Trail Work – CAMBO (Culpeper Area Mountain Bike Org)

Over the next few weeks, Mr. Burke will be doing some work around the metal bridge crossing in the field. As many of you know, those bridges have been a hassle to maintain lately. We’ve had to reinforce them several times over the past few years, and they continue to sink and bend with each heavy rain and high water event, making it difficult at times to get tractor and mowing equipment across.

So we’re pulling them out. Mr. Burke will be working on them until later in the fall when he can build a better stream crossing. In the meantime, you may find the approach from either side of the bridges to be muddy or torn up from frequent tractor crossings.

So try to avoid this crossing for a few weeks until further notice. We’ll keep you posted on progress.

On Saturday, July 30th, a storm dumped 5+ inches of rain on Deer Springs Farm in less than 2 hours. The resulting deluge washed out 2 bridges – the wooden bridge at the start of the Perimeter Trail, and a metal bridge farther down that same trail.

At the wooden bridge site, we rock-armored a stream crossing. We think that will be easier to maintain. The wooden bridge would get dislodged frequently and at times would have to be moved as the bank supporting it would erode. Hopefully, this will be a longer lasting solution.

11059762_889243194498870_7695252123210576624_n At the metal bridge site, we actually had to dig it back out of the stream bed, then move it about 15 yards back upstream where we wrestled it back into position. Eventually we’d like to find a stream crossing to replace this bridge, as it’s washed out several times as well. But, that would require extensive reroutes of the surrounding trail, and would likely be a large project we’ll tackle later this fall.