11/21/09 Trail Day

[southernerinnj]

Mercer Trail Day is tomorrow! Since Mick is horrible at posting these things up I thought I would for him. 😀
They usually meet at 9AM at the Marina parking lot. If there are any changes to this I'll repost this here.

It’s time to give a little back to the trails again.
I have been asked By the Park to re-route the trail off of the top of the Dam
The Parks Commission is responsible for the maintenance and up keep of the Dam.
The DEP and Soil Commission inspect the dam yearly and this year they were not happy with the amount of erosion on the back side of the Dam near the spillway. The park will soon be enforcing the little known no riding on the Dam rule. I am hoping by doing a re-route we can fend off the threat of having the park officials close that part of the park to mountain biking.

 

[Norm]

Your location is wrong 😉

 

[southernerinnj]

Yah yah yah well Mercer has to get some love too yah know 😉

 

[southernerinnj]

From what I can tell the issue is with the DEP not the park. From what I can tell from an email from Mick the Dam is actually off limits to riding, but this rule is not enforced currently. Evidently DEP has assessed the erosion taking place due to riding and foot traffic on the dam and has declared this to be an issue. If this re-route does not take place I could mean the loss of trails in that section of the park all together.

 

[BiknBen]

I brought the kiddies. After a couple Allaire TM days, my kids are well versed in the Circle of Death. Emily rides up and introduces herself by her TM nickname, "C-O-D" Everyone got a kick out of that.

 

[Frank]

A Thank You from Mick

From Mick:

Group,

We had a slow start but finished an acceptable alternative route.

Last week we were asked by the parks superintendant to re-route the mountain bike trail

off of the top of the dam. This is an attempt to cut down on the erosion

on the hill next to the spillway. When I visited the site last week with

the park superintendant the flat area behind the dam was dry. When

we got there Saturday morning it was a marsh. The original idea was to build

a new trail as an alternate to the old one soon to be closed. This trail was to be visible

from the closure point and which intercepted the many trails that exit the woods onto the flat

behind the dam. With the ground being as wet as it was in places it was decided

after much discussion that it was best to keep much of the new trail in the woods

on higher and dry ground. We marked and flagged the trail on the flat as best we could with

the idea of having the parks dept. bring in some soil so we can raise the trail in areas needing it.


It was a beautiful day to be out in the park with a wonderful crew of volunteers

My Thanks To :

Jeff Conklin
Mike Congleton
Rich Christiano
Dave Hall
Jackie Marmur
Sue Moser
Yuri Soang
Kevin Stout
Tom Swords
Emily Tufford
Ryan Tufford
Ben Tufford
Mick Tormey

A special Thanks to Ryan & Emily who worked so hard and give us great hope for the future of mountain biking

Mick