UMBA Trail Care
Drainage Page

Drainage
There are three important things to remember when you start thinking about trail care - drainage, drainage, and drainage. If you take care of the drainage properly, you will have prevented 90% of the most common problems found on trails. Proper drainage should begin before the first limb is cut or the first rock is moved, when the trail is still in the design phase. But there are also ways to deal with drainage problems once the trail is in place.

Each trail will present unique drainage challenges to those who care for it. The Wood Run Trails are no different. Supertree Trail and parts of Keyauwee Trail follow old logging roadbeds. Many times these old roads were not built with good drainage design, or they have not been maintained at all for many years. In some cases, attempts were made to provide drainage turnouts, or ditches that lead away from the road in order to move surface water away from the roadbed.

Many of the wet spots found on Supertree now are the result of these drainage turnouts being blocked by leaves, limbs, grass and/or accumulated silt. If the water can't leave the roadbed, it will continue running down the tread, increasing in volume, and cause more erosion.

In the picture above, we're looking across the trail, in a downhill direction. You can see the sunlight reflecting on the water standing in the tread. Behind that is a broad growth of dry yellow grass, blocking the way to the drainage ditch which extends off into the woods beyond. The grass has grown up because of the moisture, and traps leaves and sediment, which just builds up a bigger dam to block the flow of water. To fix this problem, we simply need to open a path through the grass so that the water can drain away from the tread. It should be wide enough (several feet if possible) and sloped enough (15% or about 2" per foot) so that heavier rains can flush out any fallen leaves or other debris. Once established, a few seconds spent clearing out this path each season should be all the maintenance required to keep it functioning properly.

More to come!