Tools for Trail Building and Maintenance

[selftot]

I have about 1 mile of trails to build. A bit is done / partially done. See pics.

Before i get too far into this job, help me decide if I have the right tractor tools - assuming i continue to use the L3400 i have.
Skeleton bucket and backhoe has been doing the work so far.

I might pick away at it as a project or high a big machine to come do the heavy lifting.

Any suggestions for
1) building the trails
2) Maintaining the trails
3) If i could only get one implement which one would be most helpful long term.

I was thinking land plane once the land is cleared of roots/rocks. Does that only work for an established trail or would it help in building / leveling.

Trail - Well done

Medium.

Rare

 

[ZTMAN]

We had our hunting camp select cut two years ago. The logging company hired a fellow who used a Cat 953 C track loader to build a mile and a half trail through woods on a sloped hill that did not have a trail.

Took that fellow a day and a half. Moved a lot of dirt, shale and trees.

If I need trails through the woods in the future, I will hire the heavy equipment to rough in the trail and then maintain with tractor, box blade and loader.

Edit:

I forgot to add pics.
Photo 1 -start of new trail cut in
Photo 2- view of portion of new trail
Photo 3- Cat track loader

 

[GrumpyFarmer]

Good day.

What planning to do with the property and trails? To me that’s a big factor in tools/implements/suggestions.

I find a grapple to be pretty helpful, but if I could only have one implement I would not trade my forks for a grapple. However for woods work grapples are awesome IMO.

Depending on your timeframe and plans for your machine, I would politely encourage consider having someone with either excavator or dozer or compact loader / mulching head come in and get the trails done and save abuse to your machine. Sure not cheap, neither is a new machine.

Also depending on your uses I would politely question if those trails are really wide enough. I think you will be amazed at how quickly brush and overhead branches will encroach on the single track you have there.

if planning to trim branches regularly overhead, a work platform on a set of forks is a game changer for overheard cutting. (With that width of trail my forecast would be overhead branches will need regular attention. )

what you did so far looks pretty nice and even groomed in the pics. Keep the rubber side down.

just my $.02.

 

[GreensvilleJay]

for building..
whatever you use, make the 'trail TWICE as wide ! Mother Nature will reclaim 25% back in the 1st year,more when you don't maintain it every month. When you open it up, sunshine 'encourages' RAPID growth of ground covers and saplings.

for maintaining..
tandem pull discs with heavy chains trailing behind

friend's used this for 4 decades on 23 miles of trails,once a month until the white stuff comes....
If you don't regularly maintain it light grooming) , Mother Nature WILL reclaim HER land !

 

[selftot]

... and save abuse to your machine.

Jinx !
Look what happened today

 

[GrumpyFarmer]

Jinx !
Look what happened today

View attachment 168377

Oh my…I am sorry to see that.

just the one side? (Any cracks on the other?)

I hope that buffs out.

 

[selftot]

Oh my…I am sorry to see that.

just the one side? (Any cracks on the other?)

I hope that buffs out.

Cracks on both sides. I'm gonna try construction adhesive. Should be fine.

 

[mikester]

 

[NCL4701]

Looks like you’re doing a good job with what you have.

You’ve gotten some good advice so not much to add, but I’ll throw something out there on the maintenance issue as it appears you get a lot of rain and may have some slopes involved.

For maintenance of dirt trails on slopes, water management and erosion is a significant issue. Part of that is appropriate ditches and sloping/crowning the trail as needed to get water off the side of sloped areas quickly so it doesn’t run down the trail. Part of it is also getting it packed to begin with and not disturbing it unless you really need to. You don’t have a packed rock base to provide stability. The soil is stabilized by being packed and by the root mat (not giant speed bump type roots, the tiny hair sized ones that weave together into a steel wool like mass). If you run over the trail once or twice a year with a disc or land plane or box blade and disturb the top 2” to 4”, get it nice and fluffy and flat and pretty, it will be fine until it rains and water starts running across it. For dirt on any kind of slope in a rainy area, if you’re going to fluff it and flatten it as part of maintenance, you’ll need to pack it after you fluff it. If not you’ll be forever fiddling with fixing washouts.

If your trails are all relatively flat, I wouldn’t be much concerned about the above.

Our trails are a mix. We have some pretty flat along the creek bottom and on the spines of the ridges. Also have quite a lot of sloped trails. The mostly flat areas may get soggy, but they dry out without damage. The sloped ones take more thoughtful care to maintain. The longer the slope the more important it is to keep water from running down the trail and to keep the dirt on the trail well stabilized.

As an example, this is one of our trails looking from the creek bottom toward the top of the ridge it runs to about 1/10th of a mile away. It has been there probably 70 years and is nothing but dirt. Spinning tires on it, blading it, or anything else that disturbs that top layer of tightly packed dirt requires re-packing (in my case, the weight of my tractor is sufficient if I run back and forth over it many times). If I don’t keep it well packed, I’ll be fixing washouts in addition to packing it.

BTW, a few years ago I thought about rocking all our trails. Did some calculating and figured it would be about $130,000 just to buy the rock 5 years ago prices. So I take care of my dirt.

 

[bbxlr8]

I have carved out about 2 miles of interconnected trails in the last 15 years, with some more planned. It's all sloped (on a ridge side) & mostly heavy woods with glacially deposited boulders. My process is pretty simple and limited to my equipment. I started by hand, with 1210 & jeep/trailer, and life became A LOT better with the K. I carefully plan around the big ones and judiciously move mid/smaller rocks.

Unfortunately, my main access is a colonial-era path and deeply grooved vs the surrounding terrain so it channels the stormwater, similarly to what @NCL4701 indicated. In my case, I have added water bars for lack of the correct term every so often that are dug and mounded 45' to the path to redirect flow into the down side woods. I occasionally add soil rock mix and run a rake. I keep finished cut to 2-track vehicle width.

When building them, I use the BH and very occasionally, the grapple, to remove enough to get semi-level and add fill if needed (again, fields of rocks even below the surface in some areas). Added a new one this Nov to better access my wood processing area and ended up with a nice path but a 3 foot wall of rock to one side that I have to further move in spring. FWIW I have not found the box blade to be helpful for this.

That crack is very unfortunate but per the other thread I think you should be able to get back up and running!

 

[nbryan]

I take my 60" Woods M5-4 "bush hog" rotary mower at least once a year into the bush/forest logging trail loop we cleared 5 years ago. Having the forks on the front while mowing are handy for clearing the inevitable dead-fall in the mature forest. That ancient mower can handle pretty severe abuse like hammering old stumps when I set it a bit low or go off course a bit. But 1" saplings it can handle, and heavy swamp grass/weeds over a year's growth.
But this is my solution for our forest trails.

 

[The Evil Twin]

I just used the grapple, box blade and a chainsaw.

 

[KubotaHawg]

1) Rent a dozer for building. $2000/week for 92 hp D2 last February, got more done than I ever would have with L2800 and in far shorter time period. Do it yourself, will probably cost 20% what would cost to hire it out. Don’t be intimidated dozers are easy and intuitive to operate.

2) Water bars to save what you just dozed.

3) Maintain with bush hog.

That’s my formula for trails/firebreaks on mountainous rocky 65 acres. I moved some tops and rocks my L2800 wouldn’t have budged with the dozer, plus 2x wider than a grapple/bucket/bb would have done, plus saved wear and tear on my machine.