Views On Singletrack

You might remember this image I posted about a week or so ago....

A while back I had a ride in the Green Belt. This is a strip of wooded land either side of Black Hawk Creek running Southeastward of Waterloo toward Hudson, Iowa. It is where I used to take long walks in the mid-80's and it is where I learned how to ride single track. I've seen the evolution/erosion of the shore line. I've seen full sections of the old trail disappear in to the water never to be seen again. I've seen poorly thought out maintenance and I've seen grand plans fail.

I don't mean to say I'm some sort of "expert" on singletrack by any means, but I know a lot about singletrack in the Greenbelt and how people treat it, use it, maintain it, and neglect it. My ride a while back brought many thoughts to the fore, and a recent trail group's Facebook thread reminded me of some other things. So, once again, I must post the following disclaimer before moving on with my thoughts.

NOTE: Large doses of "my opinion" will be handed out in gloppy dollops today. You've been forewarned.....

So, singletrack- that narrow dirt ribbon laced on either side by copious amounts of Nature. I tend to have a "narrow definition" of singletrack, (sorry for the pun), and much of what I see today in the woods isn't singletrack. Not by my definition. It is sanitized, contrived, not well thought out, and too easy. It has too much "man made" and not enough "natural". Much of the singletrack- so called- doesn't work with the area it is in, but against it, and the results are predictable.

About as close as it gets today to the classic, old school Green Belt single track.

The Green Belt, running as it does along Black Hawk Creek, is very susceptible to flooding and erosion these days. More so than ever. Much of this has been exacerbated by man's use of the agricultural landscape, draining of sloughs and other wet areas, and the run-off created by the increasing amount of paved areas. Back when the Green Belt trail was put in, for equestrian purposes, by the way, this wasn't the case. The trail was stable and pretty much unchanged for decades. It was a true, worn in single track when I "discovered" it in the 80's. There weren't any cyclists on it back then. Not many horses either. It was mostly a hiking trail and a place for those trying to get away from the attention of authority figures.

Then I got a mountain bike and I took it back in the Green Belt circa 1989-90. I rarely saw other cyclists here. There were still plenty of the original trails left, but even then I recall flooding that took out huge chunks of shoreline that used to have the trail on it. In fact, I nearly flew right into the creek on one ride when I came around a corner and poof! The trail was gone. Instead the single track ended about twenty feet above the creek in an exposed tangle of grassy roots. A hairy root ball sticking out into nothing. I stopped just in time.

It was also a given that you didn't ride the Green Belt back then without getting "high fived" by Nature. Tree branches slapped you in the face. Seven foot tall weeds lined parts of the trail, making the singletrack invisible for several yards. Nettles would scrape your legs and make your skin itch to high heaven. Waterloo Parks & Rec would mow once a year. This generally happened after the weeds and undergrowth matured, maybe early September. Late August in some years. You might not even get to ride back there some years in Summer, the vegetation was so thick.

This bandit trail in the Green Belt is a pretty good reminder of "how things used to be".

This was all part of the adventure for me. Weed whacking, back then, was a term I used to describe how myself and my bicycle would blaze a trail in the "Iowa Jungle". It wasn't about trail maintenance with a motorized gadget. It was minimal impact cycling and Nature ruled and did whatever she wanted to do. That was understood. We worked with that, not against it, back in those days. The singletrack was narrow, serpentine, and if it went through a muddy hole, so did you. Lensing out of the trail was unheard of back then.

Now days most of the Green Belt is wide enough for a dump truck and mowed on a regular basis. Some say that's better.....

The Flood of '93 wreaked havoc on the Green Belt. The City kind of abandoned the area for several years. Workarounds for flood damage were seemingly natural and often maintained and originally cleared by cyclists, who, along with hikers, were the main folks back there in those days. Then the 2008 flood did another number on the Green Belt, and everywhere else around here, and things radically changed after that.

The City brought in an end loader instead of the old, 4ft wide brush hog mower they used to use. Suddenly a clear cut mentality was being used to maintain the area. The single track was double tracked for a while. The big machines the City used were destroying what was once a wild area and turning it in to a grass highway, for all intents and purposes. Quads and motorcyclists started tearing up the place and I even saw pick-up trucks with fisherman driving up from the Southern terminus of the trail at one time a few years back. The City made it possible to drive back there due to the new, ultra-wide track they enforced on the Green Belt, so people did just that. We never saw that back when the single track was truly narrow.

The other thing that I see is how trail users want to "make things easier" all the time. If they see mud, they try to ride around it, lensing out the trail and making a little mud hole a great big one. Instead of getting off their bicycles or taking a few minutes of time, they walk and ride around fallen branches instead of clearing them off the trail. They'd rather burn in another line instead of maintaining the one that has been there for decades. I blame the super-wide mowing job the City does now. The users take the easier routes because they can. Nature is pushed further away, and it doesn't take much imagination to see that a paved trail mentality is starting to take hold of this part of Waterloo. Yeah....more run-off issues, more high maintenance costs, and more sanitized trail. Gah! I hope it never happens, but city governments seem to think paved Nature trails are an attraction for everyone.

Typical single track look that CVAST does these days.

Finally, there are those in the area, past and present, who felt that our "elevationally challenged" singletrack needed help and that "structures", stunts, and earthen berms would be the answer. What they did not, and many still do not, take in to account is that we have flood plain trails. These trails will always be susceptible to erosion and damage from flooding. What is more, wind damage is also a constant enemy to clear trails here. Accepting what you have, working with it, and not against it, is the best policy. I'm not against structured trail experiences, but we do not have the area suited for it. It is what it is. Why beat yourself up trying to turn it into something it isn't?

Now, I don't have all the answers, but I know that all across the nation, singletrack is getting less "natural" and more contrived.  I feel with the way things seem to be headed, we're taking away more than we need to be. There should be a better balance of the "natural" and the maintained. Getting dirty and having a brush with green things shouldn't be frowned upon. Singletrack should be narrow, not eight feet wide with a bare tread down the middle. Do we really need to build berms and structures, or should we learn how to ride the land as it lays? I'm not sure where the balance is there, but I see more "built" trails than I do trails that are so much a part of the landscape you barely notice it.