Trail Science – Trailism

Archive by category "Trail Science"

Happy Half Tau Day

It’s Pi day, or better, Half Tau Day. PDF

5 Things Jordan Crawford Learned From The Appalachian Trail

I stumbled upon Jordan’s Instagram, and soon after his website because he settled on “trail-ology” to name them both. After reading some of his posts I can see we certainly relate on some level beyond just a word. His piece “5 Things I Learned From The Appalachian Trail” is great…

IMBA’s Position on The Wilderness Act

find the PDF here IMBA will continue to respect both the Wilderness Act and the federal land agencies’ regulations that bicycles are not allowed in existing congressionally designated Wilderness areas. IMBA is not supporting H.R. 1349. As part of our commitment to trail access and public land stewardship, we…

Smooth Jumps and Rollers

*for big bikes In thinking about jumps and rollers I assume the safe bet is to make them smooth (not too jerky/bumpy) for bigger bikes as they have the biggest wheel base. For extra large 29ers this is somewhere near 46 inches…which led me to produce the following thought experiment:…

Flow versus Flowy Trails

Some people may not be familiar with the terms trail gentrification, trail sanitation, or dumbing down. I linked to a post related to this about a year ago. I’m sure there are more terms tied to the same whipping post, but no more come to mind other than “flip-flop-ready”, and…

National Hydrography Dataset

This site is new news to me, and great for some layout and design situations: https://nhd.usgs.gov/ Although it’s not practical or possible to always bypass the lower 1/8-1/4 of any mountain to lower the chances of hitting seeps as a result of “toe-of-slope-effect,” the site (with the help of GIS)…

The Stair Event

Not exactly stairs on trails, but food for thought anyway. The Stair Event, is the only film on stair use and safety. It is based on the 1978 field study of spectators’ use of stairs at the Commonwealth Games in Edmonton, Canada. The Stair Event from Copycat Video Productions on…

A Geologic Expedition of Columnar Jointing and More

This was too cool (in my opinion) to not share. It might be geared for “grades 6-12,” but this digital journey and lesson is pretty neat regardless of your age and whether you have been to these sites or not. In any case, it includes a virtual tour of columnar…

East Vs. West Coast Trails

by Trevor DeRuisé There are a lot of differences between the East and West Coasts. One has Starbucks while the other has Dunkin Donuts. One has poison ivy while the other has poison oak. One has outrageous gas prices, while the other… also has outrageous gas prices. We could spend…

Anthropocene

The Anthropocene doesn’t have much to do with trails, or does it? I found this interesting, especially this piece:

Category: Trail Science