UPDATE: April 26th, We are pushing start time back to 10AM in hopes the hard rain will have stopped. We still have projects that can be done in the damp. We need YOUR help. Thank you.
9AM at the front entrance of Pine Hill Park. We will be working to clean up the front entrance and do repair work to Exit Strategy. We have tools and gloves. Bring water and sunscreen.
The spring of 2019, the Rutland City Recreation Department is offering a new all-girls mountain biking program. Check it out!
Gritty Girls Mountain Bike Club: Grades 3-8; Sundays from 1-3pm, 4/28/2019 – 6/2/2019. Dates may change due to weather. Cost $35 for Rutland city residents; $46, non-residents. This all-girls club will be friendly and fun. Confidence, knowledge, and basic skills will be gained in a supportive, team environment. Includes t-shirt. Equipment loan and/or bike discounts are available. Get ready to ride the trails!
August 15th, Stegosaurus will be closed for the day while we remove a couple of large dead oaks near Hour Glass Bridge. Please refrain from riding, hiking or trail running on Stego Wednesday. THANK YOU.
Lower part of Aaron’s Air is temporarily closed. It is getting some much needed refurbishment. Please DO NOT ride the lower part please.
Tom Estill’s fantastic spring report of happenings in Pine Hill Park.
Thank you Rosey, Chris and Bryan for spending 3 hours on a damp Sunday morning in Pine Hill Park. Complete with mosquitoes having breakfast on them.
As we are in the midst of the freeze thaw cycles. We have a few trails that we will be closing off for winter. This will happen the week of November 20th. These trails stay closed until spring is well under way.
Droopy Muffin (steep hill) between Intersections 30 and 30A will close, Lichen Rock and Exit Strategy. We do this to protect the trail tread from ruts when it’s soft and folks are riding. There is always a good possibility that Voldemort will close in late winter once the surface water starts running.
Please respect our trail closures. Our volunteer groups work really hard to have a great trail system so please don’t make work for them by rutting trails up.
Thanks! Remember rubberside down.
Jesse from Green Mtn College and Nate Netsch repairing the corner on Southern Cross so it rides a little bit better.
Folks here is an excellent video on why we do not remove leaves from our trails.
Reasons why we do not remove leaves from Pine Hill Park trails and why our bridges do not have hard wire mesh on top.
We tried leaf removal for 2 years in a row about 6-7 years ago. By July our trails are all ball bearings. Means people are slipping and sliding around on ball bearings all summer long which isn’t any fun. Leaves help hold our trail tread together. A lot of this has to do with our soil composition compared to other areas. In the spring by leaving the fall leaves on it protects our trail tread from freeze thaw cycles which lets us open up earlier.
The other issue are leaf berms on the downhill side of trails and clogging our drainage’s up. Means water runs down the trail tread which is washing away our good dirt and creating more drainage’s issues. The other downside is leaf blowers blow all the dirt off the trail tread. We work WAY too hard to move dirt on the trail tread to have a leaf blower come along and blow it off again.
Why our bridges do not having hardware mesh on them. The bridges that we have seen in Vermont that have hardware mesh on them are flat there are no curves/bends or twists. Most of the bridges in our local area are made out of pressure treated lumber which is slippery when wet. Our decking on the bridges in Pine Hill Park are composite material which we believe is not as slippery when wet like pressure treated lumber. We do not want people falling on the hardware mesh which would hurt even more than falling on the composite decking.
Yes we know the leaves make it more challenging to walk, run or ride but by leaving the leaves on the trail our system is more sustainable in the long run.
Thank you for your cooperation.
