Philadelphia Mountain Biking Association - Forums

Trail closed at "twisty turny" until November for bridge work. Just a point of interest for members. (VG side, between Summit and Meadows)

They've got some pretty big equipment out there. Some giant excavators for doing some serious earth moving.

BTW Dr chainsaw, there's a tree down across the trail. Just norht of where W Mt Airy Ave meets the park on the Mount Airy side. You could get it with your small saw I think (your mission if you choose to accept it). It may be asking to much of a hand saw.

You know... With that giant escavator, and amount of work, and they are closing it till NOVEMBER?!?!

I bet Rich could do that work with the tiny 5' back hoe we have on the trails right now in less than a week!!!

That tree could be cut with hand saw in few hours of hard work, or with chainsaw in few minutes... Lemme know if no one gets to it by Saturday, then I'll come out with mine.

dz

I sent you a PM about location and size of tree. No problem.

Who is doing the major construction? And where/what is it?

I think it's either gas company or city. It's at the bottom of Twisty-Turny, also known as Chinese Downhill. The section of two steep climbs that come down like a V to a concrete bridge on the side of Forbidden Dr. between VG and Bells Mill Rd.

They are working right around that bridge. But you can get around it, just have to get off the bike for a little bit.

dz

Do any of these trails have real names?  "Twisty-turny"?  "Chinese Downhill"?  "Monster", aka "Mother"?  Original names like "Indian"?  PMBA could perform a real service to bikers by coming up with some descriptive names for the common trails, so we don't have to call them "You know, that one that goes by the tree, then downhill and over some rocks, then back up and ends up at the road".  And I'll bet that some PMBA members could come up with very unique and original names.  Heck, if we're BUILDING them, we ought to be able to NAME them!

Jon I totally agree. THat is a great idea. Eventually we can print up our own maps for members and name the trails. Another future project!

in it's simplest form, the loops leaving form Valley Green:

I call Indian "Indian", leaving from the other side  "Reverse Indian"        Across from Valley Green I call Penn (there is a statue of Penn somewhere along there) and the loop behind VG headed toward Lincoln Drive I call reverse Penn .

So we go: Indian, Reverse Indian, Penn, Reverse Penn.

It could be Indian, Meadows, Penn, & Bowl ?

Of course we could always go with "Native American" instead.

Jon, that's a good idea. The show stopper is in signage. Having maps with names is good, but most people would not see the maps, or woul dnot match the names on the maps to the actual sections of the trail.
The solution is to have proper signage at trail heads. But FPC is very very very very... did i say that they are very strict about placing signage in the park?
One day i hope that FOW and PMBA will get enough leverage with FPC to be able to embark on a project to create uniform, acceptable, durable signage for all the trails, and place it throughout the park.

dz

Yeah, I agree that we would be limited by not being able to put trail signs like "Banzi Pipeline" up, but at least we could make up our own maps and have names for trails like "Twisty turny", whose name seems to have survived amongst a small group of riders despite the lack of signs.  If I get inspired I'll try to use my GPS to create a map that has sections that are broken up by natural intersections or roads, and come up with "placeholder" names like "trail A" for them.  We could then come up with something more creative.  This may be a good winter project.

Tom, I took care of downed trees(s)
around 2pm. I like to do most of the sawing during the week and before the evening crowds. Never know when I will get a rogue know-it-all that reads me the riot act about chainsaws in the Wissy.

Anyway, it was a bit of a struggle with the small bike portable 13'' saw, but got a good 3 foot of pass-able choke point that I can clean up later with the 24'' hot-knife-through-butter saw.  There was actually almost 3 trees or very large branches down in that one spot. If you see any erosion issues with way I did it, lets take care of that and the one stump at the corkscrew at the bottom of the trail hill at Jeantte street some day.

I seen it. Looks good. Thanks man. Remember, safety first.

i rode by and took a look.  looks like the city is replacing a water pipe.  the bridge is not the focus.  that said...till novemeber?  they were not digging up 100 feet of pipe.  they had it expoised and already replaced the main juncture on saturday am.