Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Cap is as Cap does.

We had a pretty solid run of nice weather these past couple weeks, but lately the skys have gone back to their usual disposition, grey and drippy. I woke up this morning and it was looking pretty good out so I decided to see if the wet and temperate weather had made it to the peak yet. Spoiler alert: Not yet. 

Grey and green. Par for the course. 



Theres nothing wrong with a little snow on the side of the roads, 
mother natures finest kickstands. 


Not much of a line choice here. 

That didn't last long, I hit C4000 and decided that if it was already this snowy down here then the peak was going to be a shit show. In what I at the time thought was a smart decision I hung right and took an unnamed (C4010 I have since learned)  logging road to the first road crossing on GL6. Whoops. 

Cougar. Dont correct me. I wont listen. 

With in all of 100' I was slogging through the snow in shorts and a tee shirt, following the prints of what I convinced my self was a cougar. Probably was just the missing dog that I read about on the FOCF message boards. Took about half an hour to slog to GL. 


Just to find that the trail had more snow then any other part of the clear cut. Classic Capitol Forest. It all disappeared after the hump though.  Believe it or not (believe it) the dirt was killer from here on out, there was some mud, but its January. Other then the few patches it was as close to hero conditions as you could ever expect it to get.

                            
This is not drainage, this is removing the backing from a slick right turn and hoping it takes the water with it. While it takes you. Im going to head out this week with a couple shovels and see if I cant remedy this little road bump, or lack there of...


Note to self: give it a couple weeks before you try to hit any trail from the peak. Or not. Fuck it. 

6 comments:

  1. Yeah buddy! That bike looks like so much fun.

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  2. Yeah Cam! This is the sort of post that makes me want to reschedule some appointments and head to The Forest. Rad looking new bike there too. After all of this EMBA talk around FOCF I do wonder if FOCF could be more effective by just modeling EMBA - better work party and volunteer management through higher skilled work party leaders, democratic work party task planning and selection(to better meet the expectations of the riders) and training of volunteers through this system and structure. Volunteer turn out at work parties here is very good - even better than what EMBA sees. The group just needs better training and leadership. Hence the need to go out and "fix" a recent repair can be avoided and the work could be done right the first time. Off to work now.

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  3. Its a tough call, which would be better, a restructure or a merge. Im finding myself thinking that one of the two needs to happen to help progress what we have going on here and now that Battleground has joined we're flanked in by EMBA. The idea of restructuring FOCF I fear would just be met with a "why fix what aint broke" mentality. Having a third party help us address the issues (lack of dig know how...) that we have while building on the strengths that exist (dedication, volunteer turn out...) would go along way. This could open up avenues to some incredible opportunities. In fairness, I think this particular drainage issue is related to that digging that blew up the message board for like two weeks. Not FOCF sanctioned. But I have some bones to pick with some of the work that got done on peacock a couple weeks ago on a work party.... We need better instruction.

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  4. That dig was FOCF sanctioned. Jeff took the fall for that, and shouldn't have.

    I think the EMBA move could be good. But I think expectations of EMBA fixing everything are too high. A change needs to occur here as well. EMBA may end up just being the catalyst for this to happen. Whatever it takes.

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  5. Thats more what I was aiming at, using EMBA as a third party who can impartially diagnose the ills of FOCF, almost like an audit. Then leave the fixing to us. But the potential resource pool that would open up with a merge is pretty exciting. My big concern is that it could be worked out in a way that FOCF remains FOCF and does not fall into some sort of EMBA sub group that is FOCF in name only. Anything less and I think would have the potential to do more harm then good.

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  6. I think FOCF does what it does well. A little more experienced instruction and leadership on trail maintenance and things would be sweet. It almost takes a full time group just to maintain and keep up the existing trails here since there is so much. EMBA would be the political representation FOCF lacks and could hopefully help get new projects going, and help them be completed in a way where the end product works well. I don't see FOCF evolving into something like that very quickly, although it's possible. EMBA has a lot of "tools" that would be very helpful here locally.

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