You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
I want to move rocks around for trail building. I was considering some kind of yoke across my shoulders with a polypropylene bag on each side. The terrain will be too rough for a wheel barrow.
If I had another person we could carry a bag between us, but if not I'd need something. Does such a setup exist already? Is there a traditional technique I can use?
Note that I don't plan to damage anything, the trail is strewn with large loose rocks already, I just want to move some to fill in a short boggy section.
I don't really want to buy a new wheelbarrow for this. I used to have a normal one but I got rid when we finished the garden. I am thinking of solo techniques.
How far you moving them?
You are under-thinking this, trebuchet.
Barrow...far easier than a yoke with bags.
Sounds like you'll need to buy something so just buy the barrow.
Solo is hard work cos physics. We rarely lift heavy stuff alone, yes it's doable but the price is a strained back and worse, ripping your chalfonts.
You can roll stuff with a pinch bar, slow but you won't hurt yourself.
Drag on a tarp with some sort of harness?
Old pram from the dump? probably find one of them fat bikes from yesteryear and fit the tyres to the pram.
Could you not make some north shore raised woodwork instead , or would it still need rock to stabilise it?
Carrying rocks with no sun<br />Moley fought the law and the law won
Yes, wheelbarrow. A long wrecking / prybar can help manoeuvre them and sideways roll of the wheelbarrow to get them up and moving. Also, depending on the rock type, but breaking them up with a sledgehammer?
Levitation 🪄
If i's trailbuilding I assume that you will need to get there somehow so therefore preferred not to take a wheelbarrow.
How about some sort of bike trailer that you could get there attached to your bike and then remove to use to shift the rocks.
Have been pondering this as well. We are in a disused mine area and there often interesting rocks around that need relocating. It's when we are out on a walk so don't want to with loads of equipment. Have considered a beefed up folding luggage trolley. Another option is a courier bag like my old paper round bag. Not ideal on the back but better than nothing. No idea where you might get one though.
Depends on weight and finish of the rock...if it is a big un and smooth then a bag could work...like the bags you get a ton of stone chips in...but they are bulky things to carry.
Barrow and if it means you need a trip to stash it so it is available then it really will help make a difference.
The problem with yokes etc is they are a right faff.
You have to take it off and load it carefully (for balance) then lift it it and carry all the weight then tip them out. That kind of workflow is knackering compared to hoying them in the barrow and pushing and dumping. And the barrow will require less trips.
And rocks are hard and sometimes jaggy. Over rough terrain they are going to sway and be really annoying.
There are tools for doing this properly, you don't have to use rocks.
sorry Kayak, I've reported your post - that's made me feel quite sick
Just what kinda rocks are we talking about?
Molly the Mule... "trail building" he says....
How far? Up or down?
How big? Could you throw and/or roll them?
Helped repair some inaccessible terraces two or three weeks back. I had to move a pile of stones from the pick-up, most baby sized around 15kg, some up to 25-30kg, by hand up onto the terrace above. Had to. kick down some old fallen terrace from above, then throw, roll or carry the stones upto 12m away.
Throwing or kicking them into piles was easier than carrying.
Although a wheelbarrow might help you carry in some tools.
Thinking about it, I moved a sh*tload of paving stone and stacked two euro pallets 1.2m high in an afternoon alone with a wheelbarrow. It was flat, but despite that a hell of a lot easier.
Anything with wheels is out. It's rocky technical singletrack and fairly steep in places, hard enough on an MTB. I'd rather carry them individually in my arms than struggle with a barrow.
I don't want to bring anything in because it's a wild trail and I need to use material from the local context. Plus, it's several kms into the woods.
I plan to find the larger rocks which are generally between bag of flour and loaf of bread, there might be some smaller grapefruit sized ones I can make use of. I will need dozens. I plan to collect them from the whole length of the trail, which is about 800m, and use them to bridge the boggy bit which is about 15m or so.
They are smooth, the local soil is glacial till.
Wheelbarrow with an inflatable wheel...aware you keep posting it isn't a choice, but it really is...unless you can get a small machine in to assist you - like how they built that 40km trail in New Zealand (which I can't find the link to!).
I am familiar with both wheelbarrows and this trail. I really don't want to even try a wheelbarrow. I would rather use a poly pro bag on each shoulder. Which tbh is looking the best option atm.
My job is essentially shifting stones around and balancing them on top of one another.
Small stones like that I stick in a tub/trug/whateveryouwanttocallit and carry them. You can use the handles, lift it underneath, get in on a shoulder, drag it along the ground etc.
Your yoke idea sounds like it would be pretty uncomfortable.
Although if you're really going to carry them 800 metres I'd get an old rucksack and do them a few at a time.
(But yeah, barrow.)
Clearly I'm needing to get back to work, but having think over dinner about this - will there be damage or change by dragging a bag of rock along the trail?
Genuine question rather than me posting another comment about a barrow, honest.
lots of journeys back & forth though by the sounds of it. Would be a good workout.
That's part of the reason I want to do it. I miss digging my garden, and trail building in the woods is a lot nicer than going to a gym 🙂 If I had enough land I swear I'd dig holes just to fill other holes back in.
@blokeuptheroad has it- or big plastic builders buckets. We’ve tried barrows and they very rarely work.
will there be damage or change by dragging a bag of rock along the trail?
Probably not. It's mostly bedrock and loose rocks.
I'm now thinking something like this, and put some thick webbing straps through the handles that I can put my arms through and hoist it onto my back Sherpa style. Except using my shoulders not my head.
https://www.screwfix.com/p/ndc-polipak-polypropylene-mini-skip-bag-50-kg/575pf
Or, I could use this and hoist it onto my back holding the grab handle with one hand, like bin-men used to do before wheelie bins:
https://www.screwfix.com/p/ndc-polythenes-rubble-mate-1150mm-x-700mm/8914k
Two buckets with a strop to go over your shoulders to help limit how far your arms try to elongate on each trip? Instead of a yoke across your shoulders you might be able to use one at waist height between the strops to stop the buckets banging on your legs, Y piece or slot at both ends to trap it between the strop ends.
Probably better than trying to balance a yoke with unevenly weighted rocks either side.
That reminds me, I use supermarket bag for life bags (the woven type) to move logs around, they don't tend to bash your legs as they are slim
For a gym replacement I think just using your arms and being patient
The easiest way to carry loads of around 20kg is to hoof it up onto your shoulder.
Once it's up and in balance very little effort is required to keep it there.
See bags of cement or sand being carried up ladders .
Or a hod . Gather up say eight lumps of rock in a
4 plus 4 pattern then get the hod up on your shoulder and off you go .
Be tough on your knees mind .but if wheels are out and your jetpack is in for a service...
Levitation 🪄<br /><br />
As Harry Potter might have said ‘Rockgarden leviosa!’
Buy a deep dish canoe yoke, 2 builder’s bucket suspended by some rope, for added complexity extend yoke with a longer bit of 2x2 wood and file some grooves in the bar so you can balance uneven loaded buckets.
I considered a hod, not sure how easy it would be to fill and lift on your own though.
Beg, buy or borrow a donkey. Amazing load bearing creatures, and very sure footed. You should see them on track building duties in the High Atlas Mountains.
A friend has an antique yoke, like an old ‘milkmaid’ type thing. It’s a really nice carved bit of wood and although it is probably a bit old and too nice to take a proper load, it is pretty comfortable and I recon would make carrying buckets (of even weight) much easier. <br /><br />I do know of someone who built some steps and filled behind them with gravel on the coast path who used a rough kind of yoke. He was very patient and stoic as it meant a long walk up and down a steep set of steps… but it worked.
This is what I've used when collecting rocks for trail building. If you can rope some people in, it helps to form a human chain and just get it done by passing the rocks (or buckets of smaller rocks) down a chain.
Alternatively, consider re-aligning the trail to avoid the boggy area, if possible
Mini bulk bags. I use them for garden waste. Forestry sometimes use them for saplings. I've got three all from planters.
https://www.universalsupplygroup.co.uk/rubble-sacks-builders-bags-en/Bulk-Bags?product_id=44583
Levitation 🪄
Transmogrification ftw
Having watched small/wiry men haul evenly weighted buckets of all manner of things up hundreds/thousands of steep steps to the temples atop tall hills/small mountains in China (and what about water?! Bloody monks), that's fine on even, albeit almost vertical, ground, but I wouldn't fancy the swingage on an off camber trail.
Re-route to avoid boggy ground, as suggested above. It is the Way.
I considered a hod, not sure how easy it would be to fill and lift on your own though.
Are they interesting rocks? rope some small children in to help. I spend hours, much to the despair of my parents filling my pockets with rocks on every walk.
Re-route to avoid boggy ground, as suggested above. It is the Way.
The general public has evaded the boggy section through the adjacent trees but it ruins the flow both up and down, and this can't be improved without the felling of large trees and the removal of their stumps.
I plan to dig a little drainage channel then move some rocks around, this is the limit of what I would consider appropriate.
I was thinking either those rubble buckets or the mini skip bags. Anything lighter will get torn to shreds with dragging, and saying that has given me an idea - get a plastic sled, drill some holes and find some screw fittings with big washers, preferably with ring attachments so some sort of tie-down with netting so a skip bag can be loaded on with the net, or ratchet straps to secure it, then some webbing to go across your shoulders to drag it.
It’s how the stones were moved to build Avebury henge and Stonehenge - although they had Aurochs to drag the sleds, which had maybe 40 tonne of stones on them…
Never got a mule handy when you need one!
I plan to dig a little drainage channel then move some rocks around, this is the limit of what I would consider appropriate.
See if you can get hold of some offcuts of the flexible plastic or rubber industrial strip-doors. Cut thinner strips and set them into grooves cut down and across the slope, to direct water flow across and to the side of the track; that’ll help drainage away to the side, so it doesn’t run straight down the slope causing grooves to erode and also help stop puddling which causes foot traffic to walk around and erode the edges.
I am not a geological engineer or anything, but just using common sense from where I’ve seen lots of similar damage elsewhere.
Just found this photo showing how tree roots can do a similar thing, helping stop water erosion by diverting the flow off to the side, helps to explain what I mean.
What happens to the trail that you take the rocks from? Does that then become a boggy mess?
What happens to the trail that you take the rocks from? Does that then become a boggy mess?
No, it's mostly solid rock. The loose rocks have either broken from the bedrock or they were in the soil that has been washed away in the centuries since humans first made the trail.
What happens to the trail that you take the rocks from? Does that then become a boggy mess?
Robbing Pierre to pay Paul?
Tree roots were never designed to help channel water...if they do, it is a happy coincidence...they can help hold water which then doesn't drain and causes more issues. As things wear away around them, they then stop being useful.
Is there anyway you can channel the start of the water away so there is less water sitting on the trail? A channel with a perforated pipe in it to help the water drain across and below the trail? If so, that could result in less water so less stone moving as the existing surface is drier (although if it is the bedrock then you won't be able to do a huge amount to encourage water to drain elsewhere...so may need a wee blocker to help encourage it to move (think someone above has mentioned similar).
The bedrock doesn't need the drainage. The trail comes down the hill then flattens out and presumably the rock dips a little before continuing because there is a flat bit that has filled with leaves over the millennia and made an area of nice compost which becomes a mud pool in winter. The trail emerges from this and then continues down the hill. So yes I plan to make a little channel at the bottom of the top section of trail to allow the run-off from the trail to exit down the hillside. Then perhaps another one at the boggy section, but I don't think this will have a big effect since the soft earth is now there and will absorb rainwater anyway. If I were to excavate all the soft dirt I could probably prevent new dirt forming because I could encourage the runoff to take the leaves etc with it, but I don't want to go that far.
Then perhaps another one at the boggy section, but I don’t think this will have a big effect since the soft earth is now there and will absorb rainwater anyway. If I were to excavate all the soft dirt I could probably prevent new dirt forming because I could encourage the runoff to take the leaves etc with it, but I don’t want to go that far.
Once you can control the amount of runoff into the bog, then getting a fair amount of reasonable size stones into it, to help control foot erosion and post-holing it, it should start to dry naturally, and if possible, maybe putting another drainage channel across the middle to help stop water pooling there to help it dry out over time.
Bring rock from above rather than below
Gravity is your friend.
Sounds like a lot of work ,so make sure u do the preparation and remove the soft stuff.
Rubble bags?
Not too full, just lots of journeys and patience!
Assuming the trail is progressing, a bag balanced on the bike saddle as u wheel it down?
I'd want to walk in, I think a bike would make it a lot harder.
When I get round to starting I'll post pics. The exact spot is 51.563519,-3.156649 by the way. Have a look on OS maps on Bing, you can see where it flattens out. Strangely it's at the top of a saddle so it's downhil on three sides, must be some kind of rock formation under it collecting water, which is why I'm not sure I'll be able to actually drain it.
If I had another person...
A couple of poles [insert east euro builder joke here] and a canvas sling (like a stretcher)
Or, a number of flexi-tubs instead of the material?
C4
Looks like you can stop in and get a shoulder massage after you've done a shift with moving rocks...
depends on the size. if they’d fit, put them in a sturdy bucket and move them a few at a time.
Saw this and thought of this thread, obviously it's not for THIS purpose but you could maybe use the idea to create something?
See 3.15
Trekker's Friend hiking trailer – the hiking trailer that goes wherever you go (trekkersfriend.com)
I normally find two people and a big gorilla bucket works well. Failing that, small gorilla buckets and a couple of trips. I've shifted quite a lot of rock in a backpack on my ebike, but it felt way more dangerous than I thought it would and haven't done that again since.
.
Interesting conundrum. If you manage a donkey or large dog, that would be easiest, but may need serious negotiation with 3rd parties, not to mention some coaxing!
If you go for man-carrying, use your hips to carry the load, not shoulders (they tire easily). So a rucksack with a rubblesack liner and good waistbelt would do.
Otherwise, could you rig up a pulley system on a tree branch at the top of the hill? Then you could fill buckets further down and winch them up to the boggy bit. By this I mean a 'skyline' attached to trees high up, but parallel to the slope, like lumberjacks use. This would be complicated to set up for 1-man operation, though
‘Deer Extraction Sled’ ?
Tree roots were never designed to help channel water…if they do, it is a happy coincidence…they can help hold water which then doesn’t drain and causes more issues. As things wear away around them, they then stop being useful.
Oddly enough, I’m actually perfectly aware of that. It was by way of an example to try to illustrate what I was talking about using angled strips set at an angle to direct water across and down into a channel on the downslope side.
I’d have thought that was clear enough, but obviously not. 🙄
This photo is the only one I can find that shows anything like what I’m talking about - flat stones set in edgewise are doing a similar job, to help direct water across and down, to try to prevent the water flow causing troughs forming directly downhill.
