As many of you know various folks are working very hard to improve the trails in Forest Hill Park. That work is going to require that the trails be closed to users starting today. From Facebook:

The bad news in all of this is that the park will be closed to mountain bikers after January 18th until the project is finished. It just can’t be avoided. We’re looking at finishing the project sometime in mid April or May. Of course, many hands make short work. If we get a lot of participation, we can get this finished sooner.

Read more details about the work taking place

We’re finally getting started on the Forest Hill Park extreme makeover. After months of planning and hard work by Nathan and his crew, we’re ready to get started. This Saturday, we will begin clearing the new trail corridor. What does this involve? For starters we’re going to rake the leaves off the corridor to establish an outline of the new trail. The leaves will be raked to the uphill side of the trail and used for reclamation later. Then we’re going to remove any bush and other things in the way. This includes small trees and saplings. The trees and saplings will be then be moved to a staging area and stay there until we reclaim the old trail bed. At that point, they will be removed from the staging area and replanted. We’ll keep doing that for each trailwork day until the week of January 18th. On January 18th, the Sweco operator will arrive and start cutting the new trail. This work will take three or four days.

Once the Sweco operator is finished, the real work begins. A word of warning! Machine build trail at first will look like a road was built through the park. You’re not going to like it. Just remember, it’s only the beginning of a new trail. It’s not the finished product. Once the machine cut is complete, we need to get in there and apply the finishing touches. This means refining what the Sweco operator started which includes reclaiming old trail, adjusting grade dips and back slopes, building bridges, and constructing crib walls. Yep, this project will have it’s share of rock work.

The bad news in all of this is that the park will be closed to mountain bikers after January 18th until the project is finished. It just can’t be avoided. We’re looking at finishing the project sometime in mid April or May. Of course, many hands make short work. If we get a lot of participation, we can get this finished sooner.

So let’s get a good start on this thing. Let’s make sure that all the Sweco operator has to worry about is cutting new trail. This is the last trail care day of the year.

In case of rain or unforseen events, please check for cancellations on the Richmond Area MORE web site: www.richmond-more.org. Any cancellation notice will be posted by 8:00am on Saturday in our News section.

Thanks to John M. of CHPN for pointing this announcement out to me