Southeast Region AERC member Jerry Brown did an outstanding job organizing the recent four-day Trail Master course. Jerry corresponded with each of us and kept us informed of what to bring, wear, expect, and how to get into the staging area. There was nothing he could have improved in this area. He even greeted us as we arrived and helped us get parked.
As a trail user, and having ridden the Tevis trail in California, with endurance competitions in Utah, Texas, Florida and New York -- and many states in between -- it was a most informative course.
Jerry took us riding each evening, exposing us to some of the various trails such as heavily traveled Hooker Falls (steep downs and ups), Fawn Lake, Lake Julia, and the latest reroute of Reasonover Creek Trail -- which would be our final project to maintain. This was the best built trail I had ever ridden. The only maintenance needed was deberming, resetting of rocks that had been turned up due to heavy point contact by horses and removal of roots that had also been raised by erosion due to water turned into the tread by the rising berm.
Class was from nine o'clock in the morning until 1:00 p.m. each day, ending with an open book test to help instructor Mike Riter know if we were grasping everything.
At first, most of the terminology seemed like a foreign language. But I came away with a whole new concept and understanding of trail design, an expanded comprehension of user impact, the ability to read a topographic map with trail design paramount in mimicking Mother Nature and how to gain mileage while offering many levels of difficulty for the users.
Mike was gentle, kind, personable and very professional in dealing with every personality.
Each afternoon we walked, talked and worked the trails. We were introduced to the tools of proper trail building, shown how to use them productively and actually constructed a new reroute laid out by Mike and David Brown, the DuPont Forest's ranger supervisor.
Every person that volunteers to work trails should enroll in this course. There is much for one to completely learn in four days, and the course certainly stimulates one's interest in improving trails.
Deberming is the number one maintenance requirement to prevent erosion on a sustainable trail. If the berm created on the downhill side of a heavily used trail is kept down, water will not erode down a properly sloped trail. The 50% rule is the most important change all trail builders need to fully understand and use on every reroute. This is determined with a clinometer, which was purchased by each of us for the course.
The 50% rule? Contour trail grades exceeding more than half (50%) of the fall line (calculated with the clinometer) on any hillside will cause water to run down the trail and result in serious erosion and maintenance problems. Getting this right helps control natural impact.
Announcing: AERC Trail Masters Course offered in Brooksville, Florida (between Ocala and Tampa), December 11-14, 2008
Learn techniques for the layout and design and construction and maintenance of sustainable trails with minimal environmental impact. You will be able to work with land managers to help develop sustainable equestrian trails systems on public lands.
Sponsored by the AERC in cooperation with the Florida Forever Back Country Horsemen, Inc. and coordinated with the Withlacoochee State Forest, a division of the Florida Department of Forestry.
Cost for AERC members is $120 to purchase equipment needed for the course. To sign up or get more information, contact Truman Prevatt at tprevatt@mindspring.com.
