One reason I haven't been on the bike as much in the last weeks is that my thing has been plugging away at clearing into the edges of the forest on my place, to open up sections for trials riding. Our place is about 200m wide and 900m long, but feels a lot bigger as 3/4 of it is thick forest. When I first got our place my hard enduro interest motivated me to clear longer tracks thru the place, but since getting primarily interested in trials, I've realized that it's best to have stuff where it's open enough and in a confined area where observers can watch a guy riding a section. So I've been hacking and dragging away, with great results. A couple of months ago I bit by bit cleared each side of our "rocky gully" and that made some good lines. Then worked back from that to include an area with some big old logs and boulders that were previously covered in 20 yrs of fallen branches, bark and overgrown with small woody trees and vines. Just this week I cracked on with an adjacent section that's steeper and has some nice big rocks. Lots of hours in there with the chainsaw, light and heavy long handled secateurs and tree poison to spray on the cut stumps. Lots of cutting up and hiking up and down the hill dragging the stuff onto piles. It's amazing how removing heaps of weedy trees between the big ones transforms a seemingly impractical impenetrable area into a really interesting, more pleasant patch. It's a lot of work though. Yesterday morning I got back down there early to finish it off enough for the Friday Arvo guys to test it out. But it took me lots longer and harder than I expected and when I finished, only 15 mins before they were due to arrive, I was really wrecked. But in the arvo it gave me a buzz to see the guys forging lines through it and having fun and new challenges. Still needs work to rake back lots of leaf litter, bark and sticks but getting there. It's getting to the point where I reckon with a lot of help we could actually hold a proper event on our place with 10 or so reasonably good sections. P.S. those old longer tracks have now been incorporated into a really long walking track that zigzags back and forth through the place, taking in all the best bits, rainforest, etc. That has been a huge lot of work too, as it necessitated making new bits to join tracks together and marking it with about 300 arrows in each direction! Sometimes a group of us ride the walking track on the trials bikes - challenging and fun - but enduro bikes are now banned from my forest tracks!

Posted by Andrew von Berky at 2021-08-28 00:54:56 UTC