Do it Yourself - Building a Dream

I named this project for somewhat obvious reasons. The opportunity to freely build whatever I'm willing to break a sweat over does not come around every day. I've been dreaming of building a slope-style course for as long as I've been interested in bikes. In the different places I've lived, building has always been a priority to make sure I have the type of terrain I like to ride. The issue with this is the more often I move, the less I get to ride the stuff I've built. Luckily, I have a friend with a beautiful slice of California who was eager to see what I am able to build and ride. Nowhere that I've been lucky enough to dig has had such a perfect combination of dirt, location, and freedom of design. I wanted to start out with a simple straight away course that had a clear end in sight, instead of dreaming up some rad slope course with every kind of Gnar I could imagine. After riding it for a couple days I'm glad to have completed what I set out to do. However it's way too short and trail expansion is super crucial. Theres currently no chance to build up any kind of flow or rhythm, as the start to finish is only 15 seconds. Luckily this isn't a permanent issue in any way. With winter just around the corner there's gonna be some muddy down time in the riding which will inevitably lead to the extension of the trail while the dirt is squishy. The meadow that the jumps cut through has beautiful elevation changes that scream to be turned into hips and step-downs. It's easy to get cought up in how fun building with this dirt is, and forget to ride.

I chose a slope-style set up versus a set of all dirt trails mostly because in my experience, without a crew it is exceedingly difficult to keep dialed trails dialed year round. This was my first time building a wood lip, and I decided to go with a 6x10. If I could do it over I definitely would have built a 7x15 or 7x20. The lip as is works fine but I would like to increase the gap size. The plan is to replace the current lip with a more mellow version as soon as I have another landing stacked that can use the poppy lip.

I couldn't be more thankful to the companies and people that supported me and got me where I am. Special thanks to GoPro, WTB, Kali Protectives, Chromaculture, Tam Bikes, Nate Napieralahttp://http://www.nnapierala.com/, Drew, Dr.D and of course Dirt.

Posted In:
Stories Reader Stories