Chittenden County Recreation Trails

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Chittenden County Recreation Trails

• Where can a mountain biker go?

By Brooke Scatchard
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I Love Bikes and Maps!
I grew up in Chittenden County and have been
mountain biking ever since I can remember. I
have helped build miles and miles of trails all
around this place. I love the freedom that
riding trails provides. I enjoy life at the
speed of bike. I would be forever happy if I
could ride endless trails.
I grew up in Chittenden County and have been
totally interested in maps for a few years. I
have always wanted to make a map of all of the
fun riding Ive done around this place. I love
the wealth of information that maps provide. I
enjoy mapping new trails to ride. Everyone would
be forever happy if they could ride with a map
of endless trails.
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Here are few reasons why
You gotta love bikes!
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Methods

• Downloaded Layers from www.vcgi.org
• DEM250, Bndhash, Surface Water, Trails
• Selected Chittenden and Town boundaries layers
  from Bndhash
  
• Masked DEM250 to Chittenden County
• Created Hillshade for DEM250 and new Chittenden
  Co. DEM
  
• Clipped Trails and Surface Water to Chittenden
  County
  
• Selected trail types from Trails attribute table
  and created
  
• Long, Catamount, and Snowmobile layers
• Exported each new selection layer to create
  shapefiles
  
• Mapped every trail I could find in Chittenden
  County with my GPS
  
• Created new shapefiles for Mountain Biking, Bike
  Paths, Hiking trails and digitized each trail
  from a GPS topo map to ArcMap
  
• Calculated the length of each trail from the
  attribute table
  
• Merged my new trails layers with the selections
  from the VCGI trails
  
• Used ArcScene to make 3D map of Chittenden DEM
  and trails

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Lots of places to bike.Lots of places to
hike.Even more places to
Findings
Snowmobike!
Snow -mo- Bike
Hike
Bike
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Trails Constructed By Bikers

• The Fellowship of the Wheel, Chittenden Countys
  chapter of the Vermont Mountain Bike Advocates,
  
• has organized many successful trail building
  projects across Chittenden County.
  
• These projects totaled 1375 volunteer hours and
  15 miles of new trails this year
  
• Individuals have taken steps to clear trails on
  their own land or on friends land with
  permission.

Others
Bikers
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Hiking Only Trails Suitable for Bikes
There are 37 miles of singletrack trails closed
to bikers for biased, unsupported reasons.
Studies have proven that bikes cause no more
trail compacting or erosion than hikers.
Many of the trails closed to bikes are open to
horses. Research shows bikes have less of an
impact on trail damage than horses.
No Bikes
Yes Bikes
I think hikers are jealous of bikers!
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3D is Wicked!
I created these incredible virtual images of
Chittenden County in ArcScene.
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Learn. Do. Be.

• I have learned that there are miles of trails
  closed to bikes, but even more that are open!
  
• I have learned that a lot goes into the making
  of GIS data layers.
  
• There is some error in my bike trail layers
  because I digitized points instead of loading
  them directly from the GPS.
  
• I would make a legend with individual trail
  names to guide trail users if I had more time.
  

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Yes, Bikes On Snow!
Check out bikesonsnow.com later this winter for
all the
BOS Skike action!