Trail Maintenance & Reconstruction
Trail constructed across rocky cliff face. This "before" photo is before maintenance on the Southfork Cottonwood Creek Trail, Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest, MT.
Maintenance
All trails eventually need maintenance. Common maintenance needs include, but are not limited to:
- Vegetation clearance
- Clearance of downed trees
- Repairing existing trail drainage
- Adding new trail drainage
- Hardening trail tread in wet or soft soils
- Adding erosion-limiting devices
- Reducing steep tread grades by adding constructed risers or steps
- Repairing or reshaping the trail surface, including removing or covering rocks and roots
- Repairing or rebuilding drainage crossings
- Repairing trail structures
- Adding new surfacing (soil, crushed stone) to replace material lost to trail wear and erosion
If you have detailed specifications for maintenance, we'll follow those. Otherwise, we can suggest a reasonable maintenance strategy along with a cost estimate. Trust our experienced crews to do a quality job.
Reconstruction
Severely degraded trails may require reconstruction. Depending on the situation, reconstruction may include, but is not limited to:
- Extensive regrading of the tread and trailbed
- Importing material to fill trail ruts
- Narrowing tread that has become excessively wide or braided
- Hardening or elevating some or all of the tread
- Advanced or extensive trail drainage work
- Rebuilding or replacing bridges and trail structures
As with maintenance, we'll follow your detailed specs or we can design an effective reconstruction strategy for you.
Reroutes
If a trail has a fundamentally unsustainable relationship with its site or use, rerouting it is often a more sustainable, more satisfactory, and less expensive solution than continued maintenance or reconstruction. In reroutes, the former alignment is usually obliterated. Cost for reroutes is similar to new trail design/construction plus the cost of restoring the old trail to the level you prefer.
If you have a detailed plan for a reroute, we'll follow it. Otherwise, we can work with you to determine whether your most effective solution is continued maintenance, reconstruction, or a reroute, then suggest a effective strategy/design and estimate the cost.