Only seasoned trail builders show up when the day starts at 19 degrees. Today our four Traildogs competed another 1/4 mile of finish work on the seventh section. We parked on Brady Mountain Road, just north of where the seventh section will intersect the road, and hiked up to where our machine crew from Progressive Trail Design were busy carving out the final mile of the seventh section. It only required a hike of about 25 minutes to intersect the roughed in trail. We are working back west toward where we stopped last week while the machine crew continues on east. The trail is mostly soil, clay, and small stones and is not difficult to work. We’re hoping to make good progress tomorrow. We are about a mile east of where we stopped last week. The machine crew is less than a mile from Brady Mountain Road. We will meet …Click to read the full article
Friday we reached a key milestone for this fall’s dig – the halfway point of the planned 4.2 miles of new trail, along the northern face of Big Bear Mountain. The portion of the seventh section is a rolling, winding trail that snakes along just below the northern summit of Big Bear Mountain as it goes around large rock outcropping, boulders and old growth hardwoods. The completed product, as you look back on your finish work, has a beautiful, natural patina of fresh earth and fallen leaves. The new trail looks like it belongs there and is an enhancement to a serene stretch of remote woodland overlooking the sparkling waters of Lake Ouachita. The new Traildog Vista that peeks through a wide break in the forest canopy is a must stopping point for any user and will be one where a million Kodak Moments will be shot. At the end …Click to read the full article
Lake Ouachita Vista TrailPosted on by Al Gathright
Nov. 28 It was an eerie start to the day as a dense fog hung low in the Crystal Springs Marina Basin. Capt. Dan expertly steered us to our destination. Four Traildogs groomed .27 miles. The total distance of new groomed trail is now 1.41 miles. The Traildogs also removed a dead tree near the new bench at Traildog Vista. The crew from Progressive Trail Design is about a mile ahead of us. Now that the crew is back on their pace, they predict a Dec 7 completion date. They have about 1.5 miles remaining. USFS staff, Tom Ledbetter, Jake Raines and Chris Ham were on the trail today. Their mission was to replace trial course flagging that recently disappeared. Thursday and Friday will be the last work days until the dig crew reaches Brady Mtn Road. It is currently a 4 mile ATV ride one way to our work site. …Click to read the full article
We had four volunteers today who assisted in the construction of the newly-christened “Traildog Vista” on the seventh section of the trail on Bear Mountain. We installed a trail bench and utilized the native stone of the mountain to enhance the site. We cleared brush and two dead spars which opened up the sweeping view of Lake Ouachita far below. The Progressive Trail Design machine crew continues to gouge out new tread and are now past the rifle range located at the base of the South slope of the mountain. The Traildog volunteers have now completed one and two-thirds miles of the newly dug tread and are only about two feet behind the machine team’s mini-excavator that trails the lead Sutter trail dozer and mini-skidder machines breaking down the down slope debris and cutting the angle of repose. We are canceling tomorrow’s planned work day to allow the dig team …Click to read the full article
Today we had our first milestone of this fall dig by completing the first mile of finish work on the second leg of the seventh section. Perfect fall weather and five volunteers worked the freshly turned tread following our machine team that puts us 3.5 miles from where we moor the barge each day at the bottom of Big Bear Mountain. We are getting plenty of exercise getting to and from the work site. I can’t say enough about the lake views from their section of the trail. Imagine the view at the Hickory Nut Mt. Vista stretching 2.5 miles along the ridge of the mountain. We have chosen a particularly scenic overlook that we would like to christen as “Traildog Point.” Also today I had and excused absence from the trail work to take part in an awards ceremony at the Federal Building in Hot Springs where the Traildogs …Click to read the full article
Friday was another fine day on the trail with unseasonably warm weather and clear skies. We had four Traildog volunteers who pushed the finishing on the newly dug tread another 850 feet giving us 1/3 of a mile of new trail for the week’s effort. As we were storing our tool cache at the end of the day we noticed a large hollow log on the North side of the trail. Large, hollow logs are often encountered, except deep back in this log we could see two reddish eyes peering out with the look of a local resident disturbed by the hub-hub of our construction. Our best guess was a small raccoon had made the log its home against the cold weather that is coming our way. We assured it we would be our of the neighborhood after just one more day of work. We will return to the mountain …Click to read the full article
It seemed impossible but the weather on Big Bear Mountain was even better today than yesterday, with light southern winds, warm autumn sunshine and an unbeatable view. We had three volunteers again today: myself, Dan Watson and Chuck Dumas. We completed grooming another 650 feet of new trail, and the lead team of machine operators from Progressive Trail Design pushed forward another 1/3 of a mile. We were working in a very tough area of large rock formations, just a 150 feet below the crest of the mountain, that challenged our ability to establish a smooth tread. During lunch break, we climbed up to the crest for a double view of both the southern and northern slopes of Big Bear Mountain. The crest is one long spine of ancient stone laced with veins of white quartz. This spine of rock looks for all the world like an ancient skeletal backbone …Click to read the full article
The Traildogs started their 2012 Fall Dig on Big Bear Mountain today, Nov. 7. We had three seasoned Traildogs today as we loaded tools and equipment onto the Corps of Engineers barge for the trip across Crystal Springs Bay to the base of Big Bear Mountain. It was a challenging day as lake levels are so low we had a very difficult time finding safe place on shore to unload our tools and equipment, but find one we did. Once we had unloaded our equipment. we had to remove a couple of fallen trees that were blocking our path to the mountain. Attached is photo of Dan cutting one of the dead falls that we removed. Once we had unloaded our tools and equipment, it took almost an hour to reach the work site at the summit of the mountain. The views of lake Ouachita from the trail were a …Click to read the full article
New Signs at Pipe Spring We recently installed a new trail directional sign at the pipe spring on USFS 47 where the Charlton and LOViT trails merge, about two miles west of Crystal Springs Road. We have been receiving feedback from users that they are confused on where the Charlton goes and the LOViT goes from this point. Hopefully this will solve those issues. Bear Mountain Construction – Crystal Springs to Brady Mountain We finalized our construction plans for this fall’s dig on the second half of the seventh section of the trail. The Progressive Trail Design team will arriving on site on Monday, October the 29th. They will begin construction, working from where we stopped construction last February, and will move east toward Brady Mountain road about 4.0 miles from our previous stop position. This dig team will be leaving a more finished trail that will require the …Click to read the full article
It wasn’t cold – it was frigid this morning as twenty volunteers gathered at the Crystal Springs Marina for a day of trail building on Big Bear Mountain. Led by six trail-tested Traildogs, we had six delightful AmeriCorps Volunteers and eight enthusiastic Arkansas Wildlife Federation volunteers depart from the Marina starting at 8:30 this morning. The air temperature at lake side was 23 degrees with a 10-15 mph wind out of the northwest. The Traildogs left early to do a little tree removal and user sign installation on the sixth and seventh sections of the trail. They removed two large trees blocking the eastern end of the sixth section on Little Bear Mt., then installed several user signs on the newly minted seventh section. On the barge ride over to Little Bear Creek, water splashing over the front edge of the barge immediately froze our bow line and coated the …Click to read the full article