane damage caused this dead and down.

US Forest Service - Trails Unlimited Enterprise Unit
Last Modified: Friday, 07 April 2006 at 15:03:42 EDT