Little Sugar Creek Greenway, Mallard Creek Greenway, Toby Creek Greenway...

Parkway loop at WWC is always open.

Wears my bike wrote on 05/21/20 at 4:25pm:



Little Sugar Creek, about a mile past Park Road Park is under construction for storm drain work.  All the blacktop has been removed.  Will be a muddy mess.

I thought Poston was the one designated trash trail in the area....

SirNotAppearing wrote on 05/21/20 at 5:38pm:


The AMBC and City of Knoxville also converted one piece of their urban wilderness trail network into the "Year Round Get Down".  Basically rock armored every lip, lander, berm and most of the tread.  what isn't rock armored is some crushed aggregate.  It's meant to keep them riding through the winter.

Here's a video with some different angles to show you the tread (You need to Login or Register to view media files and links)

TrillWill wrote on 05/21/20 at 8:42pm:

Super cool.  We need something like that here.

Funny, I always here "What We Need" but I never hear, "I going to build" or what can I do make this happen.

ETSX-70 wrote on 05/21/20 at 9:49pm:


Unfortunately our rock quarries go down...so when they are done with them and turn the pumps off, they get filled with water.

strizzout wrote on 05/22/20 at 1:04am:


Yet.

pmedly wrote on 05/21/20 at 8:59pm:



Oh, it's not a slight against Poston, but Every. Single. Time. someone says something about riding when trails are wet, they either jokingly or seriously say Poston never closes, which implies that it's ok to go trash the trail, whether they should or not.   

With that being said, there also seems to be tacit approval from the overriding organization that it's ok  ride the trail when wet and trash it because they don't close it or dispute that it never closes.  For anyone who is a casual observer, never works on a trail, and really doesn't know the standard common sense policies for trail upkeep, they see that as an invitation to go ride any time.  The term trash trail only means that it's widely said to be acceptable to ride it wet, not that it's a trashy trail.  I've only heard great things about that place.

Heck yeah, I'd like to help on a project like that.  I would think a centrally located trail would be best since it would be the only trail open a lot of the time.  Maybe the Tech Loop on BYT?  It's easily accessible from the service roads (good for hauling rock), not too long, and it's got a lot of rock anyhow.

Maybe we could find a sponsor to help us get the rock.  It would be cool to have one trail in green on the home page of this site for the many rainy weeks we get.

I have thought about making the Tech Loop an all weather trail. But due to it being so close to the other sections of BYT I kinda decided against it, well at least for the near future. 

Perhaps one of the biggest challenges after creating an all weather trail would be keeping the trail as narrow as possible. Riders now seem to prefer riding around an obstacle rather than over or through as we used to do back in the day. Also the number of riders has increased dramatically over the past 20 years which would increase the short term damage and without the bi-yearly maintenance the long term damage would also be considerable. 

The reason the Short Track has held up over the years is the simple fact of this maintenance being done every year. Why is the maintenance being done? The driving force was Neal Boyd and the fact that Neal wanted to spend the time and effort to make the trail all weather, and yes of course to keep the race series going even during the worst of weather. Over the last 6-8 years there has been a great turnout to help with this maintenance. 15 years ago it was me and Neal with buckets and 1 wheelbarrow toting gravel. Now we have  the 4 wheeler, dump trailer, skid steer, and a mini excavator. And at times up to 15 people with tools helping. Now Brian Bradley also works on the course and by creating new and interesting features I expect the trail to continue to get even better and better. 

Long story short is we can make another trail but everyone has to keep in mind the ST is just 1 mile long. And everyone has to understand how much effort it took and continues to take just to make that 1 mile of trail all weather, and an interesting and fun 1 mile of trail it is. Although how quickly would you get bored riding the same 1 mile over and over without a race going on? Myself bored very quickly. So with that being said the trail would need to be closer to 3 miles and at minimum 2 miles long.

I can chat with the other Trail Coordinators and perhaps we can all come up with a plan but until that's happens..............  don't hold your breath.

ciao
Santana