Finishing Thumb Bucket & Building the Banana Cannon!

last spring we began sporadically working on a  backyard mountain bike trail called Thumb Bucket today we're gonna pretty much finish it currently  Thumb Bucket trail is split up into two sections   the lower section starts after the  Elmer Fudd bridge with the berm you then hit this double and the  trail continues to the bottom   higher on the mountain we completed another  section which contains this wall ride and bridge   today we'll connect those two sections  making the longest downhill run on Berm Peak it seems odd to start building on the back side  of a berm but that'll make a lot more sense later   here we're just roughly cutting our way across  the hillside until we reach the upper section   we're not building features or shaping the  trail because we need to drive the machine   back over it later so instead we'll do  all the finishing work on the way out in the meantime removing all the loam roots stumps   and organic matter from the corridor  is going to make our job a lot easier   ironically we're now building Thumb Bucket without  a thumb that's the part of the excavator you can   use to grab things but the hydraulic hoses that  would connect to a thumb now work our tilt coupler   having experienced it it's something I would  never be willing to give up even for a thumb   it takes us only a few hours to  make our way across the hillside   and then we maneuver the machine  upslope where our switchback starts if you remember from last time we had a wooden  bridge followed by a flat straightaway you can   sort of take a breather on that's where this  project begins and where your breather will end   from here the trail is going to pick up a lot of  speed but this project has screeched to a halt   okay so something I caught on a branch and one  of my hoses popped off and then I was messing   with the other hose to see what to do with it  and then that popped off it looks like an air   hose coupler where you just slide it back but  it it won't slide back so there's got to be I   don't want to break something if we look like  morons it's actually learning you're seeing   I should probably look this up this is somehow  the first time I managed to snag a hose   luckily my father-in-law is here and he  worked on these machines for 30 years   and to him the solution was dead simple just  let the pressure out of the hydraulic system   then the hose pops right back on just like  an air chuck we're back up and running and   if that ever happens again we'll know what  to do and now we can build this switchback as I've mentioned switchback is a 180 degree turn  along a slope in this case we'll be approaching   it at low speed but when we drop in we'll be  going downhill and so we're building a berm at   the bottom so Kevin and I need to be very mindful  of the shape both for rideability and for drainage Kevin's building a drain that directs  water away from the top of our switchback   this prevents water up trail from accumulating  and making rain ruts down our berm maintaining   it this way will be a lot easier but in February  we have a lot more than rain working against us   because any water on the trail takes forever to  dry exactly like a clay pot the clay we build   trails with remains mushy until it's baked  unless you have a few weeks of really dry   weather building bike park style trails during  the winter is a mixed bag even if it never rains   the freezing and thawing cycle overnight wreaks  havoc on anything that hasn't been fully compacted   and dried so the whacker packer can only do so  much we'll move on and hope for a mild weekend   next on the list is this dead tree before we start  working down the trail I want to take care of this   tree over here because it looks like we might be  able to use some of the wood in it we're gonna   have to drag it across the trail better to do that  before we finish it and make it look nice we're   just gonna hook it up to the machine pull back  and see if it starts leaning this way cut or loose uh I don't think we're gonna have time for  that let's hope this doesn't hit the machine yeah I was hoping we could build  a cannon out of this but it's it's   crap it's red oak it's all rotted  but I guess we'll just cut it into   a few pieces and push it off the trail and  keep it moving that was probably not smart   we'll just file that experience away  in the try to be more careful category so the trail back there makes a right turn we  could make a berm to keep you on the trail but   instead we're going to build a roller that  slants upslope so I've got to dig a big hole   over there to get the dirt take all the loom  trail debris pack it into the hole zip it up the till coupler makes it a lot  easier to shape the actual trail   so we're making big piles of clay along  the path to create grade reversals   rollers and maybe a double to increase  the trail speed and make it a lot more fun   as I make a rough shape with a machine Kevin comes  in behind me with hand tools to shape it into its   final form if he ever needs to come close to the  machine the policy is we need to make eye contact   we're not always the safest but with  certain things the rules are non-negotiable i have my iphone in the cup holder  of the excavator and now it's not in   the cup holder of the excavator hey Siri! my  phone was in the cup holder of the excavator   and I just filled in this borrow pit oh oh  oh that's it right there did it get bladed   oh I don't know if I'm lucky yet I mean is the  screen broken it does not appear that the screen   is broken yeah this is pretty dirty but I found  my phone that could have been at the bottom of   the borrow pit that would have been a disaster  luck keeps getting better today it wasn't easy   to extract the clay from the ports and speakers on  my phone but it lives on and our project continues now we've reached the back side of  the berm so I'll drive the machine   up and over it and then we'll fix all the track  marks and make it look like it was never there now it'll make more sense why we ended the trail  here in the previous Thumb Bucket video we built   this berm off the Elmer Fudd bridge but that'll  be one of two ways you can end up on this route we've been saving this tree trunk  for an occasion just like this   we do have more lumber because Kevin  recently collected a bunch of timber   and used our skidding rig to drag it all  into the trailer and bring it to Piney   Mountain Sawmill with this particular timber  I need to cut in-house with the Alaskan Mill it's still curved look at that but with that nice  upward curve it's going to be a little bit lippier   and we can call it a Banana Cannon I was like how did he get  that log from the driveway   so the purpose of the Banana Cannon is  not to launch you off the trail but to   actually keep you pretty low so that you  can land into the berm it's a speed jump as we complete the Banana Cannon it seems pretty  clear that this trail isn't yet ready to ride   that's why we don't normally build  with a machine during the winter   I just thought this time we might get away  with it this is way too mushy for us to   carry any speed our tires are just gonna  pack up with mud but we can stare at it this might be one of the coolest sections of Thumb  Bucket and I'm saying that having never ridden it   having learned what we did here I even want to  go back to other sections and rebuild them to   be more like this but until we get a few days of  warm dry weather we can't ride this trail at all   let alone get enough speed for the Banana Cannon  but when that does happen we have all of Thumb   Bucket from top to bottom and I can give you a  tour of the entirety of Berm Peak all the trails   every route to the bottom and a final measurement  of just how much downhill we actually have   so I'll be waiting impatiently for  that dry weather and until then   thanks for riding with me  today I'll see you next time you

Channel: Berm Peak

Views: 674,830

Keywords: mtb, mountain bike, bike trials, DIY, outdoors, building, trail building, machinery, excavator

Id: GT2V33QNGIY

Length: 11min 51sec (711 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 02 2022