Jenny Jump State Forest

[lou_b_83]

The Superintendent of Jenny Jump State Forest got in touch with me about redoing some of the trails. Of course I said yes. They are looking on opening up some new trails this year for multi use so people can get from the main lot to Mountain Lake. He wanted to know if I could try and get some help from JORBA to build/fix the trails that are on top of the mountain that are all ready mountain bike trails AND build a new trail to get up the mountain from Mountain Lake. Any help or info will help. Thanks.

[gt2brew]

Hi Lou,
That sounds great ! Thanks for stepping up. We should set up a meeting to chat with you and the land manager about the plans for the park. We would also need to do a walk through of the park with one of our trailbuilders to assess the condition of the current trails. If you don't mind me asking, what is you trail work experience? Local tm sessions, IMBA TCC classes, etc. Let's plan on a meeting in early 2010 and see what we can arrange.

Frank

[lou_b_83]

PM Sent

[jorbanorm]

Is the guy's name Dave Lord by any chance?

[lou_b_83]

No his name is Ernie

[mergs]

Cool developments Lou!

Frank, Bob Workman and I will be talking more about this and hope to speak to you in person on the details of the project.

Thanks for taking a lead here.

[lou_b_83]

I met with the Superintendent (Ernie) for Jenny Jump today. It went great. He does want to develop the Mountain Lake section for mountain biking . As of right now there is a trail come to the Mountain Lake section called the Jenny Jump Trail. That trail is hiking only. But you never know what might happen in the future. (His Words ). It is being built buy the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference ( http://www.nynjtc.org/ ). The Jenny Jump Trial will hit the Mountain Lake Section in the North/East Corner (On the east side of the stream). He is also working on a grant to put a parking lot on Lake Just It Rd (Not approved yet). So the game plan for now is to get all the fire roads that are there marked out on a map via a GPS(I will start this next week). Try to find were we might want to build new trails and/or reroutes and get that on a map so he can get it approved. Last little thing. He said that he has never had a problem getting a trail approved. Can't wait to get started.

[lou_b_83]

This is what the NYNJTC is going to be doing in the Mountain Lake Section. They are going to be using most of the existing Yellow Trail. Ernie did say that this would stay Multi Use but is is very steep. We will see how well the rebuild it.

[jorbanorm]

The suitability for multi-use is some thing that we should probably review. We do not want to endorse a trail as multi-use when in fact it is not sustainable as it will be the bikes that receive blame for the erosion.

[lou_b_83]

That is something that I was talking to Ernie about. I said that most of that Yellow trail is not passable by bike so maybe we should mark it as hiking only. He said that we will have to look at what they do to fix up the trail then decide what we should do from there. He does understand that it is not a safe biking trail as is.

[BobW]

Lou - From looking atthe map, it appears that where the trail takes the jog back up the hill (near the "diamond" marker) is the location where we stopped and turned around last week? Also I would say the track they laid out is going to use mostly the old fire road and not be a new purpose built trail. Which we all know will not be a sustainable "trail" no matter what the use.

Norm - agree with you thoughts completely.

Bob

[lou_b_83]

According to Ernie they ARE using the yellow trail to go up the mountain. The diamond is on the "Y" intersection.

[BobW]

Did not recall the blazes. So they are going up the steep hill at the first Y intersection, interesting. Nothing like a 30% fall line "trail". We can talk more about this tomorrow (at JH) or at the meeting.

[lou_b_83]

Here we go. I had my walk threw on my proposed trail with my JORBA adviser (Bob Workman). Things went great. I learned some thing that I needed to know to keep with in IMBA guild lines. But all in all trail is in a good spot. Sent off the Topo map to the state to see what they say. I hope they like it. I will let everyone know what they say. Keep an eye out for trail building dates to come.

[lou_b_83]

I had a last minute change if plans. The super from JJSF let me know that NYNJTC would be doing some work on the new trail coming in from Lake Just-It Rd. I called out of work and jumped in on the crew. I would have posted to get some JORBA volunteers but it was last minute. Anyway here is what they did http://connect.garmin.com/activity/31941548 . As the TC is concerned this is a done trail BUT there are some wet spots that JORBA will have to play with. I got the OK from the leader of the TC crew to make it a more ridable trail and not so much mud on the Lake Just-It side. Other than that I would like to just get out there with some tools to clear some more of the small stuff out of the way. I will let everyone know about the date I will be heading out there as soon as I get one more OK from the park.