Project Report- Dirt Mechanics- Deschutes River Trail Expansion-

A few weeks after coming home from Windham NY, I got a text from a friend who owns a trail building company based in Bend Oregon. He and his crew had been working at a project at Anthony Lakes Resort and were evacuated due to a wild fire in the area. This lead to him rearranging his projects for the remainder of the season and this put him and his crew in Bend working for Oregon State Park on a new section of the Deschutes River Trail that connects Tumalo State Park to Ryan Ranch (think Shevlin Park outskirts of Bend city limits.

An Oregon Youth Corps Trail Crew had broken ground earlier this year and created a basic tread, then we we’re brought in to finish the tread and work through all the skips sections. This section of river canyon is littered with lava rock of every shape and size, often heavy in accumulation and weight in more than a few areas.

This project was a hand build, while we had a Candy Com to move dirt and tools, and a come-a-long to move the rocks that we’re beyond he strength of our four man crew. On the easy days we were mainly creating consistency in tread width and removing organics from existing tread and bench cut. But on the hard days we spent all our time and energy moving rocks and trying to find dirt beneath lava flow.

This becomes…

This, becomes…

This.

A project like this through the lava flow took three of us the better part of four days to complete, and it took multiple holes and Candy Com loads to fill in the area. It was a real battle, but I think the final project speaks to the attention to detail and skillset that the builders at Dirt Mechanics possess.

Here’s a shot of Derek using the come-a-long on one of the many too big to move by the hands of man alone rocks. I really enjoyed the opportunity to work with Dirt Mechanics. The owner Paul and I met a decade ago when we both were volunteering on trail projects with Central Oregon Trail Alliance and we also spent a few sure.mers working together at the Bachelor Bike Park, so it was nice to finally get a chance to work for him on one of the many trail projects nhis company works on every year!

This particularly sweet section of trail overlooks the confluence of Tumalo Creek and the Deschutes River (seen below).

 

Building the Bachelor Bike Park- Season 4- Post 4- the completion of Rock Fall

Towards the end of season 3 we began building Rock Fall, a trail designated as a double black diamond, the most extreme designation in bike parks and ski areas. While Rock Fall is definitely the most challenging trail we’ve built yet in the bike park, and by far the best example of a downhill race track, it could’ve been designated as another black diamond trail. While it is much steeper than any of our other black trails, and also more challenging, it’s still in the grand scheme of things, not double black, the drops are small, and the jumps are caseable, but it is also much more challenging than Rattle Snake, our first black downhill trail, and most likely our best trail on the mountain at this point.

We broke ground on Rock Fall half way through the 2015 build season. To keep people from poaching the trail, we began our building below the beginning, at the first road crossing, but it’s difficult to build a brand new trail almost directly under the chair lift and not attract a lot of attention. We spent a good part of the last month of summer creating the new trail, and then put it to bed for the winter.

(upper Rock Fall, this was the first section of trail we broke in 2015)

Rock Fall was also the first trail where I was given the opportunity to lead the build, and also make decisions to follow or  not follow the flag line depending on our opinions. Up until this point  Tom had always wanted us to stick almost directly to the flag line, but after almost 3 full seasons of proving myself as a builder,  I was finally given some free reign in the decision making process. Not being someone who let’s power go to my head, anytime we found the flag line not working we came together as a group and all came up with a line we liked and then we would pick the best choice, you know democracy. In my opinion, the best trail has the character of all the builders involved, anyone that thinks they know better or best, is full of themselves. It was a great way to end the third season of building.

When we returned to the 2016 build season, we found Rock Fall buried in snow, so we focused on maintenance and other projects until the long hot days of summer melted the snow, and allowed us access to begin work again. We had a goal to complete the trail in time to use it in the Oregon Enduro Series race we were hosting at the end of August. The aim was to include every aspect of a downhill race track we could in the final build, and I think we did a great job. We’ve got big jumps, steep lines, banked and flat turns, and some small drops. It’s gonna be the most challenging trail in the system when it’s all said and done, and after a few seasons of being ridden it’s gonna be really fast.

Rock Fall is a hand built trail except for one section. In 2015 Carson Storch brought his trick jump.up to the mountain and we built him a landing so he could work on his bag of tricks when he wasn’t traveling for FMB contests. The landing was right under the chair lift and when we connected the trail I to this section. We figured why not use this as the line, so we built a step up and then 2 stepdowns with the mini excavator and they turned into the best 3 jumps on the mountain. We got Rock Fall ready to open the week before the race, we cut a section that we  are planning to build in 2017 out to save time and made a fall like e section as a go around instead. Although the trail was very soft when it was opened, it has revieced a lot of positive feedback from the community of riders, and I feel we finally built a trail that challenges even expert riders. I can’t wait to see what comes of this trail in the next few seasons.