Private track- How to fix clay soil

Most old track were basically watered and maybe scrape leveled. Saddleback and Carlsbad when I grew up were like freeways

That's very interesting and explains a lot, but I gotta ask. How/why do you know this? 🤣

That's very interesting and explains a lot, but I gotta ask. How/why do you know this? 🤣

Cultivator and a pto rototiller. I have a clay based track in Northeast Pennsylvania, and let me tell you. When I get spoiled with a little bit of moisture before hand, the dirt is nothing short of spectacular. Usually what I do is rip the corners deep with a cultivator and then go over it with a pto rototiller. The corners get ripped super deep, and the straight aways are groomed nicely, but dont get rutty like the corners. 

Clay can be the best dirt you’ve ridden or hard as a rock depending on how dry it is. You either need to have a pond/homemade water trailer or just ride after a rain. Sawdust works good to mix in although you’d want a very fine one, not like woodchips or mulch. You could also throw hay on it over the winter and let it decompose. High Point does that

Do you own that wooded area?  If it were me I’d buy a mulcher/shredder and clear out the underbrush and trim some limbs.  The resources you need are right next to you.  

Can't really remember where or when I learned it. Might've just been born with it preinstalled. 

If money were no object, the ideal solution would be 3-4 applications of leonardite (humic acid) every year for a couple of years, and growing a green manure crop during the growing season that you would till back in repeatedly. 

Tilling a predominantly clay soil when it is wet just continues to destroy soil tilth. 

When you disturb wet soil, the soil tries to settle in strata like the picture below. Obviously the picture is the extreme, you add soap and water to the soil and shake it well, maybe a couple of times, and over a 24 hour period it will tend to separate into the layers shown.  The clay ends up overlapping and keeping water from permeating very well, causing pooling and runoff.  The leonardite actually helps separate the clay particles and allows the water to penetrate better, and over time can improve soil tilth by combining the clay, silt, and sand again over the entire profile. 

That is pretty good dirt for NE-PA.  You got lucky there isn't too much shale.  Most of that area of PA has so much shale it's like riding on slate chips.

I skimmed the other posts so I'm sorry if I missed what I'm saying being said multiple times. But like others have said fine sawdust is better than chips.  There was a local track that got free woodchips and mixed them into the sand. The chips ended up floating back to the top and were very slippery until they rotted and got softer. That track spread and mixed them in with a dozer so it wasn't really the best way of mixing. 

 Leaves  tilled in over the winter will also help make it more loamy. I have a similar soil if I dig down deep . Its sand like when dry , but packs into hard as concrete after it gets wet and dries out. I used it to build some areas I wanted to have flat slide able corners in.  My track runs through the woods so I get a lot of leaves in the Fall. I normally push them off the sides and mix them into  a pile of loam I have. They are mostly decomposed  by spring time. 

 Southwick was mixing leaves into the sand for years and that was a part of why the sand started to be less and less sandy. So on a sand track they work to make it less sandy.

 I would look up some local saw mills. Any size big or small. And try and find one that You could work out some deal with to get sawdust from. Maybe trade sawdust for track time?

  If You want to go the leaf way, You may also be able to get local landscapers to pay You to drop leaves. You would want to only add the leaves in the fall and  keep tilling them in until the ground freezes. And not go too crazy with them , a thin layer and see how well it mixes in and add more and more as long as it mixes well.  I have a good mix of nice loam ,a little gravel and that clay like stuff here . The sandy and loamy stuff helps grind up the leaves . I have not tried mixing leaves into the clay I have since I want to keep those areas hard . But they do get dusty if I don't get enough rain. 

  You could get chips for free too , but they take longer to make the soil  better.  I have seen people re chip woodchips to make them smaller . By feeding them through a chipper over and over to get them smaller. 

As far as mixing goes, a tiller, PTO driven rototiller would be the quickest and easiest way.

 I've seen Nation tracks use excavators to dig down a few feet and mix sand and sawdust in that way. Using the bucket to dig and mix and the same time. Fluffing up the soil and leaving it loose then going over it with a tractor and discing it after.  If You have the time and or easier access to an excavator. It would mix it in deeper doing it like that.  I'm pretty sure there are some videos on Youtube showing it done .  I think it was Unadilla I saw, maybe High Point too? I tried to find a link but couldn't.    

I’ve got clay on my private track to, but after maintaining the local track for close to 20 years and built a couple of privates i have just gone to accept that you should buy the right equipment for the kind of dirt that you got and more or less live with it.

Mixing sawdust, sand and what ever is a never ending story that takes great amount of time and goes away really fast. We got horses so i get some sawdust over from the horses boxes, and i always put that on the track but the amount that it takes to make a large difference is to much to handle.

Put that time/money in to a water truck and some tilling equipment.

I don’t have the opportunity to water my track so i let it sit and mostly use it after rain. Then i go out and rip it so it’s perfect moist.

So buy a $35k attachment, destroy the natural sound proofing around track, then spend an enormous amount of time (hand) raking up large stringy mulch chunks, then distribute over track and still have to till into soil? Would be way easier and cheaper to just go get free sawdust, horse manure, pre-decomposed mulch from a large grinder from local landfill, etc 

Grass clippings would probably decompose faster than leaves, even. Lots of lawn services have to pay a fee to get rid of lawn clippings, so there’s at least some chance of getting them for free if you live close enough to the area that they service. 

Yeah the property extends well into the woods. Unfortunately, I live about 4 hours away from here so I only have so much time to spend there per year. On a good year, I have about 20 riding days up there. 

I would love to be up there full time and work the soil in and add sawdust and sand, I just dont have enough time. There are always a few weekends per year where the dirt gets just the right amount of moisture in it. Usually in the fall and it never really dries out, especially if its overcast

Its amazing how well thick brush will help reduce the sound. I have a highway that runs close to my property too and I put the faster sections out farther from any houses ,closer to the highway. In the winter I hear highway noise from a lot of the ara , but when everything's green I can be out running an excavator working late at night and nobody even knows. They were  doing some night work on the highway and a couple years ago I was out working on my track until midnight one night. Nobody cared, my neighbors and people at my house couldn't hear or even see me. It was a lot of work cutting it all in and walking the area to figure out where to go. I've kept a tree canopy over as much of mine as possible to help with keeping dust down as well as sound and hiding it from people looking on Google earth for places to ride.

I was thinking about making a trail that connected to the other trails about a half mile through the woods. It would be nice to extend my riding area and have quick access. But I did not want people to be able to get into my backyard without seeing them and also give them a great way of getting away if they came to do something bad. I thought about building a drawbridge and connecting VIA crossing a river. The banks are steep enough and its deep enough that it would stop most people from trying to cross without a bridge. But time is hard to come by for working on those things right now.