Back wood trails

The past couple of years we have started building some trails in the woods behind our neighborhood and it has become a full blown project. Originally we used the woods for paint balling but once that died down we started using the place for biking. And because it used to be an old dump we come across a bunch of useful structures to make it that much more fun.The trail building started in the fall of 2007 where we started to build a couple of trails. They started out pretty small and nothing too exciting. We had just started getting in to technical MTBing where as we had done small dirt jumps with BMX bikes before.
The first trail we built was just a small run, about 100-150 yrds. There is a main trail in the woods that is used by hunting trucks and such, so we built it right off of that and sense some of the earth had eroded it had formed something resembling a small set of stairs which was fun to ride over.
After watching some of the north shore videos on youtube we decided to build some technical ladders, drops and such. Our first wooden structure was a wooden ladder made out logs which ran over a small dried out gully. However it is not still there today because wet conditions rotted the wood.
The next wooden structure that we made was a small ladder drop heading off of the main dirt road. To give it some style we built part of it out of some of the scrap metal left back there.
These are a few recent pictures of it:
Below that we used to have a couple of zig zagged ladders but unfortunately the hunters took those down.
And then the fun began . Because it used to be a junkyard there is quite a few very old cars back there. So far i have counted seven but i could be forgetting some. In the area that we are building there is two cars that are pretty close to each other so we cleared a trail linking the two together. We started on the lower one first then worked our way up. When we first constructed the lower car it consisted of a ladder up and then a ladder for a roll down. But in the past year we have changed it to look like this:
Hopefully in the up coming season some renovations or changes will be made to it just to mix things up a bit.
After completion of the lower car construction of the upper car began. Because of the body of the car we decided to have a similar ladder to the top but make a drop off the back to a small landing. Because of increased skill level in the past year we have moved the landing back quite a bit, so instead of riding the top then dropping off we can just jump the whole damn thing.
This is what it looks like now.
Then that was the end of our first building season.
Once the new season began we started building bigger and better.
The trail that we first built the season before we extended so it started higher up and we built a set of 3 jumps on it.
After that we cleared a new trail that led to a 10 foot drop in a giant hole/ half bowl which immediately after is a trail gap then a jump made out of excess car parts.
- a little blurry but you get the point.
- lower section of same run
This is a short video of what we had so far.


During the fall of 08 we went on to building 2 more trail gaps over the main dirt road.
The step down:
Trevor is hitting the jump in those pics.

Soon after we started working on our most resent project right next to the step down.
The landing is now much bigger and moved further back. we only had it that close for the first couple of runs "just in case".

We are looking forward to the new season and all the new builds that come with it.

-in addition a new season calls for new rides
My new Iron Horse Yakuza Kumicho
My friend's/ co-builder's Iron Horse Sachem 4.0


-if you have any sugestions for future builds please post ideas at https://www.pinkbike.com/forum/listcomments/?threadid=55293&pagenum=3#commentid1443460

-Chris


Extras-

- a little kicker we built in the neighborhood


- some other places we like to ride (including ours)