Philadelphia Mountain Biking Association - Forums

I wanted to see if the members that do trail maintenance need wood. I'm starting to get more than I can take.

what kind of wood? We can always use it but it all depends on what it is. send me an email to lou.dirtmerchant@gmail.com
thanks

We're not allowed to build wooden structures on the trails...Yet. Workin on it. But firewood is always good as long as it's not pressure treated. Even we were going to build wooden structures in the park we would use something that is already here. The meadows area is full of an invasive tree that is very dense and is used to build many of the wooden structures around the park by the structures team.

Is it possible to build structures for somewhere else?...would we even have the time and place to do it?

 ???

Not even see-saws? I haven't been to the Wiss yet.

are we allowed to build at Belmont?

We are not "allowed" to build on any park property.

There is a group of us working on a plan to submit to the city for a "bike park" and this will include some wooden features. But we are a long ways away from getting this in front of the city officials and then, hopefully, their approvals. So building anything in the park would be detrimental to our efforts as I'm sure someone in a power position will be like "they already build these things in the park without our permissions so we should deny their application." We are going to have to get over a LOT of objections and obstacles (pun intended) to convince people in power that this is a safe and legitimate endeavor. The fact that cities around the country are building these definitly helps us. We have an excellent case argument, we just need to get organized and show them we are for real... 

But there is another potential project at Fuji bikes HQ in the northeast where they will want some wooden features. So we can possibly store and use this at Fuji if it is high quality hard woods... Stay tuned

I can talk to Roy at Fuji about that.

Black Locust. Extremely strong and hard and rot resistant. Almost perfect for building outdoors in the park, plus added benefit or "recycling" local wood fomr the park, so it's all natural. Big selling point. I know FOW structures crew brings that point up all the time and it's well received by "the powers".

dz

Yep. Thanks D. That's the point I was trying to make: When the "powers" finally let us build wooden structures we will use the Black Locust and kill two birds with one stone. Remove invasives and give a user group what they need. It's a win win, just have to cover risk management.