Believe me, I know how lucky I am to be able to get the work done on-site! When I scope out my trail routes, I first try to follow old, grown-over trails (which will mostly have small firs, spruces and birch/beech/maple less than a few inches in diameter). When cutting a totally virgin trail, I try to pick routs through the woods that minimize the number of trees I need to remove. I don't have many trees as big as 3 ft. dia., but many are in the 1 ft to 2 ft size. The hardwoods are bad enough when I can see they are too big to push over, but the most irritating are the little bunches of coppiced maple that look puny, but still have the original stump and root system of the parent tree (that might have been cut down 30 years ago).
Finally, on routes where there is no history of trails (or long-ago farming!), the ground is not smooth, by a long shot, but cutting and filling is a real challenge when there are lots of roots through the soil. It takes a number of years to slowly work these into a trail surface that is really useable in the summer (skiing is no problem). A dozer would make short work of all this, but my wife would likely freak out at the destruction I could wreak with a dozer!
