The Resurrection Buildup

Over the summer, my 2 friends and I decided we needed to build some dirt jumps - big ones. We chose a spot in our town with a nice central location and went exploring, looking for the optimal spot for the jumps. The first thing we noticed was a rusty abandoned truck, and all the trash... then we saw the bum encampment. There were and are still about 6 to 10 bums living in the trees where our jumps are located. As off-putting as this was, we continued searching for a spot to build and came across an abandoned utopia of dirt. A dry land atlantis, waiting to be brought back to its original glory. What we had found were the remnants of a nice healthy dirt jump spot from years ago.So my two friends and I came back a few days later with saws, a weed wacker, clippers and a pick. All of this allowed us to cut down the oak trees that were growing out of the lips and landings of the jumps. You almost couldn't see the jumps, but now it's all cleared out and we have since performed the following:

-Changed the end of the line into a fat berm
-Made a perfect lip on the last big trick jump
-Smoothed out some of the landings and perfected the last one
-Tried to create a transfer line so we could hit the last two big jumps (which failed)
-Built a sizeable launch to lead us into the standalone landing that had existed before.

So this is our starting point: a sizeable six pack that still needs work.

We have plans to make this set an eight pack, and also to utilize the optional lines from back in the day. We are planning a pump track out of a berm at the end of the set which will serve to get the rider back to the beginning of the jumps. We will be creating many transfer lines, cleaning up all the dirt, shaping lips, raking bum sh!t, drinking beers, riding bikes, and trying tricks.

Here's pictures of what we had at the start of the contest:




The berm here is in it's infantile stage, and the landing into it has had some work done. The lip you see on the left is our biggest jump and doesn't yet have a lip in this pic.




Update Dec 20:

Built a launch and smoothed the run-in, we got everything packed down and tried hitting the first jump. We tried it a number of times and finally kinda cleared the jump but we're going back again soon to smooth the run-in even more and make a little berm to help us keep speed.

Update Dec 21:

Pictures of yesterday:









Update Dec 22:

Tom went out in the morning and made the side run-in a lot better with a berm, smoothness, and a little hip set up. He also worked really hard on the lip for the first of the six pack.



I met tom down at the jumps and proceeded to help him with the small hip setup. He went to the bike shop to go work.

That's when i started to get creative, digging out a sweet hip trough type of line. I built up the berm in the ditch that was already there. Then i moved back and created the jump that led into the ditch berm hip thing. I wanted a landing, then a roller, then a dip into a lip that you kind of turn in the air to hit the berm ditch.



After I made the roller and some of the lip after it, i saw a new line that I could make. I scraped away the side of the future big double next to this hippy line and created a berm that goes around the roller.




I was doing all this work and my friend Ryan came down to throw some dirt too. We had previously tried jumping into the berm ditch set up from a small standalone launch which ryan made bigger and moved back. We will have several smaller doubles leading into this transfer line that get bigger as they progress.


At the other end of things, after ryan stacked the little standalone launch, he went to our booters and took out the side of our big trick jump (unnecessary eroded dirt making the jump a pyramid instead of straight up). He used this dirt from the quick big jump to start stacking our massive vertical step up jump on the right. there's already a big trough dug out underground to get speed and we're going to have a big jump right there and move the landing closer so we can bust the big tricks.



Update Dec 24:

I didn't do any more digging but i did take a picture of the main stuff we've been working on. It's just some jumps in the middle, check it out:


After taking this photo I chilled with the mexican bums that live 20 feet away. they're really chill and were making a fire so that was nice to keep warm. luckily there was a guy there that spoke good english so he could kinda translate. Using the translator i learned that about 7 years ago someone put a handlebar through their stomach and the jumps got shut down. ever since then the jumps degraded and people started living on the property. The main bum also said (through translation) that the property owner is super chill and doesn't mind them making fires and stuff. I hope the jumps don't seem like a high risk liability otherwise i'm sure the guy will come out and plough the ones he can and yell at us and that kind of thing.

Anyway merry christmas and i'll resume digging when i get back from vegas on the 1st of 2009. Look for some sweet updates then - I'll be using my sweet awesome new shovel!

Update Jan 1:

Got out yesterday with the new shovel and went to work on my techy line. I started from what I already had and moved back from there. It doesn't make sense to show pictures in the direction I built so here's the line of jumps in order as you'd hit them:






In addition to taking these new pics I shot a little walkthrough video:





Update Jan 18:

I haven't been working too much on the jumps, but there has been some progress. Mostly we've been hitting the transfer line and seeing what work the lips need. See Pic's






And here's Lee hitting what we've got:





Update May 3rd:

Well it's been quite some time since we've visited the jumps. In short, the bums who were living on the property randomly deserted the area early February. Two weeks later the property owner put up no trespassing signs, threw away all the discarded bum belongings/hovels, trimmed up the trees, and mulched the overgrowth. Sometime between the bums leaving and the trimming of the trees, Tom tried hitting the two big back jumps. First try, overclear the 1st. Second try, nails the first and cases the second (last of the set). Third try, launches off the first and bails to the left of the bike, hits the ground cleanly, sits up, and says "I gotta go to the hospital." Randomly he cut through two layers of muscle on the thumb part of his palm. Ripped down 101 to the hospital, 22 stitches, 10 days recovery. Miracle.

Cut to:

Since it rained for a few days we decided to go back out there because the grass is tall in the field, the trees are growing low, and the dirt is prime. We spent 5 hours building things back up yet again, grooming it all and slapping it down. It rained overnight Saturday but not quite enough to soak in. Regardless, we went out sunday after cccx and tried hitting the line as best we could. My friend got some action shots with his sweet camera but for now all I've got are these pics from late in the day after we had finished riding. BTW I almost cleared the 3rd double 3 times.