Put some thought and effort into your bike trail features
Good bike trails don’t build themselves. They take a lot of planning, time, and effort to create. Too many bikers are satisfied to simply ride existing trails, never thinking of how they got there in the first place. All too often I hear a rider complain about a jump or a berm or a section of trail that kills the flow, but that rider never thinks of picking up a shovel and fixing the problem. If a section of trail needs some love, get out there with tools, and fix it up. If some friends are building a new bike trail, go help them out for a few days. If there isn’t a trail around your home that has the type or riding you like to do, then step up, and build it yourself. Just make sure you do it right. You don’t want to put in weeks of effort only to find that your trail isn’t that good, or worse, creates access issues for everyone.
Build Legally
This is rule #1 for sure. In the good old US of A, access is a serious issue. If you’re up in Canada, you can pretty much build what you want, where you want. In the states, the Forest Service and other land managers are usually looking for an excuse to shut you down. If you’re looking for role models on the trail-building front, check out the Teton Freedom Riders. Have you ever had a fed from the Forest Service help you build a jump? No? Well, these guys have. They’re an example we can all learn from. In Salt Lake City, WAFTA has taken the hint and is currently working on the second legal freeride trail in the area.
Build to Last
The main mistake that most first-time builders make is to do things too quickly. Don’t just pile up some logs and dirt to make a jump. Instead, make yourself a three-sided log cabin to support the lip and the tranny. Then you can be sure that your sender will be there for years. The same goes for berms. Make sure they’re supported. The outside edges of trails often get eroded quickly or blow out when someone misses his or her line and rides off the side. If you don’t support these sections, your trail will be six inches wide by next season. You also need to think about erosion. Sections of trail that go straight down will change water runoff patterns and can destroy an entire hillside. If your trail does cross an early season creek, build a bridge, reinforce it with rock, make a gap jump, or do whatever you have to do to keep that section from washing out every year.
Give It Character
… And stick with it. The best trails have a theme. Dirt Merchant (a Whistler mega classic) is wide-open fast with large jumps and massive berm. Just pinning top to bottom with hardly any breaking. Fatcrobat, on the other hand, is super tech with lots of steep root sections, skinnies, and drops with sniper landings. Both of these trails are extremely fun, but if you threw a root section characteristic of Fatcrobat in the middle of Dirt Merchant, it would ruin its character.
Build Wet. Ride Dry
You shouldn’t be riding in the rain anyway, so take these days to get your building done. This keeps trail building from cutting into your riding time too much, and it gives you wet, easily manipulated dirt to work with. You can build, shape, and pack your jumps and berms without too much problem, and then come back and ride them when it’s nice and dry.
Think in Fast-forward
One of the most common mistakes of bike trail building occurs in the planning stage. More specifically, it happens in the walking stage. A builder will think to himself as he walks, “OK, it will go down this straight stretch, around a corner here, over this roller, through these two jumps, and then into the next corner.” After it’s all built, the first rider down finds out that the corner is too sharp, the straight stretch after is too short, the roller is so tiny it feels like a breaking bump, there isn’t enough room to get speed before the first jump, and the second one launches you over the next berm. Don’t walk your proposed line, sprint it. Get some other eyes on it. Mark each feature with rocks or sticks so you have a visual. For your first few features, give yourself about twice as much room as you think you need, and you’ll often find out that it’s just barely enough.
Build for Everyone
If you build gnarly trail features (ladders, big drops, gaps, whatever …) that not all riders will be able to make cleanly, then you should build a good ride-around. If you don’t, two things are going to happen. People who have no business riding something so burly are going to try it and get hurt, or people are going to create their own ride-around by simply riding off the trail. These ride-arounds are also very nice to show land managers. “Hey, look, Mr. Government Dude. People can just go over here if they don’t want to hit this massive gap.”
Respect Builders
If a trail or feature isn’t open, don’t ride it. Likewise, if you’re a builder, make sure it’s obvious that a feature is closed. If you build a big jump that doesn’t have a landing yet, stack some logs across the takeoff so some poor bastard doesn’t hit that thing and get broken when he touches down. And if you come ripping down a trail and see someone spending their day behind a shovel, at least tell them thanks as you ride by.
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Tags: bike trail building, bike trails, biking, mountain biking
