Season 1- 2013- Building the Mt. Bachelor Bike Park- Post 2- work begins/continues

Week 2- July begins to move right along:

My week begins every Tuesday (leaving Monday’s open for me to coach and coordinate for MBSEF which I had already been doing before this opportunity presented itself). It’s been a very long time since I have had to wake up at 5:30 a.m. to get ready for work, but the thought that I get to spend 40 hours a week building downhill mountain bike trails excites me, and even from the beginning I am usually awake before my alarm goes off.

Week 2 sees us starting work on the 3rd trail Rattle Snake, which is slated to be a Black Diamond Single-Track Trail. Since the trail will break off at an intersection with Lava Flow, and since Lava Flow hasn’t begun being worked on yet since the machine operators coming to work with us from Gravity Logic have not started working with us yet, we begin the trail a little way from where the intersection will be, and begin working our way down the mountain form there

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(here’s a view from where we were parking when we started working on Rattle Snake, snow prevented us from driving down the road any closer, so everyday we could carry our tools in and out about a ten minute walk)

With no crew leader to direct us, and no boss really overseeing us, we began working our way down the mountain the best we could. With no team cohesion, without any introductions unless we made them ourselves or already knew each other, we began working together the best we could, so needless to say it was slow going with many different opinions on what was acceptable trail or not for the first few weeks. Luckily the nature of the terrain and the work we were doing helped us break down our collective barriers and move more towards working together. Coming into this with quite a bit of experience, but being no different than any of the other guys in time on the hill, I kept my mouth shut at first about my experience, and just tried to get to know the guys I was working with on the mountain, which ended up working out well for me it guess/think.

 

 

 

 

 

(some of our earliest trail cut on Rattle Snake, or at least some of the earliest photos I took of it)

It took us a few days/weeks to get into our groove, slowly those with more experience, an eye for trail building, or a bit of both started to show their knowledge, and then those who agreed with it or didn’t know any better followed along or did there own thing. We all took turns getting familiar with the McLeod’s, the Pulaski’s, the Rogue Rakes, the finish rakes, the rock bars, and the sledge hammers. Tools of our trade, in the beginning we just took turns figuring out what we where good at using or like to use, and what we did not. One of the guys on the crew, Mason Tuor, took on the initial role of sawyer, since he had almost a decade of chainsaw running experience from working on a wild-lands fire crew. Ohter than the chainsaw, we all got lots of time getting familiar with the wide array of tools we had to make the trails appear with.

 

 

(a truck full of tools, this is what we were working with on the hand built trails, well these and some man power)

 

(early trail being cut on Rattle Snake, where it all began, the trail crew went through its first of many growing pains in our effort to work as a team on this trail. The first of our love/hate with the finished product, our efforts to learn and create great downhill mountain bike trail as a team).

(Let the back breaking begin, Pulaski in hand, cutting our way down the side of the mountain Baby Bigfoot aka Dustin Smith showing off his Crossfit-ness).

This was what week 2 of this project looked like from my eyes, it was daunting at first how much work is was going to take to make this idea/project a reality, but we came on strong and kept pushing forward, ten hours at a time, day after day, 7 days a week.

 

 

Season 1- 2013- Building the Mt. Bachelor Bike Park

July 1st 2013- Day 1:

After catching the summer shuttle at the Mt. Bachelor Park and Ride, we roll out of town on the Cascades Lakes Highway, on our way to Mt.Bachelor, for orientation we are asked to come to the West Village Lodge to begin our first day of training/work. When we get off the bus and head into the bottom floor of the lodge, I only know one person for sure, but feel like I recognize a couple more, other than that though it is a room full of new faces, at least we have 40 hours a week and a few months of work ahead of us to get to know each other properly.

We (the eleven of us hired right off the bat) have all been hired as the first hand crew for Mt. Bachelor’s inaugural season of trail building. With the help of 2 machine operators from Gravity Logic (the world’s premiere lift access mountain bike trail builders and designers) we are breaking new ground in the mountain bike trail system first and foremost for the Corporation that is Mt. Bachelor, but also for the mountain bike trail system and community that already exists here in Central Oregon.

After a slideshow and other first day on the job type paperwork and whatnot, we head outside and get into our first project as a team, bench cutting in an already “existing goat-trail” from the back entrance into West Village Lodge to where the bus drops us off and picks us up in the main parking lot. (not our finest piece of trail built, but a start to what the summer and fall would have to come. We cut in the bench, build some drainage and then cover the trail/path in gravel and call it good. From there we take lunch, some of us mingling, others keeping mostly to themselves.

After lunch, we climb into a few vehicles and drive up the mountain a little ways, then we park, get out, and head up the bottom of what is to become one of our first 3 trails, Lava Flow, which is going to become a green flow trail that starts at the top of Pine Marten Express (which will be the only lift in operation) and comes almost all the way back down to West Village Lodge, where it will tie in with a connector trail back to the lodge and lift line.

We move into the woods ambitious, with tools in hand we begin following flags up the trail, removing anything that would get in the way of the machines when they eventually get this far down the mountain. The rest of the first day of work goes by like this. We make it up to where the tree island we are in hits the West Village Get Back. From there we hike back down to where we park the rigs.

(this is the map of Phase 1 of the Mt. Bachelor Bike Park, and what it should look like in the next 3-5 years if things continue to go the way they have this first year of building)

July 5th, 2013 Day 2:

A few days pass before anymore work goes on in the trails that are to become the bike park, after celebrating the 4th, those of us scheduled to work that Friday, myself included make their return to the mountain, most if not all of us still fuzzy from the celebrations of the day/night before. Today our instructions are to begin digging on Blade Runner, which will become one of our most heavily ridden trails, at least for the first few seasons as 2 other trails will feed into it and send you back towards West Village Lodge and the lift line at Pine Marten Express. In our infancy of working as a team and building trail together, we begin working on the trail from the middle up, which now looking back at it was weird, but we were just breaking our teeth on what it meant to build trials at Mt. Bachelor, so we just jumped right into it one of the best things about building trails,is the fact that you can always come back and redo, move, change manipulate, whatever you want to improve the ride because at the end of the day is only dirt, rocks, roots, trees, plants, etc. that you are dealing with).

My first 10 hour day of the summer leaves me feeling rather work, although I have been riding a bunch so far this summer, the effects of manual labor show my weaknesses even after only one day on the job. Luckily for me, my summer schedule on the mountain is going to be Tuesday through Friday, so this marked the end of my first week on the job.

 

(The view from our office, Summer is gonna be a lot of hard work, but it’s gonna also be GREAT being out on the mountain, building lift access mountain bike trails, honing my skills, making new friends, and getting to ride the first legal downhill specific mountain bike trails in Central Oregon. Stay tuned for more progress in our efforts to make this long awaited project a reality).