Letting Nature Take Its Course

That hasn’t really worked out for us at “The Trail.”  We had a little flooding problem out there, remember?

So, over the weekend we figured out a better way.  TomTom put in an awesome bridge over a small creek, but the problem was still spreading.  We did a little nosing around and found that the creek had been dammed up by some pesky beavers, and that’s what was causing the creek to flood all over our singletrack.

In addition to the dam, the original creek was full of debris.  Our first step was to clean it out, so Good Guy Greg, TomTom, Irish Luke and I got to work.

It was obvious that no water was flowing through there unless there was an overflow from a big flood, so cleaning it out wasn’t too bad.  Once we got it cleaned out, we removed the damn and used the material to block off the other problem area.  The water started flowing immediately along its natural course.

Eventually it made it to the bridge.

It seemed like it would fix our issues, as the other flooded areas were already drying up.  This will eliminate the need for any more bridges in there, since we can most likely get away with some minor rock armoring. 

Unless there’s a big flood, then we’re screwed.  We can’t prevent that anyway.

It wasn’t too bad to clean everything up, and it made the whole place look nice.

Holy shit.  It kinda looks legit now. 

We did hours upon hours of work out there, but I’ll save the rest for tomorrow.

I have some things I need to address anyway, and it may take some time.

Plus I have to mourn the loss of one of our woodland creature friends.

An investigation is currently underway.