Finally! The Nemadji world is drying out. Another good week of mostly dry will really do the trick. Did a 45 mile tour with the chainsaw on the front of the bike, clearing deadfall and checking trail conditions. I would say 9 hours on the bike but, I spent much of the time off the bike cutting and moving logs and brush. Ran all of the singletrack along the the Net Lake Road and Northeast Extension except the Iron Pipe. Also ran the Harlis Bypass, Gandy Dancer Bypass, Congo and rode counterclockwise through about half of the North Loop.
The clearcuts in the Bypasses are WWAAAAYYYY overgrown making it very hard to see the trail. We’ll have to get in there soon to beat back the ground cover. Face slappers aren’t too bad but, of course, need cutting back. The half of North Loop that I did had a bunch of deadfall, which was why I had to quit after doing only half. I was SHOT and it was getting late.
It was great to spend the whole day on the bike and not on the ATV. I’m sure that I won’t be so lucky on the next trip. Still, we’re making plans to fix up some of the long term ruts and other issues that got worse with the wet conditions.
On the drive home I put 2014 Enduro posters up at the Nickerson Bar,the Duquette Store and Duquette Tavern.
On the 12th, we decommissioned a trail segment on the north end of the Hungry Bear. The DNR rerouted around the segment with a road width trail. It didn’t really make sense to keep 0.1 mile of rough trail in the middle of wide, smooth, flowing UTV width trail anyway. We pulled the big, wide boardwalks out of the segment (four that were 12′ x 5′ and one that was 6′ x 5′). My ATV got a real workout dragging those monsters for a couple of miles each. Those boardwalks can certainly be used in other places (read “Iron Pipe”).
The good news is that we GPS’d over a mile of new trail in an “undisclosed location” that day. We are working with the land managers to see if they will give it the thumbs up. We should know in the next couple of weeks. If it ends up being a “go”, we’ll open it up for the 45th annual Moose Run Enduro.