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Hello there, fellow MTB’ers. I’ve searched long and hard to find an actual site dedicated to trails and an active mountain bike community – I think I’ve finally found a home here.
I ride primarily in the Southwestern Ontario, Canada area, but I’ve also gone out West to Colorado to ride in the Grand Junction area, where I truly earned my stones (downhill on a hardtail…..). Since then, I’ve been trying to explore more trails in my area, and improve the trails that are near my doorstep. Which brings me to this:
On one of the trails that I frequent, there’s room for a great, technical side trail that’s already got the beginning and end points ready to go. However, the mid section is ripe for building and there’s nothing there.
The terrain is soft, rolling hills that have between 10-30 foot hills over the course of about 1 mile all deep in the woods. The ground is mostly clay, but there’s some dirt, rocks, and small creeks scattered about. I’ve got most of the necessary tools, including a new skid that I cut up to give me 40+ slats of wood that I can essentially build whatever I want with.
This is something I’m going to do in my spare time with another friend. When it’s all finished, I’d like to have it be a moderate-to-difficult technical ride.
What I’m wondering from this community is well… what to build? I can’t do anything crazy like 10 foot+ drops because the terrain doesn’t allow for it, but the area does have some potential for interesting things (like a tetter-totter) and some narrow, technical stuff. I definitely want to build it so idiots can’t come by and rip it out easily.
I’ll be posting photos of the area and the build as I go along, but I’d love to have other rider’s tips, suggestions, building practices, etc. I’ve checked out the land to make sure I wouldn’t be building over ESA (Environmentally Significant Area) and I’m all in the clear to go. It’s like having a blank canvas.
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you could build wood ramps for jumps or rollers. Place one on a rock for an up and/or down. The best thing to is look for mountain bike videos on youtube. thats how I got some ideas for things to build, then look at the terrain and see what would fit where. As far as people moving things, if they want to, they will. Ive seen it done.
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welcome to singletracks sprod,sounds like you got some prime land there to do some really crazy and cool stuff with…Have you watched many vids,I’m thinkin you could get a ton of inspiration watch vids of dudes that build that kind of stuff.I’m not much for watching vids but I’ve seen a few where they built some incredible wood trails in the backwoods that’ll blow your mind.Another route to go is to just start building it to the lay of the land and see what comes out of it,you never when you might build somthing that’ll blow other people’s minds….Or you could take stock of your own riding skills,and build to suit yourself for the technical aspect that fits your riding vision.. 😄 I deffinately look forward to seeing some pics and hopefully some video of these trails dude,what an opprotunity for you man.
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Got an idea,hope it is’nt too extreme but I was thinking you could build a skinny on a downhill section.You can obviously build it as steep as you like but I was thinking that could be challenging for you to ride a skinny downhill,or even uphill if your up to it.
Was thinking you could build your teeter totter/skinny with square edge bumps along them to make it more challenging as well.
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I’ll definitely be building a skinny somewhere along the route, the terrain doesn’t really allow for anything to dramatic but there is a section that’s got about a 20 foot ravine I was planning to build a small skinny bridge over – maybe I’ll build two bridges nearly side by side. I really got to get some pictures of the terrain up. I recently rode the trail for the first time this year and got some great footage (plus an epic superman bail). I’ll post that up shortly so you can see what I’m dealing with.
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You got those pictures? I’d love to help you out with ideas!
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The weather has been exceptionally awful here (rain, rain, rain) for the past week, so I haven’t had a chance to get out on the trail and take photos. I had about 30 minutes yesterday where I managed to transport some materials about half way down to where I want to start building, but it got too dark to continue.
However I did capture a long video of the first half of the ride a few weeks back. I’ll edit that up and post it so you can get an idea of what’s there…
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Finally got out there and transported more wood – took a few pictures with my cell phone but it’ll give a decent idea of the kind of area around. There’s some great fallen logs on rolling hills that will do alot for some technical building. Can’t wait!
Not sure if these will show up…
http://img850.imageshack.us/i/img00405.jpg
Rolling hills and fallen logshttp://img863.imageshack.us/i/img00406.jpg
Worn over old trail that has no (current) access – main trail is about 100m behindhttp://img846.imageshack.us/i/img00407.jpg
My friend and faithful builderhttp://img88.imageshack.us/i/img00408h.jpg
Yours trulyhttp://img43.imageshack.us/i/img00409nc.jpg
A nice gully that’s dried out and is perfect for trail dipshttp://img812.imageshack.us/i/img00410.jpg
Another view -
Make a gully run!!!
Second photo courtesy of Goo’s blog.
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That’ll take quite a bit of clearing since there’s a lot of fallen trees, but it’s definitely got potential…. I found an awesome tree that’s perfect for making a long, tough skinny on…
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