Trail Boss™ innovative new packable rock bar expands digging tools from dirt to rock
by Bill Hasenjaeger, Owner, Trail Boss
From the company that developed the first full-length trail-digging tool that is both packable and durable, comes a new product that has never before existed: a packable rock bar.
The Trail Boss Rock Bar consists of three high-strength chromoly steel handle sections and two different hardened and hand-forged tips. The full 58-inch-long Rock Bar fastens with socketed screw joints that make it nearly seamless in both function and form.
Not only does the Rock Bar disassemble for ease of pack-ability, but it weighs in with both tips at just under 12 pounds, 20-50% lighter than most typical single-piece rock bars and is equally as strong.
The Arizona Wilderness Coalition (AWC) is a Trail Boss Rock Bar customer. They field tested it this Summer while building retaining walls and performing general trail reconstruction in the Chiricahua Wilderness. Says Jonathan Patt, veteran trail-builder and project crew lead, “It did exactly the same jobs as the single-piece rock bar. We had a dozen trail-workers smashing it into rock for six weeks and it stood up to everything we threw at it.”
Brian Stultz, Wilderness Stewardship Director for AWC (and Jonathan’s boss), had this to say, “I have been bragging about the Rock Bar with colleagues about how easy it is to transport. It’s easy to carry in a back pack, and I am so happy to have this tool.”
The welding, machining and hand-forging expertise required to build such a Rock Bar does not come cheap at $375. Nor does it come easy -- which might be why it’s never been done.
Published September 2019
Bill is a career manufacturing engineer living in Bellingham WA. When not riding bikes on trails he's the owner of Trail Boss, manufacturer of back-country packable trail building hand tools. He's also the board president of Whatcom Mountain Bike Coalition, the stewardship organization for the Galbraith Mountain trail system. Bill started doing volunteer trail work with the USFS in the early 70’s in the southern Sierra mountains, primarily on moto trails, and started working with mountain bike trail groups in the early 2000’s.
https://www.wmbcmtb.org/donate-now
Contact: [email protected]
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