Hammock essential for trail construction

[WV]

Can't do without my Peoples Bridge Hammock when building mountain bike trails. 3 or 4 hours of muscling rocks out of the ground with my walk-behind tractor and rotary plow followed by a nice long nap enables another couple of hours of work.
PBH for napping.jpg
I used to carry the pack and spreader bars in a daypack while riding the mountain bike to the work area, but the spreaders were a nuisance, so I have switched to a PBH with pockets and can cut spreaders from a dead pine branch. I just leave them behind for use the next day.
spreader bar in pocket - foot end.jpg
This is potentially a method for ultralight backpacking. In the morning, just cut up the spreaders and cook breakfast in a wood stove.
I've been too busy working on these trails for the last two years to do this, though.
stones for trail armoring.jpg
Cutting bench trails on a side slope brings up a lot of rocks. All but the biggest of these were tossed out by the rotary plow - not in a neat line like this, though. I had to do some collecting and hauling to get them ready to "armor" this spongey area of the trail - many small roots in the organic soil. Now to set them in place ...
Pulaski riding on rotary plow.jpg
The biggest half dozen of these rocks required persuasion by the Pulaski, which rides on the safety bar of the rotary plow, like a lifeboat on a ship.

[KBr00ks]

Nice work! What trail system is this?

[WV]

They are mountain bike trails in Watoga State Park. It's early days - only a third of the proposed 5 miles of trail are done after two years, so I'll get to nap there for some time yet. As last month's trail cam footage shows, the wildlife still outnumbers the humans. More than twice as many bears as mountain bikers.
https://studio.youtube.com/video/crNRW70rNA8/edit

[Shug]

The Restorative Power of the Hammock. Mountain biking is demanding. Off road unicycle even tougher. No coasting!!!
Shug

[OlTrailDog]

Here is an alternative to your rotary plow: ;-)
SaltSite10_072004g.JPG

Actually this is my crew mate and me plowing up an outfitter created salt site using a trail plow. (this was followed with a spring tooth harrow and skidding in logs to cover the site) The same style plow I used for plowing trails known as a hillside plow that you would flip the shoe depending on which direction you were plowing. This was followed by using a trail grader which was an extra challenging piece of equipment that did a good job moving the dirt following plowing, but had the capacity to break something or throw you into the air when the tip of the grader caught on a rock or root. Unfortunately, during the years I plowed and graded trails I was very much a Luddite and eschewed picture taking. A practice that I very much regret.

Or there was this alternative too: Det cord and kinetic explosives ready for mud packs.
248128872.jpg

Or the labor intensive "plowing":
92230352.jpg

Another useful tool was a 'stone boat' using a single or team to haul rocks for filling in gabiens or cribbing for bridge piers:
Rob_SchafferMdws_1973_3.JPG

[WV]

Looks like you cut bench trails on steeper hillsides than I do. There's a rotary plow model that swivels to cut one way or the other, but it's too expensive and too heavy me. Wish I had a mechanized equivalent of your trail grader. The rotary plow can shake me like a rag doll if I'm not careful.The Pulaski in your third photo looks all too familiar. Someday soon I'll replace the wheels on my walk-behind tractor with caterpillar tracks, but I expect a team like the one in your photos would be even better at overcoming friction. Come east if you want a busman's holiday.