O'bannon Woods Trail Work, Group Ride, Cook Out, Camp Out weekend

[Chris Ward]

May 14th and 15th we will be having a two day trail work party at O'bannon in hopes of making significant progress on the fire tire return loop.

The term Trail Work refers to the part of the event were we will construct sweet new single track which when complete will include some of the features seen in pictures below.

The term party refers to the ride and cook out afterwards.  For the ride we will ride one of the most scenic sections of the AHT that includes the views shown in the photos below.  For the cook out HMBA/KYMBA will be providing food and fine beverages.  By fine I mean micro-brew!

To sweaten the pot and to support trail work On Your Left Cycles Will be on site providing free swag!


View of rock valley from new segment of fire tower trail



Rock features to be incorporated in the new section of fire tower trail









Pictures of section of AHT we will ride post trail work.






The schedule
Trail work at 9am both Sat & Sunday
Group Ride 2pm both Saturday and Sunday
Cook Out Saturday Evening post group ride saturday evening
Camp out Saturday Evening, camping will also be available Friday evening for anyone wanting to come down Friday.

Entrance into the park and camping will be free for trail volunteers!

Please post questions on this thread or feel free to contact me.  
Please post if you plan to attend and if you plan to camp so we can reserve the right amount sites and so we can figure out food.

Thanks
Chris Ward
502-608-2466

[Waynebachmann]

Hey Chris I will be out there at least on Saturday and hopefully be able to stay the night. I have the Fire Tower blown to Iron bridge and will get the rest by next week, Hope some people come out to enjoy the O'bannon experience. I will be glad to show people  the park's potential

[Chris Ward]

Here are some more details

For Saturday we will be meeting at the pool parking lot at 9am to work until about 12noon.   We will head from there to the camp ground for lunch.   I will have power bars and other snacks.  If you need something more than that  you might want to pack that.

Once lunch is done we will ride.  For the long ride we will ride rocky ridge fire tower trail to 462 and then we will take 462 to the AHT, we will ride the aht from 462 to cold Friday road.  We will then ride Cold Friday road back to park entrance and either take fire tower/rockey ridge back to camp ground or the road, depending on how everyone is feeling. This ride should be somewhere in the neighborhood of 22 miles.  It can be shorten by 5 miles by taking rockey ridge/fire tower out.   

For the shorter ride the Fire Tower trail and the rocky ridge trail will be ridden.  From the camp ground will ride right on the rockey ridge trail and hang a right on the fire tower trail and ride that until you reach the Fire Tower Trail.  Turn around and ride back down the fire tower trail until you reach the Rocky ridge and hang a right and ride until you reach the turn off.  If you ride back up to the camp ground and finish you will have 7.5 half miles, if you do additional loop around Rocky ridge you will have 10 miles.

From here we will head back to the camp ground were we will be cooking out.  I am planning on having burgers, brats, pasta salad, chips and salsa.  We will also have beverages,  water and beer...

For Sunday we will again meet at the pool parking lot at 9am and do trail work until about 12noon.   After lunch we will again have two riding options available, the same long ride and short ride that we did on Saturday.  See above for description.

If anyone has questions feel free to post up on here or give me a call at 502- six zero 8 II four six 6
Thanks
Chris Ward

[Kirk Wheeler]

Chris - I still plan on coming down and grilling the evening meal. I will need to be on lite duty so I coming down for the day on Saturday (hike and hang out) and grill'n the evening meal. I will head back home late Saturday!

[Chris Ward]

Awesome.  I just sent you an email short time ago.  Your help on Saturday will be great. I got the bison ordered and will be picking it up from the butcher on Friday.

Thanks
Chris

[Paul_Arlinghaus]

I will be heading down this afternoon to ride and camp and join Sunday's work session. 

Paul

[Chris Ward]

We had a great weekend of trail work,  camping and some riding.   We were able to complete close to 1/2 mile of new trail thanks to a great volunteer turn out (between the two days we had 17 mountain bikers show up) and great support from the park (7 park employees were out working on the trails as well)    This is impressive given the shaky weather forecast and the cold rainy Sunday we had.  Most of the trails we ride on in this area would not be possible with out volunteer help.  I hope everyone that showed up enjoyed them selfs and I am pretty sure you will look forward to coming back to O'bannon seeing in person where we are trying to go with this new trail.   Special thinks goes Kirk wheeler for coming down from Indianapolis to cook for the team! Thanks to everyone coming and helping! We got a lot done.

I like to think On Your Left Cycles for their support of this event and past events.  On Your Left Cycles came through again with some great swag.  Everyone that showed up to trail work left with something cool!  It was awesome.  Please stop by on Your Left, they have a great bike shop,  provide great service and are supporting our trail buidling efforts.

I also thank HMBA and KYMBA for their support of the event.  It is important to have good strong Mountain bike clubs backing trail construction, it is the only way we are going to get new trail. Please Join KYMBA and HMBA they are doing good stuff in O'bannon and around both states.

Finally but not least I would like to think O'bannon woods staff for all of their help over the weekend.  O'bannon is an awesome place with huge potential.  We have great partners from the staff in helping us realize the potential for great mountain bike trails in the park.  The 7 employees that were out working over the weekend have beein hired for the summer to help build trail.

I am going to try to plan a group ride out there in the coming weeks, so we can ride what we didn't get to ride this weekend.  I hope to see everyone from this weekend come back for the group ride!

Chris Ward

[Kirk Wheeler]

Chris did you get my Gazebbo and table dismantled OK on Sunday and shipped back with Paul?   I will hookup with Paul to retrieved it. It did come in really handy! We would have been very wet without it!

[Paul_Arlinghaus]

Chris under counted the volunteers by one.



He couldn't resist Kirk's cooking.

Here are some trail building photos.













Thanks to Chris for hosting the weekend, Kirk for cooking, and the Park for sending out their work crew.

[Kirk Wheeler]

Awesome pictures Paul, I am sure the mouse found plenty of scraps. Thank you for bringing back my stuff!

[RIC0]

We having another once of these weekend ordeals this year???  If so someone make it official so we can get it on our calendars.

[PKemppainen]

As a matter of fact, we have a major trail maintenance event planned for March 12-13.The plan is to tackle the Adventure Trail.

The focus will be on the eight-mile long section from Old Forest Road to Cold Friday Road, cleaning up fallen logs, trimming back undergrowth, and adding new signage. 

Additional crews will be shuttled into the Indian Creek Overlook Shelter and the Old Homestead Shelter via logging roads to clean up those camping sites.

This is the longest section of the Adventure Trail between road access points, making it a much more challenging segment to maintain. It's also one of the more scenic parts of the trail, with a number of rugged climbs and descents.

If you are interested in joining us, please let us know. We need a head count to insure we have adequate transportation lined up and supplies in place.

Send your RSVP to:  obannonmtbinfo@twc.com

Thanks!

[RIC0]

So this is a campout, cookout, drinking, riding weekend your saying???

[PKemppainen]

So this is a campout, cookout, drinking, riding weekend your saying???

Volunteers who wish to camp are always welcome, and free campsites for volunteers will be available. If you wish to camp, let us know so we can make arrangements.

Being mid-March, it is a "weather dependent" event, and there is a good chance some of the trails within the State Park may be too wet too ride. The Adventure Trail may be okay to ride, especially if we have a couple days of dry weather beforehand.

We're ironing out a few more details yet, and will know more in the next few days. We're looking for a head-count, to make sure we can plan accordingly. If you're interested in joining in, RSVP via a PM to me or at:

obannonmtbinfo@twc.com