Bradbury Trail Maintenance

Emma and I went out to Bradbury this afternoon for walk, seemed like a good way to keep the marathon legs loose. We decided to grab some tools from the barn and walk the Boundary Trail to check up on the work that I had done last week with Blaine, Katy and Chuck. We came across a few minor wet areas that needed a little drainage assistance by removing blockages created by fallen leaves, pine needles and twigs. We tried to avoid sending the water flowing right down the trail whenever we could but it wasn't always easy. In many places there is still a lot of work to do to get water to drain off the trails.

When we got around to the far northern side of the trail we came across a massive wet patch that has been there for as long as I have been running at the park (4 years) and never seems to dry out. Even in a normal summer the heavy tree canopy keeps the ground from drying out completely, but this summer was insanely wet. One of the problems with drainage on the Boundary Trail is that there is an old stone wall that runs across the slope of the hill, and as water runs down the hill it carries debris that builds up against the wall creating a dam and then a puddle. If no one ever clears the debris then these spots grow into muddy bogs as everyone goes around them loosening up previously undisturbed soil.

We discovered last week that few minutes of raking away the debris in the right location along the stone wall can drain the "ponds" along the wall very quickly. Emma and I worked on another pond today, you can see our work in this very exciting video: