Road Trail Building advice

[woodlandfarms]

I am going to get back up north in the next few weeks. I am going to walk the area, and look at a few other issues... It may make sense for me to open my wallet for a Dozer.....

[DRL]

Just another thought. Peter pointed out that the first of your new road is steep. If you don't use the red part of the road and start over you can get a lot more gradual slope. Something like this.
DRL

[DRL]

It sure is fun coming up with ideas that use other peoples money.
How about a pond with the trail going across the dam?
DRL

[woodlandfarms]

Originally Posted by DRL

It sure is fun coming up with ideas that use other peoples money.
How about a pond with the trail going across the dam?
DRL

Attachment 103188

And then we can put in koi, a water fall, build some seats..... Glad you offered to come up and help out...

[EddieWalker]

Originally Posted by woodlandfarms

So, I know the answer is a Bulldozer. This being said, I would love to get some advice on how to build a road / trail with what I have.

The big thing is I am unsure of is how to approach the fairly steep grade. I am going to ask permission from my neighbor to put the trail partly onto his property but in case he does not...

What I have is a 60 HP Hydraulic tractor that can do severe slopes, a 72" box blade, a bucket, and a quasi backhoe....

What is a quasi backhoe?

I have both a dozer and a backhoe. When I got the dozer, I thought that it was the way to go. I just pointed it in a direction, and pushed everything out of the way. It's great fun until something breaks!!!

Then it took months or even years to clean up the mess. If you have trees to clear, the backhoe is a much better choice!!! I no longer clear land with the dozer. I use the backhoe and after I get some trees on the ground, I take them to the burn pile. What would take the dozer a day to clear, takes the bachoe a week to do. But in that week, it's all done, and I don't have to spend months cleaning it up from the destruction and tangle created by the dozer.

If your trails are already clear, then the dozer is great for shaping dirt and cutting drainage ditches. Since you don't have one, the backhoe does a good job too, it just takes more time. Dig from the high side and put it on the low side.

Eddie

[woodlandfarms]

Here is the pic of my backhoe setup. It is like a Skip Loader, you have to turn the body of the tractor to do your left to right dumping, and the reach is limited. But it works, quite well.

I have not tired to backhoe up trees yet. We have TONS of Alders that need to go (small, nothing more than a 5" trunk".

These are going to be fresh horse / quad / walking / access to the back 40 with tractor kind of trails..

Yeah, Dozers are a mess, but I am so darn impatient. Definetly a Gen Xer.. I sometimes think I am one of those morons on those tv ads hollering I want it and I want it now.

Here is some video - It was the wifes first time but you get the idea

YouTube - back hoe

And these two pix are of the backhoe and an extension I built to remove blackberries. There is a new version of that coming this summer for sure...

[Egon]

Hey, you have the perfect machine to use the bucket for side hill trail building!

[rimshot]

I am currently building my road/trail with my Kioti CK20 TLB. For me,the less ......the better. When i started the road of course the stumps were removed as they found themselves in the boundary of my right of way. That of course made a mess but I didn't stop there. Next, I carefully scraped all the top soil, humous and sticks off the gravel base road. Of course, I had to remove the stumps, but removal of the humous was an option. For the occasional driving a tractor or a pick up or a four wheel ATV over my trail, the humus is a good enough base for now due to the root structure. I can alwlays replace it if it wears away with gravel. In the meantime this road is good enough for the small amount of traffic it shall endure w/o damaging all the rest of the tree roots humus removal of humus would involve.

rim