The Milltowns Trail bridge along Armstrong Road in Bridgewater Township was destroyed in the July 2013 flood. (See photos of the flood on the Locally Grown Northfield blog.) The wood was salvaged and ultimately donated to CROCT by the Minnesota DNR, thanks to Peter Hark. Back in May, a crew of CROCT volunteer trail workers fashioned timbers and planks from the bridge into two bridges along our Sechler Park trail.
Last week, CROCT members Todd Amunrud, Kevin Herman, Marty Larson, Michael Lehmkuhl, and Galen Murray fashioned some of those timbers and planks into a bridge along a new segment of our mtb trail in Caron Park.
Peter Hark is a resident of rural Northfield, the DNR’s Field Operations Manager State Parks and Trails, and a Founding Supporter of CROCT. He joined me and Marty Larson on his first ride on the Sechler Park MTB trail on Wednesday, a day off for him because it was his birthday. He seemed to enjoy the ride and was complementary on what he saw. For a relatively new mountain biker, he’s not half-bad, and if he got a proper mountain bike with better tires he would definitely be more than marginally adequate.
I first met Peter in March 2013 at the MN Parks and Trails Council of Minnesota’s Day on the Hill. Later that year, he was part of a DNR team that met with local Rice County public officials in Dundas for a Mill Towns Trail update. And he may have gotten his first real taste of mountain biking at the 2013 PedalMN Bike Summit, held at the DNR’S Cuyuna Lakes MTB Trail system in Crosby/Ironton.
Peter’s also been the main guy behind the DNR’s installation of 7 yurts in MN state parks this year, including three at Cuyuna. See the DNR’s yurts page, an October article in the Strib titled Yurts arrive in Minnesota State Parks, and this WCCO-TV video clip titled State Parks Offering New Camping Experience — Yurts that features Peter: Continue reading DNR’s ‘yurt guy’ Peter Hark rides Sechler and saw that it was good →
Mountain biking in Rice County, MN
