That rebuild is looking awesome! I should really just drive over there and go for a ride since our winter is so terrible.

It took me a bit to recognize it, but I remember racing on blast off a...

Sweet. I'm gonna have to get over there next spring and check it out!

^^^ siiiick.

That at beacon?

To a break from drywalling to build a quick side hit on one of the roads in our little trail network yesterday.

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20231119/2c9669feb257228192853a4669f941b8.jpg

A lot of trails struggle with this. People want to have the trail swing back slightly uphill to scrub speed and milk vert, but they also don't want to turn the berm into a bathtub.

Aside from...

^^^ agreed. We have a lot of trails that were built years ago with no regard for drainage. Now those trails are getting a lot of use and need more work on berms / drainage, etc. Aside from a...

If people are going over the top late in the corner, it could a bunch of things:

- berm kinks creating a weird apex
- berm isn't long enough
- berm isn't tall enough
- berm isn't steep enough...

I think the biggest thing with berms is to check your work frequently. Take your best guess on where it needs to be and start piling. Dig out the inside and pile up the outside. Mind your...

I don't know how literal the "swimming pool size pile of dirt" statement is, but that'd be somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 yards of dirt. There is no fucking way I'd move 100 yards of dirt with...

Yeah, the ebike is killer for trail clearing and maintenance. Probably 70% of the riding I do on the moped is for the purpose of trail work. It's quicker to get in, and it also means I can expend...

I've used buried perforated pipe to pull water away from a pump track and put it further down the hill. Worked ok-ish.

Ultimately, I find the problem is that pump tracks generally need to be...

Well, sometimes. Their dialect often shifts between metric and imperial inexplicably.

Not quite gravity logic, but we've been making one of our pseudo flow trails a bit flowier. Bigger berms (made out of dirt as opposed to mostly rotten logs), more jumps, drainage that actually...

That's pretty much it right there. If a flow trail rides perfectly on the first try, that's a rare unicorn. I've ridden trails from some of the best builders in the business that were a bit wonky...

They're not brake bumps. They're millions of little doubles.

Nice. I love some good rock work.

I also love tech trails with a few berms and flowy features peppered in. Jank with occasional moments of grace.

Legacy bike park. Super fun - they have 4 or 5 jump trails of varying sizes/difficulties, and a handful of natural tech trails that are mostly of the rooty loamy variety. They also have a...

RA: Your pics from the last couple pages looks awesome! Some day I'll make it down there to ride some of that. You seem to have a good philosophy on trail building that aligns with many of my...

True. But if I'm actually thinking about clearing trees, I'm bringing a chainsaw.

I'm a fan of the pocket boy. It's small, so you're not cutting anything major with it. But it's small enough that it's not a big deal at all to throw it in a fanny pack or whatever.

Was riding the lift with a couple teenagers today. They were discussing the finer points of building jumps in their back yard. The older one said "we just need to get one of those tools. What...

I carry a 40" handle rogue 70h pretty often (with a chainsaw also in there). Works fine. I think a longer handle wouldn't be a problem other than if there's overhead foliage.

I have the Evoc trail builder pack. The hedge trimmer is a little tricky, but if it'd fit into the chainsaw sling, I think you could carry all of that at once. The Dakine builder pack is...

^^^ nice! That all looks super fun. I love trails like that with a bunch of little bonus lines on the sides.

Yup. The lower half at least.

Obviously means something different to everyone, but I'd call schleyer at Whistler a good example of tech flow. It's rocky, and line choice matters, but if you get it right, there are smooth lines...

Tech flow trails are the holy grail. So much fun, but so hard to build well. Kudos to anyone who builds a good one.

Lots of places put them in places that get brake bumps to prevent the formation of holes.

The problem is, places that get brake bumps are... places where people are using the brakes. And those...

It's crazy to me how fast nature will reclaim trails if use pauses for even a year or two. It kind of makes me question the massive environmental review that's required on a lot of these projects.
...

Grabbed a mini-ex from a friend and have been reworking the backyard jumps for the last few days. Made the bigger line bigger so that it works better at "trail speed," and added a new smaller line....

Kinda depends on your dirt and what you're actually doing. For a lot of stuff around me, I don't actually find the rake side of the McLeods all that useful. I use a 70h (7" hoe with an axe...

Just order straight from rogue.

We have a pretty good volunteer base, considering the size of the community. A big dig day might have 30ish people. The fact that there are plenty of riders that never come dig doesn't bother me...

I justify it (at least in my head) because a lot of our local forests are pretty unhealthy. Nothing is allowed to burn anymore, so the forests get choked out with a high density of shitty small...

^^^ it says it right there. Your tools are stashed in the forest, next to the scenery.

You're welcome.

I go back and forth on fiberglass handles vs. wrapping my tool cache in a tarp. Lately I've been going with the tarp, since most of my favorite tools are wood handled. A brown tarp is also good for...

Yeah, I find the entrance to the pipes needs to get cleaned out every few years. A big diameter (6 or 8"), non corrugated pipe helps. And stacking rock and gravel around the entrance to try to...

Obviously depends on the specific location, but sometimes it's easiest to just run a drain pipe under/through the berm.

Depending on your soil and climate, sometimes using the machine to dig a...

This.

Also, if possible, get it roughly shaped and ride it before the machine leaves. If it's the wrong shape or in the wrong place, it's nice to know that while you still have the ability to...

^^^ nice. What saw are you running in the mill?

That's funny.

I've had similar issues - some weird corner that I fix to make the trail flow a little better. Random people undo the fix and resurrect the old route. Eventually, it just becomes a...

Nice Lee. Those big rocks are bastards. Don't know how many times I've spent hours excavating a big rock in an inconvenient place, only to give up when I couldn't move it and just fill it all...

I've only used one a little bit, but it was vastly less efficient than a folding saw. Maybe a good version exists? Not sure.

Looks like landscaping fabric to keep weeds from coming up.

Seems like the solution just depends on the situation. Close to a road where you can bring in materials? Just buy some pressure treated dimensional lumber and build a bridge. Good wood (cedar)...

Well, most of what we've been doing is of the "trundle downhill and hope it stops kinda in the right spot" variety. But yesterday's project was a little more involved. We actually had one really...

The whole trail is a fun little project. Semi-uninteresting terrain that we're trying to make more interesting with rock work (since there's a ton of fairly move-able rock in the vicinity).

Moved rocks last night.

Early in the process

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20200601/e678f029391efe36b9ab095911e5005b.jpg

Mostly finished (still needs a bunch of dirt work).
...

That looks fun. And yeah - they put some serious effort into that.

Nice. Makes for a clean looking yard!