Dry Trails

As often happens in late Richmond Summers, the trails are getting overly dry. That nice hard-packed clay is developing fissures and the dirt is turning to dust.

While we focus on staying off of trails when they are muddy - it causes ruts which increase erosion - trails can also get damaged when they're overly dry.

IMBA Rules of the Trail #2 is  Leave no trace – Be sensitive to the dirt beneath you. When that hill climb has turned from nice hard-pack to three inches of dust and you're spinning your rear tire the entire way up or loose soil causes you to slide through a switchback, you're moving the dirt from the trail off into the woods. The more dirt that leaves the trail, the less trail is left. We want to keep our trails, so let's keep the dirt where it is.

So how do you ride in dry dusty conditions without damaging the trails? First of all, to keep the wheels from spinning, you need to create more surface area on your tires - distributing the force over a greater surface area. You could go swap out your 1.9 tires with a pair of beefy 2.3s. Or for quite a bit less money, lowered your tire pressure by a few PSI (tubeless sure helps here).  To keep from pushing dirt out of the corners, slow down before you get to the corner - it's too hot out to be riding fast anyway.

So be safe out there this summer and help keep the trails in great shape.