Western North Carolina is a temperate rain forest, and therefore so is Berm Peak.
It’s a great place to leave something if you want it to rot.
This snake infested wood pile is a pretty good indicator of what happens to untreated
oak when you leave it outside here, and it’s the exact reason for the cache of black locust
under the flight deck.
Black locust is rot resistant and can last for decades out here, but that raises the
question: Does everything we build here need to last for decades?
Today we’re going to throw caution to the wind, and build something out of a couple
of dead oak trees.
Better yet, we’re gonna use them to make a skinny bridge over this snake infested rotting
wood pile.
Sound good?
Great, let’s go fell those trees.
Some of you may recognize this guy, as Seth.
Yes he has the same name as me, and he also has a YouTube channel called Backyard Trail
Builds where he does exactly what the name implies.
Although projects like the Adirondack chair jump and the Skinny Gene are sufficiently
different from what we’ve done here, this could get confusing.
So I’ll refer to the other Seth as Backyard Seth.
Anyway backyard Seth was passing through my neck of the woods and offered to help on a
project.
After much deliberation the snake pit skinny was what we came up with.
This optional line will start near the bottom of Woodpecker, traverse over the snake pit,
and end at the intersection of Middle Berm Peak Express and the Berm Peak Forest Road.
To build the skinny part, we’ll need to transport these trees to the wood pile and
maneuver them into position.
The day before we started on this project, I installed a winch on the Git’r for this
very purpose.
A winch, put simply, is a motorized spool of cable used for pulling.
It can pull things, or the vehicle itself should it get stuck somewhere.
This one can be activated by a switch I installed on the dashboard, or by a wireless transmitter.
So now we can use the winch to pull enormous objects like trees, and activate it from wherever
we’re standing.
We can even use live trees as pulleys to direct the force accordingly.
I already ordered some stuff that’ll make this job easier next time, but we improvised
with a block of wood to protect the tree, and it did the job.
Where the winch couldn’t help us, we used a stud for leverage and some good old fashioned
grunt work.
That was enough to get the first tree into position, but we still had one more to go.
If you haven’t noticed neither myself or backyard Seth are lumberjacks, and so the
tree ended up hopelessly pinching my saw
in place.
The
second tree was a lot heavier than the first one, and it fell in a really awkward spot.
Maneuvering it into place was like driving a school bus through a movie theatre.
The surface of this rotting wood pile is ever changing, so we used logs as footings to spread
out the load.
With just two Seths to nudge these huge tree trunks in place, we needed to get creative.
In what took the better part of a day, we finally got the tree trunks situated.
But that was only the beginning of what we planned to do here.
Backyard Seth got to work on milling the tree trunks flat.
Milling 36 feet of oak would use a little more battery power than this thing packs,
so we borrowed a gas saw from my neighbor so we could see the job through.
If this becomes a regular thing, I may need to pick one up.
Meanwhile, I got to work on all the other stuff that would make this project whole.
By nightfall, we weren’t at a good stopping point, so we lit the work area and kept on
going.
The following morning, we got to work right away.
Backyard Seth brought a whole pickup truck of scrap cedar for this project.
These planks will provide more traction, and resist rot a lot better than the oak below
it.
In fact, we’ll probably be able to reuse these planks someday.
While Seth and Dana predrilled the planks and fastened them to the bridge, I finished
up the landing with locust planks.
I guess we never officially discussed “the landing”.
The plan is to build a lip at the end of the bridge and jump over this live tree.
That’s the part Backyard Seth wasn’t so sure about riding.
A skinny lip into gap jump with a narrow landings and a tree in the middle is—committing.
Especially for someone who’s never ridden a double.
But Seth made it clear that he would be content watching.
So we have ourselves a new trail, and a new feature.
Time to see if it works.
Despite the sketchy sounding name, the snake pit skinny is actually really intuitive.
The tree trunks feel really solid, the planks are grippy, and the gap jump is smooth.
For the first time on Berm Peak, we have a feature with a good run up, where everything
works, and there’s no crazy huck or blind landing.
So, Kevin suggested I try and nose bonk the tree.
That crash confirmed the worst fears of anyone hesitating to ride this thing.
To be honest, I’m not really sure what happened there.
After that I did end up landing a nose bonk, but it was kind of weak.
It feels more natural to bonk the end of the landing since you have more time to set up
for it.
But I guess it’s something we’ll need to work on.
As for Backyard Seth and Dana, I’ve seen them both hit bigger jumps than this, but
never one with a gap and a tree in between.
So they’re planning on building some small doubles back home, so they can return another
time with the confidence to ride this safely.
Building this feature with Backyard Seth felt really natural, as if we had been working
together for years.
So don’t be surprised if I take a trip out to Missouri to build with him sometime.
In any case you should check out Seth’s channel for a very different style of building
than we do here.
I’m hoping to get four years out of this log ride with a little maintenance.
That might be optimistic, but regardless of what happens, we can always build something
new.
If you or someone you know love building as much as riding, check out the build and ride
shirt in the description below.
Until we build something else, thanks for riding with me today and I’ll see you next
time.