Benching of Forest Park’s trails is vitally important for our yearly trail maintenance. In 2021, FPC staff and volunteers have already benched over 3,000 square feet of trails this year!
But what exactly is benching, you ask?
Trail benching is a maintenance technique used to increase trail accessibility and maintain the structure and sustainability of Forest Park’s trails. Using a number of different tools, FPC staff and volunteers create new trails or repair and maintain existing ones.
The process involves cutting the tread of the trail into the hillside. The tread is dug down to compacted to build the new trail shape. It is really moving earth and is a lot of hard work! We are so grateful to our volunteers who help us with this process – we couldn’t do it alone.
To get an idea of why this work is so important I talked to FPC’s Trails and Restoration Manager, Ahmed Yusuf.
Ahmed explained that one common application of this technique is smoothing out the trails. Over time, trails degrade due to natural conditions and foot traffic and so it becomes necessary to bench them. The trail user experience is much better with a smooth trail to travel on. This is where benching comes in and helps to improve the accessibility of our trails. Work to bench trails keeps them nice and smooth!
In addition, benching is important for controlling the grade of the trail, or the measure of the steepness of its slope, to ensure the trails aren’t too steep. We do typically want a small 3-5% grade on the trails to make sure water runs off and doesn’t pool on the trails.
Excess trapped water can cause damage to our trails over time by erosion. In addition, when berms (a vertically flat tract of land, typically on a slope) form, benching is one process used to remove them and prevent water from pooling.
Fall is an awesome time for trail benching; the summer heat makes the soil a bit too hard to work with. But, now that we’ve got some rain again, things have softened up and it’s time for some benching!
If you want to come out to the trails and help FPC staff and other volunteers, the next two Thursday work parties will have some trail benching work. So make sure to sign up on our website’s event calendar, we hope to see you there!