Bathurst MTB Park, Pictures and videos of the build.

[explodinglamas]

So did you guys know that Bathurst NSW has a MTB park? Well it does and has done for a while now, only recently though has it been gaining momentum. It started as 2.3km~ of trail built by volunteers in early 2013, which had apparently been on the books for years but council was always delaying and denying access. The required support appeared late 2012 and construction got under way shortly after that. Since then the park has been expanded with "Stage 2" bringing the total trail length to 4.8km, and just a few weeks ago, we started on "Stage 3", an additional 2.7km of trail. In a matter of 4 weeks we've gone from nothing to a rideable stage 3 at the Bathurst MTB park. A machine was used to roughly cut the trail and volunteers have been grooming, shaping, and joining the dots ever since. I personally have put in 22 hours in the past 4 weeks, and countless more before that on stages 1 and 2. Ultimately we plan on adding another section, "Stage 4" in the next few months, bringing the total length close to 10km. Once the council is done building a road right through the middle of the park (seriously I could kill who ever thought this one up) we will have access to more land to build on, and will hopefully make it to 13 or more km of trail.

Below is a link to the youtube playlist of my own time-lapse videos of the work, as well as ride videos of the completed stages. I'm adding more every time I go and do some work, so expect the playlist to expand, and I'll start posting the new ones in this thread when they're uploaded.

Youtube Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLlgKn9j7zBaEpDQVK8sbYlXFTZ3wazDE

Pictures to come soon once I figure out rotorburn's requirements on that front...

 

[bowtajzane]

good job mate:thumb: your right about not realizing you had a mtb park
there, keep us posted on what's happening

 

[Mr Carlton Dry]

Link doesn't work

 

[Ridenparadise]

Looks like fun riding. Hopefully shortcutting and drainage don't become issues.

 

[explodinglamas]

[video=youtube_share;HqKxQF8fHBA]http://youtu.be/HqKxQF8fHBA[/video]
Today's work. I had expected a bit of help today, had multiple cameras ready to capture as much as possible... and no one showed up! Well one person showed up an hour late and we did some minor alterations to existing trail. In this video I'm smoothing out the machine cut trail, it was rough as guts and the grass was growing back as well. Not captured in the video was the marking out and spraying (herbicide) of a 400m extension to the highest part of the trail.

Unfortunately the road construction is about to cut our access to the top of the hill, so trail work will only be possible on the weekends from now until they finish the road. Which is a massive bummer as I work nights so most of my building has been taking place during the week.

 

[bowtajzane]

it sucks no one showed up, maybe get your dog on the tools,
he looks keen as

 

[will2]

Watched the GoPro video, some sweet flow happening mate, Great job!

 

[explodinglamas]

it sucks no one showed up, maybe get your dog on the tools,
he looks keen as

People have lives and families, these things happen, just gotta roll with it. As for my dog, the only thing she can do is drag me over the lighter tools. She's an awesome riding buddy though! I want to make a video of her when we ride but she's too damn fast!

 

[explodinglamas]

Video of riding Stage 3 yesterday.

[video=youtube_share;7dEjTAXd4_s]http://youtu.be/7dEjTAXd4_s[/video]

So we did a bit of work yesterday, and instead of film the work, I filmed riding it afterward. As you can see its still very rough, and the majority is still machine cut rough path. Most of the work now is actually going to be for the downhill part of the trail, as the entire climb just needs to be smoothed, and we have a guy with a mini dozer coming soon to do just that. The DH requires smoothing, building of features, and berms a plenty. There is also marked out extensions at the top of the trail, which should add an extra 500 or so metres, and a bit of flow. There are several features that are really cool that we're planning on building on this stage. One of which is going to be a series of bridges over and through the large area of fallen and cut trees you can see on the right at 7:09 in the video. Another is going to be an over under style thing, with a bridge that goes over the landing of a drop in. We're facing some logistical issues with that one at the moment, as moving the required materials to what is probably the least accessible part of the trail is a challenge. I've not done a very good job of explaining any of this, so I'll post pictures and video when I can.

 

[SummitFever]

Looking good. Where abouts is it relative to Bathurst? Is it currently open to the public?

 

[explodinglamas]

Looking good. Where abouts is it relative to Bathurst? Is it currently open to the public?

Its to the south of Bathurst, Access is off of College road a few hundred metres before the tip. The park is open to the public, however there is currently road construction going on through the middle of it, so access to stages 2 and 3 is restricted during the week. On weekends, the entire park is open. Once they finish the road we'll be back to 100% open all the time. There's virtually no sign-age at the moment so it can be a little confusing to ride, you can watch my other videos to see the direction you should be going, though as I said, only stage 1 is open during the week at the moment. The local club holds weekly night races on Wednesday nights starting at 6pm.

 

[SummitFever]

Cheers. Once again, keep up the good work. No doubt it will be superb when its done. These sorts of things end up drawing people to places they might not normally go. I've only been to Bathurst once before, but liked it as a place. This will certainly bring me back with the family to do some riding.

 

[explodinglamas]

Cheers. Once again, keep up the good work. No doubt it will be superb when its done. These sorts of things end up drawing people to places they might not normally go. I've only been to Bathurst once before, but liked it as a place. This will certainly bring me back with the family to do some riding.

That's the plan, ideally we want to host events and make it an attraction. Council doesn't quite believe in that yet though...

 

[thecat]

Map and directions here http://ctmbc.net/node/45018

Haven't managed to check out stage 3 yet. Looks good, hopefully get there next week


With Rydal. Bathurst and Kinross all so close it makes for a good weekend trip. Rydal + Bathurst one day, Kinross the next

 

[explodinglamas]

Today's trail work just cleaned up parts of the existing line, as well as removed a lot of grass and smoothed out some rougher trail. I also experimented with a new method of smoothing trail. It's more labour intensive, and takes a little longer, but I think the results are better, the only way to find out is to ride it though. Tomorrow the local club is having a working bee from 2pm, and we should be able to get a lot done, the only issue is going to be capturing all the work on video!

On another note, there is going to be a proper race at the Bathurst MTB park as part of the EVO Cities MTB series. This series will have one race in each of the seven EVO cities: Albury, Armidale, Bathurst, Dubbo, Orange, Tamworth and Wagga Wagga. The Bathurst round will be on the 31st of May 2015, and will be 4 hour solo, and 6 hour teams endurance event. So now we have a deadline for our work. Given the layout of the park, as well as additional construction of facilities, stage 3 will need to be completed, as well as a linkage to the planned clubhouse/starting area. Depending on the speed of progress, the planned stage 4 may or may not be ready or used for the first year of this event. On top of this there are plans for a monthly working bee schedule to get things ready for this, and future events.

[video=youtube_share;1B0tZH92rIo]http://youtu.be/1B0tZH92rIo[/video]

 

[explodinglamas]

Today we had a lot of help and put everyone to good use. Instead of work on stage 3, we created a new bypass and trail head for stages 2 and 3, as well as refined some lines to work around the road construction. All this will mean that the local club will be able to race using all stages for the weekly Wednesday night races, instead of just stage 1 (which they have been doing for the last few weeks). Stay tuned for more updates, as well as if I will ever figure out how the hell the picture functions of this website work, because for me they just don't.

[video=youtube_share;vRB5u2jbU0A]http://youtu.be/vRB5u2jbU0A[/video]

 

[explodinglamas]

Did some more clearing of grass and smoothing of the new downhill section today, It was windy as hell and cold to boot. I couldn't feel my face. I've been working my way backwards up the hill clearing grass and smoothing out the rough surfaces left by the original machine cutting. The reason I've been going backwards is that stage 3 is open for riding, and it's better that the trail gets better the further you go on the DH rather than is good, then turns to crap on the way down.
In any case there's not much more of this sort of work to be done, only about 150 metres or so now. Once that's finished we can get to building the berms and other features. This weekend we're getting a machine in to clear the climb and we'll have some people smooth over what's left after that, with any luck the local club will begin to use it for their Wednesday night races and it will get nice and bedded in.
And of course, the video.

[video=youtube_share;g879LQCY3SQ]http://youtu.be/g879LQCY3SQ[/video]

 

[explodinglamas]

Only filmed a little this weekend, so missed the majority of the work that went on. The descent is almost totally smoothed now, a little more to go, then we will start adding the berms. The climb was mostly smoothed this weekend using one of the club members mini dozer machine, however it threw a track then snapped a belt 2/3 of the way down the hill, so the first section of the climb is still rough as guts. we're going to have to do it by hand most likely.
Another of the club members was busy building some wood bridging over the massed downed trees at the top of the hill, so we will soon have a really cool feature to ride.
[video=youtube_share;jyfD1uIwrdA]http://youtu.be/jyfD1uIwrdA[/video]

 

[chrisp2087]

This is looking awesome!

I'm heading out to Orange with some (non-riding) friends in November and this has now been added to my "must-ride" list on the way through.

Keep up the great work and thank you!

 

[explodinglamas]

Today myself and another member of the MTB committee spent pretty much the entire day at the park working on an A-B-C line combo. we finished the C line and the A line requires some trimmings to the timber to be finished. The B line should be done this week, with more woodwork and a longer bridge system. Its difficult to see in this video, but the A line goes up onto the bridge, straight down, and drops off the end (about 2.5-3ft), the B line goes up the same entry bridge, but veers right across some more of the fallen trees, and then will ramp down to a small drop off (<1ft), and the C squiggles around everything. This is turning into a pretty cool feature, and is going to be a real highlight of the park, at least at this stage. It will also be the first completed complex wood section of the park, but don't worry, there's more to come!

[video=youtube_share;LYp3cI8DOhg]http://youtu.be/LYp3cI8DOhg[/video]