MEDORA - Man and machine are bucking tough grasslands' terrain to write the sequel to North Dakota's most popular hiking, biking and horseback trail.

Maah Daah Hey II, a 45-mile extension to the original, is being scribbled through ravines, scoria and clay hardpan south of Medora.

The eight or so miles that are finished are open to anyone for a taste of what to expect a year or so from now when "part two" is complete from Medora down south to the Burning Coal Vein Campground in the ponderosa pine country around Amidon.

"Go ahead. The grasslands are open," said Forest Service engineer Curt Glasoe.

Same as the original 100 miles between Medora and the North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, the trail is on land managed by the U.S. Forest Service on the Little Missouri National Grasslands.

Paul Planer, owner of Clearway of Colorado, was awarded the trail construction contract, one of seven companies to bid the work. He's used to building trails, but this one is taking all he's got.

This is a year when a lot of Forest Service money was diverted to fire fighting all over the country, leaving little in most budgets for any capital improvements, like trail building.

Consequently, bids came in low.

This one, at 74 cents a foot, compares to as much as $1.15 a foot for parts of the original trail: "The best price we ever paid," said Glasoe.

Planer was named Trail Contractor of the Year for 2006 by the Forest Service.

He brought two mini excavators that run on tracks and are scaled for narrow jobs like the 36 inches from one side of the trail to the other.

The machines beat the pants off human trailblazers. Even so, the going is far from easy, said Planer, who rode his machine on a slide down a hillside the day before.

"Mostly, the work I do is in the high mountains. Here, everything is really different; not harder, just different," Planer said.

Because it will fracture, mountain granite is easier to bust through than bentonite clay that's been baked hard all summer, he said.

"You get out (of the hardened clay) exactly what you swing at it. You swing a Pulaski, you get the depth of the Pulaski head. You swing the excavator teeth, you get that much," he said, measuring the length of the teeth with his hand.

Then there's all that creeping juniper growing like Southern kudzu on north faces and in ravines. It's like a knee-high jungle, intractable and tough to hack through.

Wade Planer was running a mini-excavator not far off East River Road, around a hill or two from his brother.

Wade Planer said he can run the machine 12 hours and use less than three gallons of diesel most days.

Some stretches of Maah Daah Hey II go fast - 1,000 feet a day or better - some go slow, with the mini-excavator running at a hair over idle speed all day.

"It goes good when you don't have the juniper," Wade Planer said.

Paul Planer said he'd never worked in the Dakotas before, but he bid the job because he needed the work. He said he'll complete his 25-mile contract - 17 miles of trail from Medora south and eight miles from the Burning Coal Vein Campground north - this fall.

Planer follows a trail of orange ribbons on a route that was mapped, walked and surveyed carefully by Glasoe and others in the agency.

Glasoe said the new trail is the same and different than the original stretch.

In response to a popular "hot" complaint, this trail keeps to more shade along the route. There are more wildlife and cattle trails, and users will have to keep heads up so they don't get fooled and wander off the wrong way.

Glasoe said the Forest Service hopes to afford the middle 20 miles of Maah Daah Hey II next year, along with a new campground about mid-way and improvements to Burning Coal Vein Campground.

"By next fall, it should be pretty much in place," Glasoe said.

That will be good news for a popular destination trail.

Glasoe said a trail count on Maah Daah Hey I found more than 9,200 users this year, two-thirds of them pedaling mountain bikes. Another 26 percent rode horse and only 8 percent hiked the trail, he said.

The total for all three users compares to just over 3,000 when the first count was made in 2004.

Maah Daah Hey I took four years to build and opened in 1999.

Anyone who wants to sample the Maah Daah Hey II can get on the trailhead located at the driveway to the Bully Pulpit Golf Course south of Medora.

(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 888-303-5511 or lauren@;westriv.com.)