Kevin has been here full time for a couple of weeks now, and
with him on staff berm peak is officially an enterprise. We've
got the Berm Peak Ranger Station close to completion. Berm
Park slated for a Fall opening and other top secret stuff in
the works. But in any case, none of this would be possible
right now without Kevin. there's just too much work to
be done. But soon we'll be able to focus again on our primary
mission, which is building entertaining stuff to ride
mountain bikes on. That's the whole point of building Thumb Bucket,
it's a canvas and today we're finally going to paint on it.
You guys already saw what we did here, but I'm going to show
you what we might be able to build today. You guys up for a
build? Yeah. Yeah. When the Porters visited back in
October, I had just broken my leg so they had to ride Berm Peak
for the first time without me. This time I want to make it up
to them, especially Milo and Owen. I don't know if you
remember from the video this landing without a lip. Oh
yeah, we're going to make some lips for it and I'm thinking we
can make a big one and a smaller one. Yeah. that'd be
pretty cool. Last time, I referred to this pile of dirt as a
landing without a lip. Today, we're going to build not one,
but two lips in front of it. Maybe we can make one out of
rock and one out of wood, so the wood one will be maybe more
of a mini cannon and then this will be more of like a kicker.
Kevin's super good at doing rock lips. I've
definitely built stuff before that didn't have speed for so
testing it will be key as well. The first task is you guys are
going to have to source what we need for it. With lumber prices
through the roof right now. We've decided to double down on
sourcing material from Berm Peak time for you boys to be
lumberjacks. Arborists, arborists That one's pretty good! In the
past, it was cheap and easy to get a load of dimensional
lumber and so in the interest of time that's usually what we
did, but it would now be cheaper to harvest the tusks of
woolly mammoths than to visit Home Depot. So we need to start
living off the land. We're going locally sourced, organic,
cage free, grass-fed—until it's not convenient anymore. And
while the Porters are sourcing those materials, Kevin and I
need to cut some trail. Last time, we only made it a few
feet behind the switchback, and we'd like a lot more of a run
up this week. We also want to take care of a drainage issue
when it rains water flows down the berm and washes sediment
down the trail. By building a roller before the switchback
water won't even make it to the berm before shedding off the
trail. Not only is this good for the riding surface, but
it's also a fun way to launch into the berm.
As I learn to use the machine, Kevin and I are beginning to
function as one unit. We confer with each other constantly as
we move up the trail. We disagree sometimes, but it
always ends in a better overall trail. Kevin wants to build
features on the way up instead of waiting for the trail to be
done, but I don't want to do too much of that for a few
reasons. First of all the excavator is a rental, so I
want to get the actual singletrack completed so I can stop
paying for it. Second, I'm not ready to ride the stuff we're
planning on building. Once I get on the flat ground, my
ankle will be fine. Sure I can walk and work, but I don't have
very good control of my foot and so I'm afraid in a crash, I
can roll my ankle and re injure it. Until the nerves regenerate,
we're going to focus on building singletrack and
preparing for a brighter future where we can turn it up to
eleven again. Let's just keep the tracks on the ground until
then.
Meanwhile, the Porters sourced some pretty good material for
the build. Yeah, that's that's white oak. In fact, I have an
app that'll tell us by the bark. Well it says it's like
fourteen different things. It doesn't really know what it is.
Yeah, What do you think Owen How's this looking? Even when
building a really small double, choosing how long you want the
gap to be is important. In this case, it has everything to do
with how much speed we can get out of the berm. Does the gap
look good though? Yes, yes. awesome.
Owen's jump will be a mini cannon and we'll utilize this
piece of white oak as the riding surface. We'll get this
placed in the location and angle and then trim the top
part. so we can drop it down. If we need to drop it more. We
can just trim it a bit more to hold it up. We're using two
smaller pieces as posts.
That was first shot!
Even rough sewn timber can get slick when wet, so Eric is
carving channels into the surface for more grip.
Also on the end of the cannon, Owen gets a tag. I always
noticed that camp signs use diamonds for O's, but never
really gave it much thought. Apparently, it's hard to make a
circle with a chainsaw. Wow. You know what I'm the most
impressed about. I'm one of those people who couldn't tell
you which way an "N" goes unless I had a pen in my hand.
You know what's going through my head. It's like don't blow
the "N"! So we'll just finish the rock jump first and then we got
both features? No. we don't test things on Berm Peak. We
just build them to completion and then hope really really really
hope that they work. Now to build Milo's jump, which we're
making out of another natural resource; Stone. I never thought
we'd ever build with Stone found on Berm Peak. There's just
none of it, but luckily I was wrong. On this side of the
property, we're finding a lot of it and putting it upslope
of the trail so it's easy to pull down and use. Of course,
we still need to haul the stone to wherever we're building.
Alright, so that was counterproductive thing of the
day, but it was worth it. Yes. If you build something out of
stone and you do it right, archaeologists will find it. In
this case, they'll probably be wondering what it is. Building
with random stones is like Tetris. You need to find a way
to stack the rocks so they don't fall apart. This means
building a solid base to keep it all contained. Filling in the
cracks with smaller stones and packing in a healthy amount of
clay.
Okay
We've got large rocks, medium rocks, small rocks, so I'm
going to do a little bit of gravel to mix and lock it in.
but then I'm actually going to rake dirt across everything.
you'll never know it's there.
I think you guys should both try the Owen Jump first just
just to get a run up. Your dad and I are happy to send it
first. Nope nope! Not happening.
I hit my brakes, but that's good. Alright first test of the
Owen jump.
I went DEEP! He did go deep, he landed super deep that was easy to clear you
don't even have to put in that much effort. You want to go
back up. Send it again. Make it look smooth. Yeah.
Nice so Milo's jump is about twice as far as owen's jump, so
it's going to be really important to carry speed
through the berm that he needs and then get some good pop off
of the lip so he gets actually over it. Yeah Milo
you got this!
He would have cased it, but he saw that he was over it tucked
up the back end and snaked it into the landing. perfect. I
want to do another one! Let's go.
I know you were talking about coming off the Milo jump and
then nose bonking the Owen jump. It's only right that you
ride both of your kids' features at the same time and so yeah.
That's a good point. I hadn't thought about that way. Anytime
there's two things like something in the middle of a
jump. I'm like I wonder if I can footplant or nose bonk
that.
It's super quick! And that's on video' it's going to
be like meh meh nose bonk! Classic. So much sketch in such a small package.
Yeah, I'll give it a couple more goes. The hard thing is
no time to get it over there. It's just it's so quick!
The Milo and Owen Jump is perfect for regaining speed
after the berm and since there are two options, everyone can
ride it. The last time the Porters visited I was bedridden
and I tricked them into fixing up all my trails. Ending up with
a Milo and Owen jump on Berm Peak is really the least we can do
for them on this visit. We crammed a lot into their visit,
including a full on test of the Berm Peak Ranger Station, a trip
to Berm Park and a whole boatload of activities you can watch on
Eric's Channel. As for Thumb Bucket, we're about halfway up the hill
and next time things are really going to get interesting. Yeah.
I can't wait. Thanks for riding with us today and I'll see you
next time.