Implements for bike path in woods...???

[Skerby]

Hi all, I'm going to design a bike path in my woods and wondered the best way to go about it.. i have a lot of brush and fallen little trees (3-6" diamater). should i just go through with my loader and scrape and back drag?

yard rake? box blade? other?
i think i'm going to get a chuck-n-duck so i will probably put down my own mulch on the path..

thanks for the help and suggestions.

 

[EddieWalker]

I would think that the rake would be about the best choice for going over it first and cleaning off the ground as good as possible. Then address the problem areas as they appear. Box blade them, fill them or make them even worse!!!!

Eddie

 

[thcri]

Your probably going to be dealing with some roots. I would think the box blade would be more aggresive. I would not use the scarficiers just the blade. you may even find that spraying round up will help your situation first. And even with your mulch you will have to do maintenance a couple times a year to keep the weeds from growing up within.

murph

 

[dmccarty]

I would use the box blade to just move as much brush/trees as possible without moving dirt. If you have lots of trees you have lots of roots. The more you dig the worse it gets. If you soil has rocks.... More of the same.

We want a walking, maybe a bike, path around our place. That would be a mile. Internal trails would add even more milage. Start doing the simple math of a 4 inch deep layer of mulch, which is minimum with our stumps and rock, time 30ish dollars per yard and it adds up quick.

A big state park near me replaced their trails with a bed of ABC road base then put mulch on top of the rock. It most have cost a fortune but they had to do it because of the amount of food traffic in the park. I just paid $10.5 per ton for ABC. Call it $15 per yard. Even that is expensive.

A 6 inch stump can be easy to pull out the ground. Or it can be a long digging session even with a JD 48 backhoe. If the stump has a tap root I have seen stumps like this go down a couple of feet. If you can just move the trail around the stumps.

Later,
Dan

 

[Egon]

Use the loader for the basic trail and then, if necessary, finish with whatever attachment you have.

 

[MossRoad]

The problem with scraping and dragging is it opens up the soil to erosion. I would use a brush hog to clear the initial trail down to 2" height. Then I would pop out any little stumps that could be tire poppers for the bikes.

Here's how I make trails on our property with our Power Trac PT425. The video link shows a 100 yard trail cut through 6' weeds. It took about 2 minutes in each direction to make a 7' wide trail. The same principle applies in the woods. The brush hog is mounted on the front, so the trail is already cleared by the time the tractor arrives. The PT425 brush hog is 4' wide, so I can make it through some pretty narrow spaces. Anything under 2" is destroyed into mulch. The nice thing about this is I can just drive the PT425 where I would like to walk and a trail is left in my path. We now have close to two miles of trails on our 20 acres by using this method. And now that they are established, it takes about a half an hour to mow them with the brush hog two passes wide in most places. Grasses have taken over the trails in most places and makes for easy walking. Bikes would do just as well.

Make a trail video.

 

[JHTFarmer]

Best way:

Have it done with a tracked skid steer loader with high-flow
hydraulics powering a mulching head. The machine is highly manuverable, powerful, will mulch anything in its path including trees, stumps, branches, twigs, rocks, etc.. The ground will be covered and protected from erosion by the debris. It will do it in one pass. It will be done fast.
The result will look great and be immediatly useable by mountainbikers

cheapest way:

Fire up the old 40 horse. Break out the loader, brush hog, box blade, and rake.
Don't forget the chainsaw and a tow chain.

 

[Bob_Skurka]

I use a landscape rake. It works to create and to maintain trails in my woods. It works better (for me) than a box blade, but if you have problem areas you may need to use a blade to drag in some dirt, then use the rake.