The focus of this weekend was to work towards finishing up the last corners on FrankNFurter. When we were last there, we had a digger with a clock and only had a wee bit of time to connect up the two tracks. So we just barrelled up with the digger, with one corner too steep and too tight and the other too tight for most bikers.

Colin opened up another couple of corners on the way up and piled up some dirt (yay for Diggers and their buckets) for the Berm Queen and helpers to get stuck in. Recent club member David was introduced to the joys of trail building and Lisa gave him his initiation rock to dislodge, which he did admirably! Of course it was 5 times the size it was expected to be.

Fifth Corner After – but not finished just yet.

Fifth Corner Before


Colin then got straight into widening and opening up the two corners that needed attention. We have now pretty much gotten the hang of this and are now moving at least four times the soil we ever anticipated when we first started using a Digger. What this means is a nice flat big corner that everyone will enjoy climbing up and later when the berms are in, rail round them on the downhill as well.
Fourth Corner
“What rock?” says the Berm Queen.

Fourth Corner
David and his Initiation Rock






As this was a multiple terraced traverse track, we had a bit of an issue getting rid of the massive volumes of dirt, rock and vegetation from the top corner. Luckily just down the way, we had a clay spot that was a big boggy, so we used this fill to retain the edge and add in some rock and “nice” dirt to help. Whilst it worked a treat, Col deserves a medal for the number of trips he made, I reckon about 100. But it sure beats doing it with a wheelbarrow!!
Colin the Digger Master
Shifting some of the ‘spare’ dirt and retaining the boggy bit
The corners look great and now just need a bit of touching up with the digger and then handed over to the Berm Queen for the final touches. Will do some better before and after photos next month.
Thanks to the Rules who popped out to deal to a naughty pine that fell down over the River and onto an area I want to build on in the future. It was good to see Justin the Money Man out getting some blisters and neighbours Ursula, Alister, Andrew and Chris pop out and say hi. Andrew helped us out put one of the wayward tracks back on the digger.
Next month, it’s finish up on FranknFurter, some rock breaking, another massive berm and then after some seasoning we should be able to open up another 600m of track. w00t.
We look forward to seeing you come out for a ride.
