Building a mountain bike jump over my driveway

Last week, we took this muddy, bumpy logging road and turned it into a durable gravel road that is now the grand entrance to Berm Peak. But of course, it's not just a gravel road. We built some rock

jump

s on the side that end at a small landing. Because the rock

jump

s are accessible from the snake pit trail, it's a really fun line. But you have to brake hard to avoid hitting the retaining wall, and that's a big loss of speed. Of course, Pat opted to simply climb over the retaining wall. This doesn't work well, but it works.

And he got me thinking that we could make this trail continue to the other side of the

driveway

and continue downhill. To maintain this trail, I needed to make some improvements to what we had, including the landing and back trail. I have found dirty gravel very useful for this. After fine-tuning the path a bit, it was time to experiment a little. To start, the cypress trees needed a little pruning, but not too much because I wanted this feature to be hidden from the front yard. Making the path to the

driveway

passable was more challenging than it sounds.

You see, this driveway was built with stone during the construction of the house, so removing the stone from the retaining wall could cause the driveway to crack or even collapse. But I was able to move a rock that couldn't stand and throw some dirt on it to make everything work. Still, not what I would call an amazing lip, but a good start. It feels incomplete and a little bland given the season we're in. In the southeast there is spring, summer, autumn and mud. That's a little better, but still not what I had in mind. With all that speed, we could make it to the driveway and maybe even get some air.

But to build a proper edge on the retaining wall we would need a lot of soil to cover the rocks. And I'm not good at

building

dirty lips anyway. Lately, the 10.5 radius has been my go-to for almost any jump. But on this one I made the last 8 inches flat so we can squeeze it recklessly without getting thrown over the handlebars. To install this on the retaining wall, you could dig it out as far as possible and trim the side supports with the reciprocating saw to fit over the rocks. Now that I've created some of these lips, I've cut the whole process down to about 45 minutes.

And given the lack of maintenance and water resistance, I suspect this won't be the last one we build. This wooden part will be the top part of our jump, while the bottom part should be dirt and gravel. I must admit this was a little more work than I expected. But with some of the leftover material from the road project, I was able to place the border and even make it blend in with the surroundings. But this lip could be so much more. From the very day I drove down this road with my real estate agent, I wondered if we could build a jump on it, and many of you had the exact same thought when you saw the map of the property.

But the side profile actually looks like this. From this direction the approach would be uphill, so it is not possible. From the other direction, the jump would be a step forward, a big one, and I'm not sure how we would get the speed for it. But there is one place where the profile looks like this, and it's right in the auxiliary parking space where we've built our border. And that might just be a little by design. It's time for a test. It wouldn't be pretty, but it seemed possible to clear the driveway. To get both tires into the gravel I would need a little more speed and it would be a serious drag.

So the next day, Kevin and I got to work trying to clear it up. We were falling short and the culprit was speed, or lack thereof. The skinny snake pit can only be done very quickly without messing up, and you have to make up the difference later while jumping rocks and preparing for the driveway gap. Despite the rough landing, I even tried the hollow of my hardtail to get some extra boost, but to no avail. So we continue to refine our lines and push our luck. Kevin definitely jumped further, but it wasn't the two tires in the gravel.

After that, we both started to get a little insecure and decided to call it quits. The next morning I got up early and prepared the road. I added extra height to the landing so we could increase speed and some more support at the bottom of the lip for a smoother takeoff. Pat also came to try it. With those trail improvements, we immediately did better than the day before. In summer, with a harder surface, I'm sure we would have overcome the gravel, but despite this disadvantage, we gave it our all. Pat definitely cleared it up with a clean teardown.

And with that, the gap in the driveway officially became a reality. But it's my driveway, so I had to clear that too. So I took a couple of tips from Pat about choosing online and gave it another chance. I said that would never happen, but we have a space in the driveway. And it leads directly to another trailhead in the Moonshangle bushland. That means we can continue this downhill race and add additional, crazier features. And now that this line continues down the driveway, we can call it a path. I considered naming it the lower snake pit since that's where it starts, but since it crosses the forest road it needs its own name.

Thanks for traveling with me today and we'll see you next time.