With many folks still preferring to ride close to home and away from crowds, the idea of having a private backyard pump track is more appealing than ever. While it might seem like building one takes little more than some dirt and a little bit of sweat equity, making a pump track that’s actually fun to ride requires an experienced hand.
Davide Reina is someone who has that kind of experience, and he’s come up with an innovative solution for sharing his berm-sculpting skills with others. Easy Pumptracks uses modular cardboard templates to lay out and shape the perfect berms and rollers for any pump track project. Customers — typically bike parks or public land managers, but also private individuals — work with Easy Pumptracks to come up with a design for the full track. The company selects and cuts a set of modular cardboard templates, and ships them to the buyer with instructions for assembly.
After the modules are filled with dirt, the cardboard will naturally degrade and disappear, leaving just the dirt. The cardboard can be shipped flat, which minimizes transportation costs, but still, a massive amount of cardboard is required. Think multiple stacked pallets of cardboard, not just a sleeve of moving boxes you can order from U-Haul.
Beyond that, building a pump track requires a massive amount of dirt, and a way to move it into place. Davide says their primary customers are ski resorts and parks since they already have “excavators and trucks and dirt for free or they are easy to get [..].” For example, according to Davide, “a normal 3-wave speed ring (24 x 6 meters) contains 21.2 m2 of dirt.” That’s roughly 2 truckloads, just for one proper berm!
Still, Easy Pumptracks seems to offer a clear advantage for inexperienced builders attempting to create a fun, sustainable pump track.
For more info, visit easypumptracks.com.
