Hondo Gravel

After last the flooding last summer how much has the Katy been repaired? Would like to return in the future.

stardognine

That poor trail ALWAYS has problems. 🙁 It must be a full-time job, maintaining it.

veloz

Though it was closed, we
rode/camped from Sedalia to SL last September. Usually encountered a detour every day but not difficult. The official state website had detour info. Our biggest issue was water and food as many places were shut down from the flood (and every day was 90+ degrees).

alan s 

I rode it last spring and didn’t have any issues. The river was close to cresting the banks, but still had a few feet to come up. Was the trail damaged during the summer?

robow

Huge sections of the trail eventually ended up under water and were washed out due to unusually high amounts of rain during the spring and early summer.

Eggman84

Why not check out the Missouri State Parks website? They have an updated map of trail conditions at https://mostateparks.com/page/84206/...k-advisory-map.
Just be aware, conditions in a month or more (after next spring runoff) could be drastically different than today. No guarantees.

alan s 

I cut my Katy trip short and took Amtrak back to St. Louis due to the rain. There were torrential downpours for days in Missouri that just stalled, so I drove a few hours east in Illinois and had good cycling and camping weather. Probably didn’t take much more rain to cause flooding. Looks like I rode it at an opportune time.

Hondo Gravel

I will check the Katy trail websites. Hopefully by summer 2020 it will be all passable. Last trip was June 2018 and it was 15 degrees above normal. Everyday was hot and high humidity. Had fun anyway I’m use to heat and humidity..

JerrySTL

Here's a great resource for all things Katy Trail: https://bikekatytrail.com/ and https://bikekatytrail.com/forum.aspx .

From what I read, there are only two closed sections both with nice detours.

I just signed up for the annual Katy Trail Ride in June. It will be my ninth time. https://mostateparks.com/2020ktride

UniChris

Unfortunate reality likely is that when the level routes carved by rivers are used to run a railroad or canal with few inclines, that becomes subject to flood damage.

Converting the railroad into a trail doesn't lessen the risk (in a way, a gravel trail surface seems even more susceptible to damage from minor flooding than ballast, ties, and track) but can remove the funding and economic urgency that would get a heavily utilized railroad repaired as soon as the waters recede.

Also lots of the these routes were built in an era where you could change the environment in ways you can't today - it's not uncommon for rail trail conversions to need things like boardwalks across marshy areas where in the era of railroad construction a causeway would have been built or raised.

alan s 

Yeah, back in the good ole days, we were able to change the environment much more easily. The kids running things these days need to take a lesson from the past and learn how to get things done. Global warming would never have happened on our watch.