Building a cabin road

[gdicks]

OK so I have a nice piece of land on which to build a remote cabin for which I need to route a trail. This trail may one day end up being a road but for now it need only be wide enough for a side by side / atv. My question is to anyone who has built a road / trail before, am I better off trying to avoid the hill by going around it or side hill up then side hill back down the back side?

Ive tried to roughly outline the land. The red area is a bog / marshy area that I need to avoid and the white lines show the rough contour. My initial route in blue kept to about the same elevation and skitred around the hill. The orange line would side hill up then side hill back down the back of the hill.

My initial thought was the blue line which while steeper on the back side of the hill, I could make the trail by flattening out the slope as I go. The issue here is the forest in this area is larger trees that are harder to remove with small equipment. The orange option would take me up the hill and back down but the forest consists of little more than saplings although extremely densely growing.

The overall elevation change to the top of the highest point is not that great maybe 50 feet so I'm not climbing a mountain here. For scale, the entire trail using either approach is about 400 meters or a quarter mile. Im hoping to use my BX25 for the job but I can get something bigger if needs be. Anyone have any helpful advice to help me make my decision?

 

[FTG-05]

- Click on "Edit", then delete picture

- Go to GE/View, unclick "Status Bar"

- Retake picture with graphics; repost new picture

"Corner Brook" location now anonymous.

Good luck!

 

[davesl708]

My preference would be for the orange trail. You might get a better view while traveling on it.
Orange is flatter terrain and you would have less chance of washout in a rain. Easier to make and maintain.

Good luck with the project.

 

[MossRoad]

If you have any snow or ice ever, take the blue line.

 

[gdicks]

We do get A LOT of snow but this will never be a cleared winter road.

 

[gdicks]

My preference would be for the orange trail. You might get a better view while traveling on it.
Orange is flatter terrain and you would have less chance of washout in a rain. Easier to make and maintain.

Good luck with the project.

The view would be a nice feature for sure although I hadn't thought of it from that angle....

 

[airbiscuit]

Not sure what I think of that "hairpin" corner on the orange route. I'm guessing trucks, equipment, etc will have to get in when you build the cabin. 400 meters isn't all that far, and either route has about the same length to it. Wouldn't the orange route actually be more prone to erosion? What is the soil like (sandy, clay, etc.)?

You may like playing on that Kubota so much that you end up with a blue road and an orange trail )

 

[MossRoad]

We do get A LOT of snow but this will never be a cleared winter road.

You say that now.... but in the future, I'm sure you'll hear sometime "Let's spend the holidays at the cabin" or "Let's go cross country skiing at the cabin." or "There's been a break in at the cabin." It happens.

 

[MossRoad]

The hairpin turn and construction vehicles is an excellent point. So is traffic. What if you do decide to make it a road and you meet another vehicle half way down the road, right about that turn? On a flat road, you can make it wider easier than you can on the side of a hill.

And roads on hills require ditches and culverts on the uphill side to direct water and dirt away from and under the road to prevent erosion and washout.... and those ditches and culverts will require annual maintenance at the least. More work for you.

Make the access road on the flat path and make hiking/atv trails through the picturesque parts.

 

[LD1]

Blue line has almost no elevation change. That gets my vote.

 

[newbury]

What are the contours like BELOW the blue trail?
Are those 10 FOOT contour lines? (not a good time to mix up feet and meters and you use both in your post)
Where are the property boundary lines?

IF you can build a path for an ATV which can later be enlarged to fit a truck, with adequate sides so it doesn't slip down the slope, the blue trail may be ok. But based on the contours the east side of that hill looks fairly steep.
Same consideration for the orange trail.

Another thing to take into account is that the blue road will likely take a long time to thaw out in the spring due to shading from the hill.

IF you are going to be felling trees and moving them with a BX25 smaller trees would be better.

And as others wrote soil is a major consideration. You can get most soil maps in the US online.

The slope of the orange line (50 feet over about 200 meters) is not too steep. And it looks like you can easily widen the turn.

/edit - I'd vote for the orange, with a wide turn and a view unless you can easily make the blue road wider w/o any slope side to side.

 

[gdicks]

The contours are not to scale they are a simple means to represent the shape of the land with the exception that the east side of the hill is indeed steeper. The hairpin turn is also not to any scale, it would obviously not be that sharp in reality. No equipment with the exception of the bx will have to get to the site.

The blue trail would be slightly elevated from the marshy area and if need could probably be more easily widened later. Keep the observations coming though this has given me a lot of food for thought.

 

[Streetcar]

for a cabin that is only occupied part time, I would go with the flattest road. ditches on hills can get clogged or erode. if you do not fix before the next storm, you could have major problems.
on my old road the hill portion required more maintenance than the flat portion.
Where is corner brook

 

[JerryK]

Ditto on the flattest route, blue line. Anytime you make a road go up or down an incline you make artificial routes that the water will tend to wash out over time... The blue sidehill route might need some route underneath your road here and there for water flow across the road.. but will probably not be as much upkeep.

 

[airbiscuit]

I agree that there is good discussion about this. One option to consider is to go out there with different colors of flagging tape, and walk the woods and "blaze" the trail in different locations. That will give you a sense of the lay of the trail and the ease of building. You might find an option C.

 

[Cord]

My preference would be for the orange trail. You might get a better view while traveling on it.
Orange is flatter terrain and you would have less chance of washout in a rain. Easier to make and maintain.

Good luck with the project.

I'd pick the blue. I have a trail that goes up a hill and also parallels it. The parallel portion isn't bad, but the part that goes up keeps on washing out. I have plenty of cross slope, but it isn't long before the tires raise the crown of the trail and the water starts running parallel to the trail. I'll be repair the trail for a third time this year and will be putting down a paver to help keep the slopes correct. Now if those are 1' elevations, then the terrain is pretty flat and I wouldn't worry about it. My comments are based on them being 10' intervals. For the blue route, just be sure to not cut the high side of the hill or it could wash down onto your trail.

 

[gdicks]

I've been out there several times and walked it as many ways as I can and these are the only two options I can see. I can probably get access to the site via the beach but Id like to get the trail route figured out so I can start the cutting. The lake is a hydro reservoir so the water level varies widely year to year and beach access wont always be available. The ground in the area is Extreemly sandy which makes me more worried about washing out, although the road I am branching off doesnt seem to have much trouble. In looking at the site though the guys who built that road followed the contour of the hill as much as they could.

By the way Corner Brook is in Western Newfoundland, Canada.

 

[Furu]

You say 50 ft in 200 meters but that gives an average grade from one end to the other once you convert to the same units. What would be the steeped grade (10%, 20% etc) along that route. There is a great US Forest Service book with drawings and all that dealing with forest roads that you might look at. Think it is available on line if you search for it. No matter what route you choose you will want to put in water containment/flow devices (water bars, culverts, etc) or you will be fighting a loosing battle and possibly in violation of Provincial regulations.

 

[s219]

So is this a case where the best route for a road might not be feasible because it's not the best route to clear with a BX? 1/4 mile is nothing to sneeze at if you're clearing with chainsaw and small tractor, so it might be a situation where you have to forgo the optimum path for a road and think mainly about the path that you can clear with your available time/tools/equipment. That means giving less weight to some of the traditional factors we use when picking the path of a road.

If it's really only to be a path for a UTV/ATV/BX, then just pick the easiest route to make the road. Chances are, no matter what path you choose, if you want to come back and make a bigger wider road for vehicles later on, you're going to need a heck of a lot more equipment than a BX anyway, so it will be a whole different level of effort whether you use the same path or make a new one.

When we developed our property, I made a path in for my (at the time) B2920. I picked the path of least resistance so that I could gain access to the area where I'd be cutting firewood and hauling it back out. I had to cut a few big trees, but it was mostly saplings that I could cut to a 2' stump and then use a brush grubber to yank the stump out. The path was just wide enough for the tractor. A couple years later when we put in a driveway, many other factors dictated the route. The middle of the driveway overlaps some my old path, but for the most part the driveway dictated its own route based on it's own considerations. At that point we had an tracked excavator and could knock down trees like toothpicks, so difficulty wasn't part of the equation.

 

[airbiscuit]

When do you plan to start cutting the trail? BTW, I want a remote cabin.