This is a great video on explaining the different techniques for gravle road maintenance. I've yet to come across a video so informative and explanatory. Great job !
Agree. My dirt motorcycle traversed 60 miles over NFS roads on one day and I passed just 8 people. One of which was grading the road using NFS maintenance machinery. Waved at the operator and she blew me a kiss.
Thank you for grading tech. For gravel roadways Always wondered why you fold the moldboard forward. Those round bits on the bottom of the blade must be great for potholes.
Too bad the Forest Service hires so few seasonal folks anymore! What a waste for the young people of today to not learn the valuable lessons only working in and for the environment can bring! Our fathers and grandfathers had the best! Where men went out and did things that were noble and right and worked hard! Now it's all computers and GIS and the like! No more pack strings and backcountry adventures.
gosh I couldn't agree more. there are very few that are very willing to do the exact work required, but the forest service is just a lot less willing/funded to be able to do so...
Personally, I like my National Forest Service dirt motorcycling assisted by all genders in uniforms doing salary work. I won't cherry- pick one gender and urge advancement on observed superior conduct of all gender. It was a female officer that saved me from a bear and another that helped me get out of a flash-flooded fording.
I'm a member of the Armpit Grotto based in Laramie with road experience between Montana and the Salish Sea regions also. Using a Suzuki DR650SE. Single- track after I've shoveled clearance over a slide or around a collapsed culvert. Also carry a timber saw because trees also fall on your exit roads. Otherwise use the tools to assist other outdoor recreation.
While I commend the NFS road maintenance I'm not ignoring the infrastructure issues. My DR650SE is rigged to carry a timber saw, "D"- handle shovel, and a tool repair kit. When a tree fall happens and I need the road to exit a National Forest I'm going to cut vehicle clearance. I've shoveled vehicle clearance to exit National Forest after a slide occurs. My Dunlop 606 knobby is excellent over most rubble after the shovel has levered larger rocks aside. I replace missing nuts and lock-washers to secure loose NFS signs. But my purpose in using NFS roads is to locate and explore karst (nss@caves.org).
Wonder where this is? Certainly not Southern AZ where I live. Most of the FR's haven't seen a blade since the Carter Administration. Search and Rescue and Border Patrol is constantly bitching about the condition and impassability of their roads. Most here are unsigned and FR numbers gone. Your Tax Dollars at Work! (Or not)
Same all over the 1st world. Apparantly it's ok to have crews of guys making shitty patchups of sealed roads, but graders are not aloud to do more than 3 passes on a gravel road. And they wonder why 3rd world countries are moving ahead of us
I found Sector 13 of the US Border Patrol had obtained new ATV to access my county by- ways. But lacked trained operators for 24/7 field operations in the temperate rain forest conditions. That's a galaxy far, far away from Arizona conditions and Carter's Administration. To complicate things a vast private tree farm amid mountain terrain is between ordinary USBP coastal services and a larger extent of forest eastward that is a Federal Wilderness. The private parts are gated and serviced by paid private foresters with heavy equipment. Opened to all US Citizens during the Hunting Season for Bears . That's when I've seen the USBP vehicles on timber harvest roads.
@@toruko-ishibravo2zulu679 Thanks for the info. In AZ the best maintained FRs are above the Mogollon Rim and adjacent to the Native American Reservations. Serious sportsman territory. Graded, signed and I would say, well maintained. Possibly due to pressure from various local Chambers of Commerce that depend on hunter/fisherman dollars. Below the Rim, down here in the deserts many of the FRs are anonymous and hard-core 4WD only.
Ah! The wonder of the way-back machine. Those were the days! Thirteen years ago. No more road maintenance crews anymore. FS/BLM road maintenance today consists of planting "road closed" signs. If the road is closed, you don't have to maintain it. What little maintenance done today is contracted by office pencil pushers to the lowest bidder.
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They been closing road since 2008, the maintenance on existing roads is negligible leaving in deplorable condition. Why, their budget has increased with inflation but instead of maintenance they added people and raising salary and benefits. Typical federal government agency, less today for a more.
