Trails and standing water

[jjp8182]

This: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/construction/pubs/ots15002.pdf and this: A Landowner's Guide to Building Forest Access Roads | Eastern Region State and Private Forestry can be very handy guides to building any sort of dirt or gravel road/trail. There are also some other handy guides out there for building logging trails/roads.

In short only adding material or ditches alone won't be enough; how to handle the drainage for the area is what needs to be done. Which may mean culverts, intentionally shaping the road to permit drainage across it.... and also getting the water to flow in a way that it won't cause significant erosion (which can be reduced by not giving the water too much slope/length to accelerate).

Ideally a road should be at a localized high point, but depending on the nature of the road/path having it be a "wet crossing" can also work if it's been appropriately stabilized with rock or concrete ....though whatever is done the drainage aspects need to be considered as water needs to be able to flow so figuring out how to direct it in a way to accommodate the road/trail is really the challenge. ...otherwise you'll always be waiting for good weather to dry things out - or be continually fixing more erosion damage than may be necessary.

 

[Smokeydog]

All good suggestions that depends on terrain. Could possible rerouting road to higher ground help?

 

[Jstpssng]

Looking at his pictures will give an idea of what he is dealing with. I'm not sure if it's just those two places or not but in his last you can see the water running across the trail, hence my suggestion of helping it along with a culvert or dip. The ultimate goal is to get the water away from the road/trail in the quickest way possible, and all of the ideas mentioned by the various posters are ways to achieve that.

 

[mcmopar]

Thank you so much for all the great responses, these are just trails on my property, only used for walking or just getting to the back part of the property via 4wheeler or tractor. The land is basically flat and until last summer we were unable to access this area due to the heavy brush. Hired a skid steer with a heavy duty brush cutter to open things up and then I used a rake and box scraper to clean up the trail. Trail goes to the end of my property in a U shape. I believe the property has a slight slope from left to right as the left hand trail is just wet with very little standing water areas, unlike the right side with the standing water in the areas of the pictures.
If I cut a small ditch on the sides of the right hand trail will that help? Just want to try to keep the trail dry and usable.

 

[Thomas]

For now I would ditch both sides and pull the dirt back upon to road and crown it,find lowest spot trench it.

 

[DieselBound]

^^^

Whatever you do, don't go BIG until you become well acquainted with the property. That this is newly cleared it'll take a bit of watching to first understand how it's interacting with the surrounding area.

 

[John_Mc]

If I cut a small ditch on the sides of the right hand trail will that help? Just want to try to keep the trail dry and usable.

Hard to tell from the picture, but the idea of the ditch shouldn't be just to hold the water, it should be to take it somewhere away from the trail. If there is any downhill slope away from the trail, ditch to that so the water flows away.