Madd Propz for that work RA - lotta people will really enjoy this :yourock:
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Madd Propz for that work RA - lotta people will really enjoy this :yourock:
FKNA! That looks like a great climb! I would love to get out there and do a machine/hand build. That to me is probably the perfect combo trail. Throw some hand built techy stuff with fat berms and jumps. Just wreaks of fun!Quote:
Originally Posted by raisingarizona13
Thanks Zion Zig Zag, TBS and Jackstraw. As you all know, trail building is really hard. It's nice to get an atta boy every now and then.
I heard a lot of people say that East Zion wasn't really worth the time because there simply wasn't much there. Well, starting in a week or two that should be changing. Phase 1 wasn't a whole lot of mileage or vertical. Probably 150-180 vert total and around 10 miles of trail. Well now there's an additional two systems connected to phase 1 and I think there's probably about 1000 vets total. You can shuttle from the bottom to an upper lot, climb up 4-500 vertical from there on an easy climbing trail and ride all the way through back to your car at the bottom. I think it's going to be sweet but each of the 4 connected systems are more of the session kind in nature with directional climbs to directional downs. If you don't like machine built trail, berms jumps and modern dh trail this place probably isn't for you but there are some hand built tech trails and xc riding here and there, enough to get in a decent ride at least.
@jackstraw, it's a fun climb. It's steep and punchy with the right amount of recovery sections in between. I have to take it nice and slow but I found a really fun rhythm to it.
There's three dh's in the new canyon system, two off the top and one that extends from those down to the bottom. The lower trail is half hand built and half machine. The land manager plans to put in a big, tall and pretty skinny bridge across the wash at the end of it all. I think it's a great mixed trail and a ton of fun. I'm big on the mixed builds. I'm big on all kinds of builds honestly. After a ton of seat time in the x I'm pumped to get to Kingman to do some really cool hand builds. Stoked!
Looks great!!
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Hot damn, East Zion is now on the list, these trails look DOPE!
RA13, mad props for your work. I started digging this year in a zone that is about as easy to work with as it gets and the magnitude of the work blew my mind. I thought I'd be done in no time but 2.5 months into it I have about 2.5 miles of trail and if I had to guess I'd say close 100 hours of work.
Looking at your pics, even with serious equipment and volunteers to help it looks like an absolutely brutal amount of work. Thanks again for doing it!
Thank you Boisall, trail building is so freaking gnarly and exhausting, I often joke that it's my primary sport with actual riding being a sort of byproduct.Quote:
Originally Posted by Boissal
I get paid to do the work so it's not altruistic is any way but the pay isn't great but the payout once it's done and I see people enjoying themselves is priceless. This probably sounds goofy or like I've got some sort of "visions of grandeur" complex but by building cool trails you get to create experiences for people. We all know when we just discovered a really good one compared to something that's just sort of there, the good ones get people extremely stoked and putting that stoke out there and into the universe is the jam and does the world a whole lotta good imho.
I just finished my time at ZMR, hopefully I can get back to build more and do some maintenance work for them. I was going to ride today but I'm dead. I used up everything I had to wrap up a few final projects on the system.
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Yeah, RA13! I probably have more hours building these days than actually riding. I primarily build in four different areas locally. One is the most technically difficult locally and one other is the easiest beginner zone around. Both ends of the spectrum. The beginner area sees a lot of kids with their parents and nothing brings a smile to my face more than seeing the groms out there just having fun. And as a hack non-pro builder I cannot emphasize how much the Rogue Travis tool has made my life so much better. That tool is amazing.
Dude.....seeing kids, families and everyone else get stoked and even giddy with joy has got to be the best buzz out there. I'm completely addicted to that and the whole process. It's so freaking hard and all consuming. It teaches us patience and persistency well beyond anything else I've ever done.Quote:
Originally Posted by jackstraw
I like building everything. Green trails can be super fun for everyone when done right. Tech, flow, jumps, gnar.....all of it man. It's all great. I don't get the attitude some riders have where they only like this or that and adamantly describe their dislike for any sort of style or experience. It's all fun.
I've been under the impression that the Rogue Travis is a pretty awesome jack of many trades sort of tool but, if I can have separate more specific tools I prefer that. I always tell Vols to use the right tool for the right job and if I need a pick mattock there isn't anything really better than a pick mattock, same with say a Mcleod or a Pulaski. But if I were doing solo work and riding/hiking to work sites on my own I bet it's the best way to go for moving light and fast. That being said, I could be completely wrong about this as I haven't had any real time using a Rogue Travis.
Yeah, jackass riders bitching about trails are pathetic, especially if they've never lifted a finger to help build or the best is when they won't stop to pick up some debris and ride around it instead. It's never the good or great riders I've noticed. My friend, who is arguably one of the best riders around here, hits my easy area once in a while and loves how he can practice bike body separation. Embrace the different trail styles and improve your game.Quote:
Originally Posted by raisingarizona13
Oh no, you're absolutely correct. In my tech area I currently have 2 mattocks, 1 Mcleod, 2 six foot digging bars, shovel, bucket, hard rake, and a Travis tool stashed. Plus my friends have a couple tools stashed also. The digging bars are critical with all the boulders we have. And even having them stashed it's still a pia getting them from A to B out there. Logistic issues :biggrin:
I have 2 Travis tools, so one stays in my truck. It's perfect to just cruise down a trail quickly and do just about any type of quick work needed. I just built a new short .3 trail in the easy network. Aside from chainsaw work, I built the whole thing with the travis and a rake. Pretty happy with the results. Fun, flowy, fast (when it gets ridden in!) adder.
After living here for 20 years now I've learned to really appreciate easier trail. It's nice to turn off the brain and tune out every now and then on trails that aren't super busy like most of what we have Ain Arizona. I love falling deep into a flow state and just honking along.
But like anything else, I get bored with too much of any one thing. It's sort of a curse and a blessing I guess.
Yeah, I like the variety as well. Although, I prefer the tech, it does beat the shit out of me, so it's nice to take a break from it. 10 miles there is like riding 25 in an easier area.
I find a Rogue Hoe or Travis to be better than a McLeod for debris removal, bench cut, shaping, and coarse raking. The smaller head and better construction makes it more versatile, and you can do some light prying or digging without worrying about snapping or bending the head. The McLeod is sometimes better for tamping with the wider flat head (though a dedicated tamper is better than either). For removing rocks or chopping roots I still prefer a Pulaski or a mattock (or rock bar or folding saw).
The Mcleod for me is all light duty. I use a a heavy mattock for bench cutting then follow through afterwords with a McLeod for the finer tuning. With a heavy mattock I can let the tool do a lot of the hard effort instead of my back. My Mcleod is light and that helps me conserve energy when in for a long haul. I rarely use the rake side and prefer the flat side to lightly tune up the tread, backslope and out slope after its shaped. I wouldn't ever use one for bench cutting unless maybe the soil was predominantly sand, I would easily kill a Mcleod very quickly using it that way. The extra width makes those specific tasks much faster. When I say long haul I mean full time hand building, some projects have taken 12-15 months. I like the Rogues but they feel really heavy but yet, not as heavy as my mattock. If I did every bit of hand built construction with one it would ware me out much too fast. I'd be working too hard compared to using different tools. This is why I tell the vols to use proper tools for the right tasks. They tend to beat themselves up and break their tools unnecessarily. Once you're on a really big, full time project the little things really matter, especially at 47! This is also why I think the Rogues are a rad jack of all trades tool but not always perfect for professional building where we can have a small army of 20 yr olds carry in all of the gear anyways and use more specific tools for any given job. :DQuote:
Originally Posted by teledad
It all depends on where, what, time duration for the project etc. I definitely think a rogue is perfect for a part time volunteer or an under the radar trail builder that wants to move fast and do quick, touch up jobs or basic maintenance. Carrying three separate tools can be a real PIA but it's not a huge deal on a professional new trail construction project. Everything you said makes complete sense to me, as long as it's not a full time thing I'm doing and I only want to carry one tool.
As far as tamping goes, your boot is better than all of those tools if you think about the weight to area ratio. Tamping is nice for jump take offs/landings and it definitely makes the gram photos look sweet but beyond that it's mostly fluff compared to regular use.
Sorry if that's too long winded but I'm a total trail building nerd and I spend way too much time in the field thinking this all over. I often work 8 to 10 hour days for 6 to 8 days straight at a time and every bit of technique adds up and starts to really matter.
RA: Your pics from the last couple pages looks awesome! Some day I'll make it down there to ride some of that. You seem to have a good philosophy on trail building that aligns with many of my preferences.
On the tools discussion, I'm a big fan of the Rogue 70H - 7" wide hoe with no rake. For most of the work I do, a rake isn't particularly necessary. A Mcleod is a bit too light and gets mangled on rocks, and unless the dirt's really loose, the blade bites off too much material, which is tiring. The 70H has more width than a pulaski or mattock, but it's still narrow enough that it works alright for digging and loosening dirt. I also like the shorter axe handle of the 70H over the longer straight handle of a Mcleod. Although the rockier the dirt gets, the more I'm inclined towards a smaller head like a Mattock or a pulaski.
thanks man!Quote:
Originally Posted by toast2266
All of this makes sense, down here we are almost always dealing with a shit ton of rock in the soil. That's definitely shaped my tool preferences. I imagine it's different for a lot of us because of location/local geology. Again, I'm a super nerd so I totally love these discussions.
What's up with that bike park up there Toast? I don't think it's the one at the ski area but it's in the flathead Valley. I follow em on Instagram and the trails looks freaking amazing.
I'm loving the Rogue 55H with the rake for rockier and rootier terrain. The rake is great to a 1st pass cleanup removing small plants and brush and the narrower head works a bit better when digging into rocky stuff. It's also light enough that I can swing it around all day without blowing up. I was at it for 9 hours last Sat and when I walked out my upper body was PISSED.Quote:
Originally Posted by toast2266
I wanted to try a Travis at first then realized I never really use the pick and the longer toothed rake makes more sense for what I do.
Legacy bike park. Super fun - they have 4 or 5 jump trails of varying sizes/difficulties, and a handful of natural tech trails that are mostly of the rooty loamy variety. They also have a campground zone with a pump track, airbag jump and mulch jump.Quote:
Originally Posted by raisingarizona13
It's a pretty cool area, and this is just their second year open. They're constantly adding bits of trail, so every time I go there's something new.
Pete Costain and Terraflow is the trail building company behind it. They've done a ton of work around the flathead, and also down in big sky and over in Idaho. Great guy, and his trail building business has really taken off over the last few years. Incidentally, his son is Parkin Costain who's a ripper on bikes and skis and has been in the last few TGR ski movies.
See, that's the beauty of the Travis. The narrow end is similar to a Mattock so I can pull small boulders easily and then the rake to clean the surface layer, narrow hoe for cutting roots etc, and fat hoe for everything else. Four useable surfaces. The Travis rocks man!! :DQuote:
Originally Posted by toast2266
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nice work in here as usual gents!
caught this one in a memory feed recently from 2015ish, working with the groms is always a good time
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also enjoy the tool topic, everyone does things a little different, i focus on bike park and finish work, rarely do any bench cutting
go to setup is a 3 pack
rogue 55A- break up packed dirt, pick out bigger rocks, smash shit
metal rake- pick small rocks out, contour dirt
flat shovel- 90% of the time this is whats in my hands, pack pack pack
mattock and spade come out for larger dirt shaping projects
i hate mcleods with a passion but will happily hand them out to other volunteers :biggrin:
its also interesting to think about how trail design can influence riding, not just in creating the experience, but in how you can control the experience
since i like to focus on finish work one of the more obvious things i find is that prepacking the entry to berms leads them to be ridden better with less braking bumps as a result, just by drawing a riders eye into the berm early and their interpretation that the packed area is where they "should" be riding completely changes their approach
of course this only works when riders speak the same language as the builder, something ive also gotten very wrong haha
Nice work RaisingArizona and others that are busting out more trail!
We finished up another one here in Telluride and weather permitting we'll have it open for the last two weekends of the season.
Steep complex terrain with tons of wood.. tight switchbacks made pitting out very difficult and required much planning. Finished trail is just under a mile long with 17 corners and is a progression trail for building up to a blue jump trail. Of course there are more cynical bikers out there who are always ready to rip on 'blue flow' ...but this ones fun as shit. Although I am a little biased:D
Here are some before and after shots. We use a John Deere 60 with a thumb followed by a 35 with a tilt roto bucket ��. Then Hand finished and reveged.
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It's so wild to see machine building pics. I've never built with one. We had a tractor out in one spot, but it didn't cut it for anything more than the wench ha winch to set up a long skinny.
Up in the White mtns cleaning deadfall on some old hike/bike trails near our cabin. Riding old hiking trails is so old school and kind of painful [emoji3], but fun. https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...395a840462.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...6caa4b7154.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...b7dfa698e1.jpg
Great shots Rip! Building blue flow in terrain like that is so time consuming. Looks fun to ride! Props to your machine operators.
That looks dope Rip! I'd be stoked to lap that all day.
I probably need to get back up to Telluride next summer.
Thanks all. Would love to show you around RaisingArizona or anyone else who makes it up this way.
I run the bike trail crew here and was in the 60 cutting about 80% of this trail while also working with the crew building 'la cura' the previous vid, and keeping the hand crew dialed on both new trails, and all the while all of us were maintaining the rest of the trails thru a very wet summer. Needless to say it's been a bit busy.
So glad to have this trail wrapped up as it completes what in my mind is phase one of the park build out. We now offer every type of riding from beginner to expert, flow to tech, cc to DH. There's still tons of room for improvement but this is a big step after 7 seasons of building.
I haven't made it down there to ride the bike park since July but I've been enjoying watching what you guys have been doing on IG. I really like the variety of trails in the park.Quote:
Originally Posted by rip
Maybe I'll have to try and make it down there next weekend.
If you want to scratch your desert itch I'm happy to show you around our new stuff here in Montrose.
Thanks! We're really trying to make it so there's no part of a run where you are like 'ugh I hate this part ' only thing we can't fix is the transfer over to the old park due to giant mansion in the way:rolleyes2 but it's not too bad.. and I do have a plan to come into that section with more speed in the future.Quote:
Originally Posted by snowaddict91
Hopefully the weather cooperates, we had to keep it closed today due to rain and some snow. Should be a pretty fun closing day next week assuming we can get it open. I've got to head to Michigan as soon as the season ends due to ailing parents so I probably won't be able to ride up there til next spring. I did ride the electric hills trails a bit over memorial day and spring creek is one of my favorite chunks of trail anywhere.
White Mtns as in NH? What regions are getting trails developed these days? I’m sort of from there and rode the trails a bit in like 2005.Quote:
Originally Posted by jackstraw
I love reading all the trail talk. Can’t say I do much building but deeply appreciate the art form.
I may very well take you up on that. I really like to visit bike parks/trail systems and ride with principal builders/trail designers to see what they've been up to, tap a little into their process and learn new things. Lift served bike parks and more progressive, modern trail construction are the things that interest me the most right now, especially seeing different approaches to construction and their expected maintenance needs and available resources for maintenance. Besides the nerding out, I love Telluride and your trails look sick!Quote:
Originally Posted by rip
I lived in the White House in 05/06. I met that crew during the summer of 05 doing gondola laps on Sasquatch, Running With Scissors, PBR etc. Those were good times on old school steep trails with a free lift ride. That was also right when Flagstaff shined as a secret dh spot too. It was an exciting time and a whole lot of fun, we felt like a bunch of outlaws back then but things have definitely changed for the better. Now, instead of hiding in the trees and trying to not get busted because all we wanted to do was ride we can actually get work and be paid for this shit! HA!
Yeah NH. There are builds going on all over the place. Where I am is a rogue build not on any maps or strava. I don't know the builders, but they clearly want it on the down low.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dromond
Buffed the entry on this little popper to a concussion today. [emoji3]https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...4029ab8748.jpg
Yeah man let me know, I'll send you a a pm with my info. I got here after those trails all got shut down and I feel ya on one of your previous posts about trail building taking over for your riding. I do more riding in the off-season! I'm not the main designer here but I've been here since we started the new build. Lots of help the first few seasons from great builders from GravityLogic and winter operators turned builders. Now we are doing it on our own and trying to add our own flavor to the trails.Quote:
Originally Posted by raisingarizona13
Rip, I made it down to Tride today for closing day, just have to say La Cura is a ripping trail! Especially love the steeps in the top half. I needed to ride it about 5 more times to get the jump section dialed but man that was fun. Really digging the variety there with the old tech trails interspersed with flow.
That describes the ideal trail for me personally. I've been trying to build that style whenever I can. Flow is difficult to hand build unless the terrain naturally provides it, but if that's the case you don't have tech. Here I'm building berms in random spots (if that is considered a "flow" feature, idk) but for me I think it is. I've certainly had comments from riders talking about riding tech and then this berm out of the blue shows up as being unusual. Unusually good is how I take it, but I'm biased in my opinion [emoji3]Quote:
Originally Posted by snowaddict91
It's physics. Some turns are great flat and some need a berm to keep momentum going. I sure do love some steep gnar into a big ole honking berm.Quote:
Originally Posted by jackstraw
Here's a steep section into a very tight and snappy rock armored insloped corner. This is from our phase one at East Zion we hand built in the summer of 21 on a trail called Bison Chute.
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Nice. I love some good rock work.
I also love tech trails with a few berms and flowy features peppered in. Jank with occasional moments of grace.
Well yeah, if I slide out on a turn it needs a berm! Even if it was because of my poor riding skills, it's getting a berm! [emoji23]Quote:
Originally Posted by raisingarizona13
Nice rocks RA!
Thanks. The rocks at East Zion are giant limestone pavers and are pretty darn cool to work with.Quote:
Originally Posted by jackstraw
Thanks for coming out! It was a great weekend and a great end to the season. I'm with ya on la cura, I love the top but I'm getting to old to be sending the jumps on the bottom on the daily. That parts for the kiddos :biggrin: We've got very primitive plans to build more steep tech like the top part of the trail. The terrain around there is just asking for it. A lot of places just got rid of their old steep fall line trails when they brought in a company like GL but we are committed to keeping ours around and have done a lot of work to them over the years... To make it look like we haven't done anything at all.Quote:
Originally Posted by snowaddict91
I know everyone says they love black tech but I've hung out in enough different bike parks to know if I go searching the old school trails it's usually pretty empty and everyone is out riding the flow. Which is fine.. I love the flow as well but I like being able to take out my dh bike and smash rocks all day or take my 140 trail bike and pump rollers and boost jumps.
I will say that Snowmass has been doing a good job of both ends of that. Animal Crackers, Cowboy Coffee etc in the bike park, plus the OG race trails that have been getting way more attention (from riders) lately.
But after they spent what they did for Valhalla from GL, I could see wanting some more budget friendly type rides.