The Flow Trail Turns Six! A Look Back at How It Was Built
January 31, 2020
A note from Drew Perkins, the Flow Trail’s designer and current trails program director at MBOSC.
In early February 2014, MBOSC broke ground on the Flow Trail at Soquel Demonstration State Forest (SDSF). Since six years have now passed, we thought it would be fun to look back at the construction of the trail and share what we learned about building both a trail and a trail stewardship.
The Emma McCrary Trail in Pogonip opened in June 2013, and was our organization’s first big success. Building on the popularity of Emma, MBOSC had some momentum and was ready to tackle a bigger project. The Flow Trail was a natural next step. The project was our first major partnership with CAL FIRE at Soquel Demonstration State Forest, and was built as a replacement for the Tractor Trail at Soquel Demonstration State Forest, which was an old logging road that had been restored during a timber harvest. Instead of putting riders back on the old road (which was the easiest trail at Soquel Demonstration State Forest), we wanted to build a new, easy-to-maintain trail that would still be accessible to both beginner and intermediate riders, but also offer fun options for more advanced folks.
In the winter of 2012/2013, we got to work. We started building out the layout of the new Flow Trail, and ran our first major bike raffle fundraiser, aptly named, “Own the Flow,” with Ibis, a local company that was about to launch its new model, the Ripley. With these funds, we hired our first employees to manage the build, and broke ground in early February of 2014, right after the first rains hit.
We knew from our experiences on the Emma McCrary Trail that managing large volunteer groups was a challenge. We also knew that we would need large volunteer events to tackle this project. To educate our most engaged volunteers, we started our Crew Leader Training Program (which has evolved into the MBOSC’s current Trail Academy class series) in the summer of 2013. That hard work paid off, and with a few volunteer Trail Crew Leaders at our side, we were able to successfully host several large weekend volunteer work days and a popular two-day campout event. Before we knew it, we had dedicated volunteers dropping in to join the build crew almost every day of the week.
While we had finally gotten into the groove of volunteer education and management, the weather had its own plans to disrupt the Flow Trail buildout. 2014 was the second year of California's historic multi-year drought, and although we started construction during the first rainfall in February, by mid-April the soil was getting too dry to continue work. Fortunately, we had finished the first two segments (3 and 5 - about 1 mile total), and they were able to open for summer riding. Logging activities continued on segments 4 and 6 throughout the summer of 2014, and segments 1 and 2 were farther up the hill away from the access point.
Segments 3 and 5 were popular that summer and provided a brand new type of trail experience that did not exist anywhere on public land in the greater Bay Area. That said, trail use was still limited. Riders had to connect to the new segments via fire road, and because we had had such a short and dry winter, the first sections of Flow got dusty and bumpy pretty quickly once the trail opened. The team and I knew that there was room for improvement, and spent that summer finalizing our plans for the next winter build season.
Based on our experiences over the summer, we decided to change things up the next winter to finish up the remaining 2.75 miles of trail by the summer of 2015. We changed up the equipment we were using, honed our build techniques and workflow, and hired a crew from American Conservation Experience to help out with during the week as we roughed in the rest of the trail. This extra help during the week let us focus on shaping and fine-tuning the Flow Trail on our volunteer days. Just like the winter before, our 2015 work period had a very large turnout from our dedicated volunteer base, and we finished up the project with 529 unique volunteers and a whopping 6,500 total volunteer hours. Thanks to the staff, volunteers, and technical changes we had made to our construction strategy, we were able to finish the Flow Trail on schedule.
The trail opened in April 2015, right around Sea Otter. Word was getting out about it, and we saw a huge spike in usage. Flow Trail was regularly getting 400-500 trips on weekend days, with the SDSF parking lot and roadside parking options consistently packed. We celebrated with everyone who had been a part of the trail’s success, and hosted an amazing grand opening celebration in May at the Badger Springs Picnic area complete with tacos, live music, and an epic volunteer raffle.
In the process of building this trail, we learned a few things that significantly influenced our next projects.
- Moisture management is absolutely critical in order to keep the soil in the right condition for shaping and compaction. We were struggling with extremely dry soil as we were finishing the build seasons on the Flow Trail, and after rain events, the soil was too wet to work for several days. This meant we had to carefully watch the weather forecasts to nimbly reschedule workdays and place strategic tarps across the trail to keep moisture in or rain out.
- We designed the trail to minimize erosion, but didn't realize how much wear the heavy traffic could cause, and how quickly the trail can change with continued heavy use. Most of the ongoing maintenance work required on the trail is to deal with damage from skidding, not water erosion - which was a contrast to maintenance work we had done previously in SDSF and Wilder.
- Carefully thinking through trail grade, line of sight, and user speed are critical for high use trails. By thinking through these factors ahead of time, trailbuilders can minimize on-trail conflicts and overall trail wear.
- Building the trail during a drought can be done, but it requires additional maintenance down the road. As weather patterns fluctuate, trail crews will have to come back regularly to deal with problematic wet spots that did not exist during initial construction.
- We learned two major lessons when constructing the berms and rollers that make Flow Trail so fun. First, you can never, ever have too much compaction, and second, build everything bigger than you think you should - it’ll shrink once the dirt dries!
- Bike-oriented trails like the Flow Trail will take regular maintenance to deliver a consistently high-quality experience to riders. Funds for this ongoing maintenance should be factored into all project fundraising efforts from the get-go.
We also learned a lot about running a professional trail stewardship organization.
- Demand for a mountain bike-oriented trail existed locally, and supporters were willing to give their time and money to the cause. Folks were traveling from all over the Bay Area and California to help build and ride this trail.
- Big volunteer events are fun, however, they require a lot of prep. A huge amount of work can get done when you have an army of volunteers, but there’s a ton of back-end planning and organization needed to make the volunteer's onsite time worthwhile.
- There’s a learning curve for attaining proper trailwork skills. In order to build a sustainable trail as efficiently as possible, it’s absolutely essential to invest in expanding the skills of volunteers and staff.
- Implementing and maintaining projects of this scale takes a dedicated, full-time staff -- and having staff adds a whole new challenge to running the organization. As we grew, we realized we had to take building the organization’s professionalism as seriously as we had been taking sustainable trail construction.
Experiences from this project shaped the direction that MBOSC has taken over the last six years. Building the Flow Trail was the start of our work as a serious trail building organization. The trail was recognized regionally for its high-quality construction, and was the springboard for the tremendous growth we’ve been fortunate to experience over the past few years. The Flow Trail also gave us the inspiration for formalized volunteer programs, like our always-popular Dig Day series and Trail Academy classes. We’re proud of everything Flow Trail taught us, and look forward to expanding our offerings and building even more fun, sustainable trails over the years to come.
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