But just because I can't ride like a cool guy on leaves, doesn't mean I want to get rid of them. In preparation for this cool blog post, I read this. They're talking about erosion control if you rake leaves and I was wondering if they had ever actually been in the woods before. Leaves are the first barrier against rain carrying away your trail's soil. All over the woods where you see leaves, there's minimal erosion. Where leaves are gone and there's bare soil, lots of erosion. People get rid of leaves because riding on them is hard, but apparently have cooked up this trail maintenance theory to lie to themselves. One thing the Reservoir has going for it is that no one has started carrying in leaf blowers. Sadly, I was riding Nassaghegon this week and to my dismay, I found a bunch of leaf blown trails. I always that it was pretty remote out there, but I guess I was wrong.
4 comments:
I agree. There is natural erosion and man-made erosion on trails. The latter is due mainly to heavy usage and it probably does more damage than the erosion that occurs because of the wreckage of time and the elements. I'm no expert, but leaf blowing trails is so that you can use the trails more heavily, right? Duh!
Bad design + use leads to erosion. Things that keep water from carrying away soil are good.
Leaf blowing in the city is likely pointless, and definitely irritating. I feel like a super cranky old man when I come upon the leaf blowers.
I met my match the other day in Keney Park and was just too blown away (ha) to even get angry--a city worker with a car-sized, industrial tractor leaf blowing machine cleaning a closed, paved road/path.
I can't even imagine wanting to bring a leaf blower onto a singletrack trail in a forest trail system. Now I can cite this informative post when I come across them and curse them.
I don't know if citing the beat bike blog will win anyone an argument anywhere.
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