Intro

I do trail work on Iowa mountain bike trails. There are a few different types of trail work, that are appropriate for different times of the year. I’ll cover a few here and link to more in-depth articles if I’ve made them.

Tool Selection

The selection of tools applies regardless of what you are doing. From simple axes all the way up to large industrial equipment you need to decide what you’re going to bring. For personal tool selection I found that low maintenance lightweight and powerful tools are best. For this reason, all the tools that I use are electrically powered. These tools need almost no maintenance, are powerful, and do not leak fluids when you’re trying to transport them.

My most used tools are as follows:

• Electric String trimmer
• Subcompact brushless sawzall
• Electric chainsaw
• Rogue Hoe McCloed

Over the years of doing trail work, I’ve adopted a philosophy of using the lightest weight most portable tools that will effectively get the job done. Two examples are normal string trimmers versus walk behind string trimmers and a reciprocating saw versus a chainsaw. In the string trimmer case the walk behind string trimmers are gas powered require a significant amount of Maintenance and are difficult to get. While the electric string trimmers require nearly zero maintenance and I have two of them on hand at any given time. In addition I have enough battery power to Outlast the gas powered walk behind string trimmers. The reciprocating saw versus chainsaw case however is a little closer. They are both electrically powered however the reciprocating saw is significantly lighter can have the blade removed and stored and in my case it runs on 18 volt batteries instead of 40 volt batteries which makes transport significantly easier as well. For the vast majority of trail clearing that I do, the 6-in sawzall blade is completely adequate.

The other reason portability is very important is that the trails often are not flat enough for large powerful equipment. String trimmers and sawzalls can go up a cliff face while a brush hog struggles with a steep incline.

Trail mowing

Trail mowing is primarily done in the summer. This can be anything from a large group effort with large machines such as brush mowers and walk behind string trimmers to individuals with their own string trimmers going through the trails.

There is a lot of work that the individual can do that will contribute to the overall well-being safety and enjoyability of the trails. While the Brush Mowers and bigger equipment get a lot of attention, it is the smaller individual contributions that can really make a difference.

For trail mowing I have settled on a brushless electric string trimmer with some Wheels attached that I got off of Amazon and improved just a little bit. It is essentially an ultra light weight walk behind string trimmer. While the string trimmer does not cut nearly as wide of a path as a Brush Mowers it is sufficient enough to open up trails for people to use them where otherwise they would be unusable. This setup makes it very easy to go out and in an hour and a half clear a sizable chunk of trail without all the pre-work required to get tools and ensure they are working.

This is work that typically is needed over the summer months and into the fall months. During winter there is nothing to mow and spring it is usually just starting to come up so it’s not much of a concern.

Trail dirt work

Unfortunately trail dirt work does not mean building jumps and cool Burns usually. It typically means reshaping tread for water to run off and filling in areas that have been eroded significantly. The book trail solutions imba guide to building suite single track is a fantastic resource for seeing how dirt work can affect the trail over time. In addition it gives ideas on proper drainage and trail maintenance.

The Rogue Hoe McCloed is a rather expensive tool, but it’s worth every penny if you’re serious about doing dirt work. Most of the dirt work tools can be found at your local hardware store for relatively cheap but that McCloed stands so far above anything you can get for cheap, I cannot recommend it enough. I have honestly done entire trail reworks with that single tool.

Dirt Work Power Tools

This gets its own special section, because I have tried for years to find power tools that work well on dirt that are portable and are lightweight. When you talk dirt work usually you’re talking industrial size things or at very least wide open areas like redoing a patio or a parking lot. Specifically, I’ve tried to find tamping tools that are small enough to bring to the trail with you on a bike. When I couldn’t find these, because they don’t exist, I have tried to make them. This was met with limited success. I’m still on the hunt to fill in this gap.

“Face Slapper removal”

Face flappers are the branches that hang over the trail and hit you while you are walking or riding. There are kind of two different categories of removal here. The easy category is shorter term removal and the harder category is long-term removal. Both are very valuable as the short-term removal is significantly easier to do in both time involved and effort.

Short Term Removal

Short-term removal is cutting back the face slappers so they are not over the trail. They will still grow back or the tree / Bush will grow around it in time but it’s appreciated and may be good enough for a few years. One of the major downsides of this, is some plants when you cut them will grow back with multiple new branches. It’s like a plant Hydra.

The tools for this kind of clearing can range from simple hand tools up to chainsaws. The humble electric hedge trimmer seems to be the top dog as it can remove huge amounts of small branches. With face flappers they are not going to be large branches they will be only little ones. This is a maintenance item that anyone can help with since even a pair of hand pruners will help get face slappers. This is typically only needed during the growing season, once the growing season stops the face slappers are usually cleared out pretty quickly.

Long Term Removal

Long-term removal means removing the entire branch, or even the entire plant if it is invasive. See Effective Strategies for Honeysuckle Removal in Iowa Forests. As you’re cutting much further back, this means that larger tools will be required.
A hand saw is sufficient for small amounts of work but a sawzall or chainsaw would be preferred for large amounts of work. And given that there are hundreds of honeysuckle bushes right next to the trail, there’s a lot of work to go around.

Fallen Tree Removal

Removing fallen trees is a year-round process. After large wind storms tornadoes and snow events there can be many trees across the trail. Snow events pose a particularly interesting issue since oftentimes the trees are not fallen they’re just weighted down and branches are across the trail.

For small trees a hand saw works acceptably moving up from that a sawzall with a pruning blade can take out a large amount of fallen trees. It also works really well for pruning back larger trees so the chainsaws can get to them. Finally there are the chainsaws. They are the most powerful however they are not nearly as portable as the other two options. For this reason they aren’t as attractive as they might initially seem.

Another thing to note is that land managers do not like chainsaws on their land due to liability reasons. Be sure to know the land manager stance on this before clearing out trees with them.

New trail cutting

The real art and trail cutting is in the planning of the trail itself. Besides that it is just a combination of trail mowing dirt work and long-term face slapper removal. For that reason see the above points for the tools needed for these. I won’t be going into how to actually plan out trails here although the IMBA trail building guide is a great resource for this.

Snow trails

Snow trails are an interesting area in the state of Iowa. We don’t get enough snow to really justify permanent trails, but some years we get enough snow to make temporary trails.

Locations that get a lot of snow makes sense to have snow trails. I have used what is called a snow dog to make snow trails and groom them. This worked pretty well however, the machine had some issues that made it kind of sketchy to run.
Specifically, the clutch on the engine would not release meaning that the machine was difficult to start and also would not stop very easily. In fact sometimes the only way to stop it was to kill the engine. In the middle of the woods in the dead of night by yourself this is not a great feeling.