trail building, how many miles per day

Trying to put together some numbers for trail building using a mini-ex (337 w/long-arm). Side slopes are 30-60 degrees, alluvial soils, little overburden. Trail is basically along the foot of some mountains that boarder a glacial riverbed. The trail is to be located upslope anywhere from 50' to 1000' from the edge where the toe meets the swamps. The layout has not been completed. Trail is full bench w/4' tread, 3-5 degree outslope. Final finish will be done with something like a sweco dozer. Some respected trail designers from our area estimate 1/8 mile per day for dirt work. Seems a little low to me. Any opinions here?

I don't think that they are too far off. Its probably faster to build a 12' wide road where you can get a larger machine up than it is to carve out a little path with a mini hoe. For instance, you hit a chunk of rocky ground that a larger excavator would just blow thru and you have to hammer it out...

Another thing to think about is how far are you from support equipment. Even the little stuff like refueling, let alone a breakdown.

For estimation purposes, unless you have done it before and are positive that your faster than their estimations, I wouldn't go over what they think you can do in a day.

It's pretty vague unless someone is willing to actually run and stake a line, measure the cuts and fills, estimate the amounts of rock, dirt and borrowed fill required. If it's a foot trail, the grades and side slopes they can tolerate may not work for your equipment. Hope you are going to go T&M on this, I would hate to bid fixed price on the info you have given. 1/8 mile is 650' per day, I think you will be lucky to achieve that unless there are stretches where little or no work is required. Don't forget to price in the cost of a quad to get you back and forth and haul fuel, tools and supplies.

Most of the jobs like this (ours are gov jobs typically) the engineers have CY of cut and fill with profiles and that helps alot, you can see where the cuts and fills are on the trail. Without that kind of info your guessing. I have cut trails with my a mini ex and if it is just cut with no fill, excess is laid on the downside of the trail and your not having to make huge cuts you can double that number in a 10 hour day. What takes time is having a stretch of fill then cut and you need a loader and some compaction, that will cut down on your linear feet per day. However if you can sit in you mini and cut you can make time.

Thanx, good feedback. The trail is multi-use, including ATVs. The route will be laid out. They won't have the kind of cut & fill detail that's done for roads. Basically just a flagged route thru the woods. We have to figure out volumes on our own. There will be some fill but most is excavating. Huge uncertainty is bedrock. It is pretty much mountain side with some pretty big slick rock sections along the route that the trail will go above or below. We can do some rock breaking with a boulder buster but its slow going. They like the expanding cements but that's even slower. They prefer not to cast all the spoils down slope. I'm not sure how that's going to work out. If this is like other trail projects around here it will be at least two years before we turn a spoon full of dirt.

I've built trail for 25 years. First question is will they provide a swamper? If you are alone, like I mostly was, doing everything from running the chain saw to hauling fuel, I would average between 30 and 50 lineal feet per hour at the end of the day. (rock your chain saw and you will be filing for half an hour) Second question is sluff off. Do they want everything neat and tidy, or are they going to let nature sluff off the cut and sluff off the fill. Will they require it to look like natural habitat: like placing logs and stumps so they look natural? Are you going to have to plant grass seed and rake by hand? Also make sure you are on the same page with respect to collateral damage. If you rip out a big stump beside the trail bed, they might come along and say why didn't you just cut off the roots and make it look more habitat-like natural?

sounds like a neat project, if you get it be sure to take lots of pics for us on here, cheers

I'm suprised that you aren't given more specs. Private land,or goverment? I've done a lot of trails around Anchorage on private land and its one of the funnest jobs to have pioneering a trail. Creeks to cross can make it complicated with all the erosion control you have to do.Hope it works out and do post pics.