SMNDFBR - Working ON the Weekend

Everybody's mowing on the weekend, everybody needs a little trail maintenance. Everybody's pruning up the branches, everybody needs a sharp handsaw.


Photo Credit: Kris Sonderup
This week for the SMNDFBR we took the show on the road and headed out to Branched Oak Lake's area 7 to help out with the THOR trail day that was going on out there. Branched Oak Lake is the nearest "real mountain biking trail" to Lincoln, if you don't count Wilderness Park, but it seems like it's not gotten a lot of love the last few years for one reason or another. Hopefully with a little help from fellow mountain bikers, hikers and trail runners we can start to turn that around. It wasn't too many years ago that it was a regular stop on the Psycowpath Racing series and it's a trail commonly used for the Cornhusker State Games MTB race. If all goes well we can bring the trail back to it's former glory and get a few more wheels on the ground on a regular basis.


Armed with pruners, rogue hoes, mowers and hand saws we dispersed and started tackling the maintenance that needed to get done before the ride.


It wasn't too long before we found ourselves a bit out gunned by a fallen tree blocking the trail, we attempted to push it over so that we could drag it off to the side of the trail but it would not budge.


Luckily Joel had brought a chainsaw and we were eventually able to make short work of Mr. downed tree.




Pruning and tree chopping done, it was time to reroute some of the really eroded portions of the prairie section. I've never personally mowed an open field before today but to tell the truth it's actually a bit easier than mowing the lawn, you don't have to empty a bag nor turn every 40 feet and walk back the way you just came. Mowing a field you just point and walk with the occasional slight turn left or right but no real backtracking, all mowing should be this simple.




With a decent amount of people showing up for the trail day it went lickity split and it was time to change gears, put away the tools and grab bikes.









Not much for story this time around, just some trail maintenance followed by good riding with some great people. Next week the ride should be back to it's regularly scheduled programming, come on our and join us. Weather should be getting better and the trails are already in perfect shape, couldn't ask for much more of a reason to get out and ride than that.