Tag Archives: Sechler Park

The skinnies and logovers on CROCT’s Sechler Park trail are ready to ride

We’re a long way from some of the technical-rich MORC trails systems in the Twin Cities metro, but we’ve been gradually adding optional technical features to our Sechler Park trail in Northfield to keep things interesting for more advanced mountain bikers.

With the spring thaw, the two skinnies created by a chainsaw work crew in late January in the area of the Sechler trail  some are calling The Playground are now ready to ride.  They’re advanced-level skinnies, not because they’re high but because we haven’t flattened them. They’re both in the early stages of rotting so we opted to just lightly score them, hoping we can get a season or two of use out of them.

The larger of the two skinnies now has a ramp to make it easier to get up onto the log. The other end of the log splits into two branches. You can drop off the log in between them or try your luck on the narrow branches and finish with a wheelie drop off the ends.

Sechler skinny Sechler skinny

The other skinny is a bit tougher not only because it’s smaller and tapers to very small but it’s also bouncy:

Sechler skinny

We have designs on a third advanced-level skinny nearby, one of three still-living trees that toppled over together towards the river. It’s almost ready to ride. We just need to figure out the entrance. Until then, just pick up your bike, place it on the log, and go:

Sechler skinny Sechler skinny Sechler skinny

Also available on other parts of the trail are two logovers that have different levels of challenge depending on where you choose to ride over them:

Sechler logover Sechler logover

New advanced-level trail segment in Sechler Park is open: The Pipeline

The Sechler Park trail has a new optional advanced-level segment, connected to the far southwest end of the trail. It begins near the concrete beam and cement block remnants of the ‘house’:

Sechler Park trail's Pipeline segment at the 'house'

It then traverses the top of a long Spine-like mound where a large iron pipe (home to a geocache) sticks out of the ground, which is why we’re calling the segment The Pipeline:

The geocache pipe on the Pipeline: Sechler Park trail

A log straight across the face of the last mound on top provides a difficult technical challenge before the segment drops back down a steep embankment and rejoins the main trail.

A difficult log on the Pipeline: Sechler Park trail

More random photos along The Pipeline:

Zero degrees and windy, City of Northfield officials walk the Sechler Park mountain bike trail

L to R: Dale Gehring, Marty Larson (with his dog Lexy), Dave DeLong, Griff Wigley

City of Northfield Ward 2 Councilor David DeLong and Park & Recreation Advisory Board (PRAB) Chair Dale Gehring walked the the Sechler Park mtb trail this afternoon, accompanied by yours truly and CROCT board chair Marty Larson.

The 1.5 hour hike of  about 3 miles (from the cul-de-sac behind Walgreen’s to the far pavilion and back) was a little challenging, as the temperature hovered around the zero degrees F mark with gusty northwest winds.

Marty and I wanted to give them a first-hand look at what CROCT volunteers have accomplished in Sechler Park since we got approval from the City to construct a mountain bike trail there last year. We’d like to add extensions and features to the trail this year, as well as install one or more trail head kiosks.  And we’re interested in discussing the possibilities of adding off-road trails and bike park features like pump tracks to other City of Northfield parks. (For example, see the CROCT blog posts about the Meadows Park community planning meetings.)

We’re not yet sure if Dave and Dale were impressed with what they saw, but given the weather conditions, it’s likely they’ll remember the experience.  😉

And on related note, Councilor Dave took a few spins around the River Bend Nature Center parking lot last Saturday on a fat bike during the RBNC Fat Bike Event. In case you missed the photos of him in the blog post/photo album:

City of Northfield Councilor David DeLong City of Northfield Councilor David DeLong

 

Chain saw crew adds two advanced-level skinnies to the Sechler Pk trail

I spotted this log along the Sechler Park river bottoms MTB trail last fall, thinking it would make a great skinny. After some discussion with CROCT president and trail steward Marty Larson, we decided it would be best to make it an intermediate-level skinny by shaving it flat like the log on the right that was recently created at MORC’s Elm Creek Trail:

Sechler log - fall Sechler log - fall Elm Creek skinny

So we organized a small trail work crew today, including two guys with the best electric chainsaw 2017 has to offer: Bill Nelson and Dave Nygren. Unfortunately, after they sliced the end off the log, we discovered that it was starting to rot. So it didn’t make sense to put all the work into slicing it flat for an intermediate-level skinny. So instead, they scored the top of it to make it an advanced level skinny. Likewise, a narrow log skinny next to it:

rotting Sechler Park log Dave Nygren Bill Nelson
Dave Nygren, Dave Berglund, Marty Larson, Bill Nelson Bill Nelson, Marty Larson, Dave Nygren Dave Nygren, Bill Nelson, Marty Larson
We still have to construct a ramp of sorts to make it easier to get up onto the bigger skinny.  We have the log pieces ready but the ice and frozen dirt prevented us from making it stable.
In the meantime, we’ll be looking for another log that would be a good candidate for a beginner/intermediate-level skinny.

Winter riding guidelines during the freeze/thaw cycles

CROCT’er Bryanne Horne took this photo of a section of the Sechler park Trail earlier this week:

Sechler Park MTB trail ice ruts

You can see that the ruts were created by mountain bikes with skinny tires, not fat bikes, when it was warm. The ruts then froze and they’ll likely remain a problem (nobody likes to ride ruts, muddy or icy) till they get covered up with snow, or until the spring thaw.

We don’t have strict rules yet for the Sechler trail, in part because it’s our first winter, in part because the trail goes through the river bottoms that floods frequently, and in part because we’ve not sculpted the trail, with the exception of a small segment of the Velodrome in the Figure 8 loop.

But we want to instill good habits among our ridership.

MORC’s Carver Lake Park mtb trail in Woodbury, for example, has winter riding rules that specify:

  • Bicycles w/ 3 inch + wide tires
  • Bicycles w/ 2 inch wide tires once trail is hard packed
  • Bicycles w/ less than 2.0 inch wide tires not allowed

It’s not likely we’ll completely prohibit bikes with tires less than 2 inches wide in Sechler, especially during a crappy winter like this, the trail has been rock hard much of the time. But you get the idea.

And if we do get heavier snowfalls and the trail has snow on it that’s deep+soft+packed, we request that skinny tires wait until the pack gets harder.

Let us know if you have questions.

Myrna Mibus, winter fat biking in Sechler Park, smiling & laughing way too much

Today I accompanied CROCT member Myrna Mibus on her first ‪‎fat bike‬ ride on the more challenging sections of the Sechler Park mtb trail. Sections of The Spine can eat you up and spit you out, as she found out. Fresh snow made it tougher than normal:

Myrna Mibus, fat biking in Sechler Park 1

But she owned a challenging line in the Velodrome section of the Figure 8 loop:
Myrna Mibus, fat biking in Sechler Park 2 Myrna Mibus, fat biking in Sechler Park 3 Myrna Mibus, fat biking in Sechler Park 4

Here’s a 40-second video of her various rides. She was smiling and laughing way too much: