Last week, we built a new trail here on Berm Peak.
It was a short one, starting at the top of Woodpecker and ending at a row of shrubs behind
the garage.
The trail is named Airbag, which seems appropriate for a run with an emergency stop at the end,
but we’re not quite finished with this trail.
Eric travelled all the way from Utah to visit Berm Peak, and I’m having a great time showing
him what we’ve built here.
Eric has a trail system in his yard too, although it would be more accurate to call it a slopestyle
course.
Only a few trees hide this course from his patio, the one tiny sliver of his backyard
that isn’t covered in jumps.
And I have good reason to keep my yard looking normal too.
I promised Mrs. Bike Hacks that all the trails, jumps, and features would stay in the woods,
behind the trees.
Today’s build will certainly push the boundaries of that agreement.
Today, Eric is helping me design build a huge jump which will be hidden behind these bushes.
Of course that does put the trajectory of anyone riding this jump, squarely on the lawn
behind the garage.
But I have a solution for that.
For now, all we need to do is build the lip.
A lip is a curved launch made from dirt, wood, metal, or anything really.
Our lip will be 6 feet tall with a 10.5 foot radius.
That radius will make a transition from the ground to a certified bike cannon.
To make sure we get that angle exactly right, I drew a guide which we can use later on with
a level.
This transition is just mellow enough to cut with a circular saw, which makes for a really
smooth cut.
But since we’re using 2x12 lumber, we’ll need to join a few pieces together in order
to make it a full 6 feet tall.
To join the sections, we line them up very carefully and use a scab to keep them in place.
A scab is just another piece of wood fastened to the outside of both pieces.
Once we actually install this lip on the trail, it’ll include additional supports at this
junction to help support the weight of the structure and the people riding on it.
Now that we have the pieces joined together, the scale of this lip is really starting to
sink in.
Back on the trail, we need to do a fair bit grading to get the approach right.
We also need to dig down so the front of the lip meets up with the trail.
Because the whole trail is going downhill, we also need to contend with the angle of
the lip itself, which requires even more digging.
It’s a good thing we built the approach last week, because this part ended up being
a lot more work than we originally anticipated.
It also ended up being a lot more complicated.
The original flag line of the trail put its path
right between the garage and a bunch of trees.
In the woods, I tried to get everything as straight as possible without cutting down
any live trees.
Now, we’re left with a deceptively narrow margin to get the lip angled right.
We need to make our measurements, dig down, and then hope everything remains in the same
spot when we drop the lip in place.
Here to help us with the final stages, is Joe.
He’s a long time friend of Eric’s, and actually a neighbor of mine.
To do this alone or even with two people would be challenging.
You need to hold a giant transition in place, measure it, and fasten it all simultaneously.
So you either need three people or six really long arms.
While Eric and I finish up the construction of the lip, Joe is making some adjustments
to the area behind the bushes.
This really pushes the boundaries of my no building in the yard policy, but it’s technically
still in the woods, right?
Although it’s not ideal, we cut away part of the lip to preserve this large tree root.
This could eventually cause a problem with the lip, but the whole point of this project
is to hide the lip behind trees and shrubs so we need to make some compromises.
All in all, it took about a day and a half to get our materials, settle on a design,
grade the approach, and build the lip.
Now that it’s done, we get to see if this lip is any good.
Yep, I bought an airbag lander.
It’s not like I kept it a secret though—the trail is named Airbag.
But it’s possible that some of you didn’t know that landing airbags are even a thing.
You don’t see a lot of wedge shaped bouncy castles in day to day life.
But while the airbag is as awesome as I imagined, our airbag experience didn’t start out so
smoothly.
There was a learning curve.
We were also riding our lip for the very first time and trying to gauge speed.
Naturally, I did the honors.
This is only the most recent instance of me not listening to Eric, but to be fair, I don’t
listen to anyone.
Eventually we got the speed thing worked out, and by then it was starting to get dark out.
But we had a list of things to work out for the following morning.
First, we covered the drainage trench with 3/4 plywood so the bottom of the landing would
sit flat.
That was causing a sort of double bounce on day one, and the plywood solved it.
Once we got that taken care of, we went back to make some adjustments to the lip.
Because of the slope, the lander was a fair bit lower than the lip making it difficult
to see when approaching it.
We went back and forth, first removing two planks from the top, and then trying it again
with only one removed.
We kept testing it, making adjustments, and discussing it.
Eventually, we settled on making the lip one plank lower than the original plan, and everything
felt perfect.
That put us at about 5.5” feet with a 10.5 foot radius.
With the lander about 10 feet away, this is actually a really mellow jump that you don’t
need much speed for.
That’s kind of what we wanted since we intend on doing tricks off this thing.
But we still had a lot of mistakes to make.
At first, we were afraid of running the airbag too firm, since it might actually bounce us
off of it upon landing.
So, to dampen the bounciness we experimented with the air flaps and got it to where we
thought things would run smoothly.
At first, things did run smoothly, until they didn’t.
I guess the flaps must have blown open because the airbag was collapsing so much that Eric’s
pedals dug into the cover and stopped his bike completely.
The same thing happened to me.
Eventually we realized that closing the flaps and running it super firm was actually the
way to go, but we sure did learn that the hard way.
It’s worth mentioning that the lander has this big heavy duty cover on it that protects
the airbag from pedals, handlebars, and teeth.
Among these learning experiences, we did have some big wins.
Although I was unable to throw any tricks on day one, Eric and Joe were getting really
comfortable.
The jumps at Eric’s house are designed for dirt jump specific bikes, which are small,
simple, and optimal for doing tricks.
But with the airbag there to cushion a potential fall, Eric took the opportunity to try those
same tricks on his full sized Diamondback Release.
With a storm headed our way we needed to pack up and call it.
But we crushed our objectives.
Now, there’s a big jump on Berm Peak and it’s totally hidden from view, assuming
the airbag is packed up.
I plan on using this airbag a lot.
I never had easy access to a good trick double before, so now I can spend some time and actually
learn some tricks.
Without Eric and Joe to help out, this wouldn’t have come out as good as it did.
So thanks to both of you guys for helping me build what is currently, the most ridiculous
thing on Berm Peak.
Check out Eric’s channel to get a behind the scenes look at his trip here.
Until then, thanks for riding with me today and I’ll see you next time.