Consider Bovine closed temporarily for project

[GW]

After walking Bovine and seeing the condition of it right now I talked to Mike Steffa about the project and we agreed that for now Bovine should
be closed to biking due to the tree limbs and the condition of the trails until the project is completed.

Right now most of the trail after the 4 jumps is unrideable and in bad condition with all the tree limbs and debris on the trail making parts of it unrecognizable. After talking to Mike today I got the impression that they are not through with the area and should be cleaning it and removing all the tree limbs and trees that have been cut down. Even if they do come in and clean it up we are going to have a considerable amount of work to do to recover our trails. If you are a lover of Bovine I recommend that you don't go and check it out until they are done because you will get very depressed in seeing the current condition.

The good news is that other than some of lower Hillside and the Prelude none of the other singletrack should be affected. Once cleaned up they will be planting native tree saplings and prairie grass in it's place to make it better and more natural for Illinois Prairieland.

[Randy]

I'm scared to look.

That's one of my favorite pieces of trail in our little slice of singletrack.

[GW]

I walked it again Friday and I think we are going to be best off redoing all of the trail from after the jumps to the benchcutted area and from the end of that area to the creek crossing. I talked to Mike and he didn't think they would do much more clean up other than where the Black Locust trees were cut down at the creek crossing. He was going to email the guy doing the destruction...I mean project to let him know he needs to clean that area up some since it is blocking our trail. I have my ideas of what we should do but we need to get a time to meet soon and walk it as a club and see what others think about our next step.

[Randy]

It's supposed rain some almost everyday this week, so I'd think it better to wait for slightly drier conditions before we get a group out to start making plans don't you?

[GW]

Yep, I didn't check the forecast before making my suggestion. I'm going to go down and take some pictures to show Mike so he can see what they've done.

They've done some on Lower HIllside too but other than clearing out the sections where that crap was so thick and making it wide open now they haven't done near as much destruction as on Bovine.