Aug 3, 2013

Andy Forsberg, Mike Hillestad and their kids and Roy Fleming were up working on the Iron Pipe.  Andy used a skidloader to fill in the “200′ long rut”.  He filled the rut and crowned the trail there in the hope that the level was brought up sufficiently and the ditches on either side would be deep enough to keep it from rutting again.  Time will tell.  The plan was to bring up a mini-excavator but trailer problems cut that plan short.  Roy did some major brushing with only a weed whip.  Andy asked about the new brushcutter I ordered.  Got home today and found out via my email that it has shipped.  I hope it shows up this week as it is needed soon.

I checked out the logged off trail at the north end of the Hungry Bear and the west end of the Harlis Bypass, which were done by the same logger.  Sheesh!  Looks like that logger hates dirtbike trails!  He really screwed the pooch.  It took me a while but I found the existing boardwalks in the Hungry Bear and found a route through.  I started clearing it as well.  Next weekend we’ll have to get in there and re-establish both trails.

Last Thursday the DNR informed me that they blew the beaver dam that was flooding the north bridge and boardwalks on the Wilderness Trail.  I checked it out and sure enough, the water was down.  We’ll have to look again next weekend to see if the beavers were really defeated or not.  I hope so!  Both bridges on the north end of that trail really need to be straightened and the boardwalk especially needs to be reset (or it will eventually be ruined).  That’s another project for next weekend.

The good news is that the trails are reasonably dry.  Areas that got rutted when it was wet can be ridden around.  I rode a little over 30 miles and things were looking pretty good.  There were lots of dirtbikes and ATVs out there.