You see, here's the problem...

I've become very familiar with the Backyard Trails.  It's pretty much the only mountain biking I've done since this whole "shelter in place" order went into effect over a month ago.  I've never had the opportunity to get out like this with such frequency before.  Normally, I only get one to two mountain bike rides per week, and I head to the mountains three to four weekends a month.

I have no idea how many times I've ridden at the Backyard recently, and on most of the days that I wasn't riding there, I was doing trail work of one kind or another.

I love so many tiny pieces of these trails, their subtle nuances starting to shine through as I become familiar with every nook and cranny.  There's this one spot where you come in kinda hot to a soft right turn with a gradual upgrade.  There's a couple roots, but you're cooking with gas, so you fly right over them.  Then the trail drops hard left and down into a "choose your own adventure" junkyard of rocks and spider-webbed roots.

We had a huge rain a few weeks back, one of those overnight dumpers that just saturates everything.  I think it was a Wednesday.  I worked the next day, so I wasn't too bummed that the trails were closed.  I did trail work the following day.  Then the trails opened back up, and I went for a ride.

So... coming in hot to the soft right turn...

And there's a rut in the turn.

It's not a terrible rut, but there was never a rut there before.  It's easy to put the blame on all the new people that have discovered "exercise" and "going outside" recently.  They don't know the "rules," although some of the trailheads have our 24 hour rain rule posted... which is a soft rule that needs some common sense applied. 

.01 inches of rain after it's been dry for weeks... mebbe less than 24 hours.

1.75 inches of rain and it's been raining bats and frogs for the past few weeks... mebbe the trail could use a longer break.

Over the course of the past few weeks, I've ridden with a couple other people.  More than once, coming into this section, I've heard various comments.

"Shit.  What was that?"

"Looks like a moto's been back here."

"Was that always there?"

Etc.

More rides, more rain, more closures, more people riding during the closures.  Every time I'm out there, I notice that things are getting worse.  This past Saturday (when the trails were closed), I headed out to help Leaf Life, Tim, and Jacob with the jump line... and I grabbed some tools and wandered through the woods since "the rut" was nearby (as the crow flies... if crows flew low to the ground through the poison ivy).

Here's what that one small, tire-width rut had turned into in just about a month's time:

As one would (well at least "should") expect, this is the end result of one "small rut" that only got worse as it held water, people continued to ride when the trails were closed, then it didn't matter if they were closed or not as it couldn't drain and dry out...

Then people started riding to the left of the rut.  That rut started to hold water, so then they went to the right, up into the foliage... until that became a rutted swamp itself.  This three foot wide piece of trail was probably now closer to eight feet, and here's the thing, THE SITUATION WAS ONLY MORE FUCKED UP THAN WHEN IT STARTED... because... people.

The thing is, I've been aware of the "ride through the center of a puddle, not on the edges" concept of keeping the hole from just getting bigger for eons.  It's just that this is the first time I got what was essentially a time lapse photographic experience IRL as one small rut became this shit hole.

So, I was quite incensed when this got posted on our local MTB Facebook page a week ago:

149 comments, which means it got quite heated... as one might expect when everyone is bored and sitting behind their keyboards.  You can already guess what some of what was said...

"Want a smooth path? Become a roadie. Problem solved"

"Ruts/bumps/rocks are a good thing imo."


"Take it up with the ones actually throwing shovels and sweat into the trails that we all get to enjoy, for free."

"It’s easy to tell the people who don’t volunteer to help maintain trails. #CLUELESS"
 
"The virtue signaling is ear piercing up in here"

There were some misogynistic comments that I won't give further oxygen to, but I can't believe that in a "discussion" of this sort, we still have people working so hard to make our local MTB scene seem less than inclusive and being basically ignorant to what their words are doing to make our wives, girlfriends, daughters, etc feel less than welcome to our "boys club."

I digress.

Fueled by a week's worth of pent up anger about that post and a month's long growing fury as I watched "my" trail get fucked up, I went to work.  I thought it would be a ten or twenty minute job.

It took forty five minutes.

Dig the drain... make it long enough to get lots of water off the trail.  Scoop out the sluicy shit at the bottom of the hole... now make the drain a little deeper because the surface of the trail just got lower.  Drag out the loamy shit in the newer ruts that were added because they'll just serve to hold water in the area later.  Go find some prickly green limbs to shut down the go around that should have never been there to begin with and make it look like it was never there...

Forty five minutes that I coulda spent helping the with the jumps... or building my own shitty, self-serving bump/lump/jumps... or some other irrelevant feature.

I did a little more drainage work here and there before going back to the jump line.  Multiple groups of riders came along as I was working.

"Hey, I know you probably don't know, but the trails are closed."

Then I would calmly educate them as to where to find the trail status online before leaving the house, why they trails are closed, how riding the trails when they're wet makes these problems worse... only prolonging the closures.  I also told them that nearby Park Road Park is currently open, so mebbe go ride there.

I also told them that if they keep riding, there's a good chance there going to happen upon a very surly Leaf Life who will be less cordial about dispersing the bad news.  You see, Leaf was the trail manager at the US National Whitewater Center in another life.  He's wasted his breath a thousand times over telling people the trails are closed, wear a helmet, put your dog on a leash...

His patience is thin... and for good reason.

Anyways...

This is only one of a dozen or more spots that I can think of that have gotten drastically worse recently.  I'm gonna try to take mental notes on future rides, and remember locations, and do what I can when I can.

Please understand, I never think of trail work as being a holistically selfless act.  This is 90% for me, and 10% for other riders.  In the same way that I'll wipe the piss off a public toilet seat before doing my business, it's mostly for my ass, not yours... although I know you don't wanna sit in piss either if you're next in line for the loo.  This post isn't about seeking praise for my "hard work," but to share the story of...

Sorry, you only get MS Paint.  I'm too lazy to fire up my dinosaur PC to use proper Photoshop.

I'll just leave it at that.

Also... "these trails are on public land, and I pay taxes," and also "taxation is theft," and also also therefore "you're double stealing my money."

BTW: It's raining right now.