Everything that comes and goes from Berm Peak, be it bikes, supplies, or the Gator was traversing
this little patch of lawn next to my driveway.
As you can see, it wasn’t a good long term solution.
And so BP1 was born…hastily.
It’s a short double-track forest road that connects the driveway to the trails and while
it’s a better solution than the lawn, it’s not gonna work either, at least not in its
current state.
Now, I would have improved BP1 a while back, but it’s not singletrack.
It’s not really a mountain bike trail at all, so I honestly don’t even know where
to start.
Luckily my friend, James does.
If James looks familiar it’s because he owns Squatch bikes which we’ve featured
several times.
But in a past life, James was a professional machine operator.
He now refers to it as therapy.
Since the summer, James has been itching for some machine therapy on Berm Peak, and I’ve
been resisting it.
But BP1 isn’t quite a shining example of hand cut singletrack, and James has our best
interest at heart.
So I ordered whatever James told me to and had it delivered to the house.
That included about 30 tons of gravel, which we’re storing in the auxiliary parking spot.
Ironically, that spot is what really needed the gravel.
We also took delivery of stone—lots of stone, some of which we hand picked to ensure we’d
have the right shapes and sizes for the project.
To move the stone and gravel I borrowed my neighbor’s tractor.
And on the morning of the job, James’s therapist arrived.
James used the excavator to place boulders on the low side of the road so we could build
it up with gravel.
With much smaller boulders, Gary the stone mason built rows across the road to keep the
gravel from sliding down.
James recommended we hire Gary and I’m glad we did.
But that left me as kind of the new guy on the job, trying desperately to be helpful
and not make too big a fool of myself.
My first job was to use the tractor to transport stone around the back of the jobsite.
So one by one, I gorilla’d stone into the bucket.
I’m sure a more experienced operator could have made quick work of this, but I’ve actually
never operated a front loader before.
Learning to control the loader was surprisingly easy and only took a minute.
But learning the machine’s capabilities and limitations took all weekend.
When there’s a load in the bucket the tractor handles completely differently.
And when traversing uneven terrain, how you position the loader is essential.
I damn near flipped this tractor on my first few runs, but with repetition things got easier.
You may notice that we’re completely destroying the lawn that this road is meant to protect.
We knew this going in, and have plans for it.
But if any of you were wondering why I’ve been avoiding large machinery it’s because
of this.
Still, this project is gonna be well worth the mess.
As we got the stone in place, James had me run gravel to the jobsite so we could start
building the actual road.
The gravel first gets graded with a rake, and then compacted with a plate tamp.
At first it looks almost like concrete, but in a few months all this gravel will sort
of blend in like a normal forest road.
As the day wore on we fell into rhythm, and things started moving along real quickly.
By nightfall, we had made it about 3/4 of the way to the end, but rain was in the forecast
for the following afternoon.
So we’d have to wait till Sunday to finish up the road.
But the following morning at the crack of dawn, I set out to get a side project done
before the rain came in.
The day before, James stealthily placed some rocks in key locations along the road.
The counterpart to these rocks, would be a dirt lander.
And I only had only a few hours one before the place got soaked.
Some of the gravel in the parking spot got mixed in with the clay underneath, so I used
the tractor to scoop a bunch of that dirty gravel into the gator to use on the landing.
Between the dirt excavated from the road and that dirty gravel, there was more than enough
material to build a landing.
But if we were gonna ride it this weekend, it would need to get compacted a lot.
I got the landing done just before it started raining, and we only had one more day to work
on the road.
Sunday morning, we set out to finish the last bit of road before noon.
But there was a problem.
The rain from the previous day made running the tractor—really sketchy.
We considered running it down the road we just built, but I didn’t want to risk it
on the steep part with all that weight in the bucket.
So, we used the git’r.
Yes, these gators are available with power dump beds, but I didn’t pay extra for that.
But we made it work, and the job started picking up momentum again.
By the afternoon, we had reached our goal for the weekend and started wrapping things
up.
And it was finally time to test out the jump.
The the first lip is obviously this little diving board rock off the edge of the road.
It can’t be more than a 5 foot gap, but if you boost off this rock further back, you
can prehop the entire thing, lip and all.
Of course, it all connects to the snake pit skinny which used to end in a muddy disaster.
But these fun, intuitive rock features were…a little out of place on Berm Peak.
We needed something sketchy.
Option three was a little bucky, meaning it wants to throw you over the bars.
So we did a little shaping with gravel to make the transition smoother.
While the gap isn’t all that big, you need to clear it off a 4 inch rock.
And that’s exactly the kind of sketchiness we like around here.
But for maybe the first time on Berm Peak we have a really good approach.
And, two other really intuitive options.
I named this feature the Squatch jump after James’s bike shop, and later that day both
of James’ mechanics, Sean and Pat, stopped by to try it out.
James and Gary got a real kick out of watching their work being enjoyed in this way.
it’s hard to imagine walkways and staircases eliciting the kind of reaction this rock feature
does.
I’m looking forward to the spring when we can transplant some rhododendrons along the
edge of this road and make it blend back into the woods.
And I’m really looking forward to my yard —not looking like this.
Anyway I hope you enjoyed watching us build a gravel road, and if you have any ideas for
what we should with all that speed after the landing, put it down in the comments.
Thanks for riding with me today and I’ll see you next time.