When is drainage too effective?

Yep, keep the pavers in Squamish. 

I am also not talking about gold paving whole trails. Just taking extra care to sift for high impact spots like braking zones and berms.

I'm thinking steep sections into corners where even gold paving won't hold up long term - but of course that can be remedied with better trail layout. Unfortunately lots of old trails have spots where it's either a rut to bedrock or a re-route.

Posted by: syncro

I'm thinking steep sections into corners where even gold paving won't hold up long term - but of course that can be remedied with better trail layout. Unfortunately lots of old trails have spots where it's either a rut to bedrock or a re-route.

Have we come full circle to rock armouring?

Posted by: earleb

Posted by: syncro

I'm thinking steep sections into corners where even gold paving won't hold up long term - but of course that can be remedied with better trail layout. Unfortunately lots of old trails have spots where it's either a rut to bedrock or a re-route.

Have we come full circle to rock armouring?

I think rock armouring has been overdone in places, but it's useful in certain spots. Steep doesn't have to mean eroded rut, it depends on what happens after the steep.

riding the steep sections on Pingu is absolutely horrible with the cobblestones.  Lots of old school trails that have steeps in it seem to fair ok... just more maintenance but rider experience is way better.

Pingu has 14,000 ride logs on Trailforks and one of the steepest sanctioned mainline, most shuttled sections of dirt on Seymour.  Also built decades ago without knowledge of water management.  

John Deer has 17,000 ride logs for popularity comparison, but it pales in steepness.  Only the drop into the valley compares, but it has no need for brakes as the runout is steep uphill to stepup jump.

Dirty Diapers which I compare in steepness in a few spots, and is “oldschool” has 60.  Only 60!

I’m not disagreeing with you that rider experience on Pingu’s heavy braking zone is terrible, but at least “they” don't have to throw dirt on it monthly to keep it ridable.   I expect the Pingu steeps would have been closed and rerouted as non-sustainable by the land manager and maintainer if not for the rock armours durability.   Its all a careful tradeoff.  

.

Grannies - only 509 ride-logs. Thats old-school sustainable by design at its best.

Anyway...  its pouring again now.  We need moar drainage!

Posted by: heckler

I’m not disagreeing with you that rider experience on Pingu’s heavy braking zone is terrible, but at least “they” don't have to throw dirt on it monthly to keep it ridable. I expect the Pingu steeps would have been closed and rerouted as non-sustainable by the land manager and maintainer if not for the rock armours durability. Its all a careful tradeoff.

The problem in that location is Pingu is the only trail to go from the powerlines to BP and is too steep for most beginner/intermediate riders to ride comfortably = locked up brakes and erosion. The smart thing to do would be to cut in a new half of the trail to bypass the steeps and get people down to where it mellows out and traverses down to the BP.

Posted by: syncro

Posted by: earleb

Thinking a bit about it now, heavy braking zones would benefit from using sifted gold in it's initial build, I think it would save future repair time further down the line.

Grass pavers

Aesthetics are awful though. I will move the earth on trails I've built to keep solutions natural. (Literally, as most solutions unhappily end up being a giant fucking grade reversal).

I'm with Syncro. Hard braking sections are all potential candidate for a re-route. I took one short hard braking section out recently, that lost momentum turned it into a section probably 3x longer with the same speed. Amazing just how much inertia is lost in one hard pull on the brakes.

@Heckler nice link, I'm going to take care of some long ignored tread creep now

Yeah, I’m thinking really limited sections where a reroute may not be possible. Keep em covered with dirt and they’re not too visible tho. 

Another point this discussion brings up is using gold dirt or mineral soil - glacial till on the Shore. It sounds backwards, but there isn’t an unlimited supply of the stuff and digging pits to “mine gold” can create other problems.

Posted by: heckler

Pingu has 14,000 ride logs on Trailforks and one of the steepest sanctioned mainline, most shuttled sections of dirt on Seymour.  Also built decades ago without knowledge of water management.  

John Deer has 17,000 ride logs for popularity comparison, but it pales in steepness.  Only the drop into the valley compares, but it has no need for brakes as the runout is steep uphill to stepup jump.

Dirty Diapers which I compare in steepness in a few spots, and is “oldschool” has 60.  Only 60!

I’m not disagreeing with you that rider experience on Pingu’s heavy braking zone is terrible, but at least “they” don't have to throw dirt on it monthly to keep it ridable.   I expect the Pingu steeps would have been closed and rerouted as non-sustainable by the land manager and maintainer if not for the rock armours durability.   Its all a careful tradeoff.  

.

water does more damage than the number of riders.... I think there are other options than laying down cobbled rock beds.  I would much rather ride Incline than Pingu.

Lol, we agree. Pingu is straight fall line water-flow in that section. Incline is too, and already washed out to bedrock after many more years of being a logging skidder road.

Would rather ride dirt of course but I find the first part of Pingu pretty smooth with the rock armour/wood?