Sunday, September 27, 2009

Trail Report: Bradley Park

Date of Activity:09-26-09
Condition of Trails(s): Dry


Trail Ambassador Name: David Francefort
Trail Ambassador Email: dfrancefort@excite.com
Town: Wilton
Location: Bradley Park
Trail(s) Ridden: N/A
How did you use the trail?: Trail Maintenance
What was the time of day?: 8AM
Duration (Hours): 3
Distance (Miles): N/A
Observations: First official approved trail maintenance day at the park, Chris and local ride and resident assisted and myself were the TM crew for the day. We chatted with a local residents on the street who also want to assist in future work events. The park is not large 88 acres with about 5 miles of trails and only gets dog walkers. We basically walked every trail in the park cutting back overgrowth, repaired a series of bridges strung together that had many loose boards that we renailed down. Also made it easier to get on the bridge with built-up rock. We spent most of the time in the park cutting down fallen trees hung up over the trail or right in the middle of the trail. You can see from the pictures that was the typically size we had to deal with. We also came across a 20+ foot bridge that seemed to be seriously sagging and very bouncy. Upon looking at the structure we found the problem, it was not construct correctly at all. The span was too great to span with one piece so they overlapped multiple pieces, unfortunately they only overlapped the wood by 2 feet and on a span that long it can not support the weight. It is ready to collapse so I am going to bring in a floor jack and lift the center and put additional support columns in the middle all the way to the ground.

Future projects include repairing the underlying structure on most of the foot bridges, 200+ foot section of trail on the fall line and is now a 2-3 foot deep trench and really dangerous just to walk down, reblazing the trails.


No comments: