Building berms

[Quintin]

I have always wanted to know how to build a strong berm. how much digging is involved and whats the best way to reinforce the lip and main path so riders dont just plow through it.

Ive heard that the best berms are not built and are in fact forged by traffic. is that true?

 

[Dim]

I like to start the berm building by laying medium sized rocks about half the height and width of the berm. from there its important to get the right dirt, that makes all the difference. dirt with a high clay content is what you are after, its sets hard. i start putting that type of over the rocks little bit at a time. this is the secret to a strong berm, "Bit of dirt, then compact, bit of dirt then compact" that makes it rock solid. Make sure you have a decent amount of dirt over the rocks and there you go, a solid berm. Thats my way anyway

 

[johnny]

What about cutting into the ground, even just slightly?

 

[Binaural]

What about cutting into the ground, even just slightly?

Avoid if possible, since it will tend to turn into a puddle, especially if the soil isn't very permeable. Sometimes you have no choice though.

My tips are as follows:
1. Use as many rocks and as little fallen wood as possible, since the wood will rot and collapse over time. Once the rocks are settled by a bit of rain, they hold onto dirt well, which is really important for sandy soils.

2. Fallen trees make great berm supports for a really high, hard berm

2. Really sandy soil will tend to mock your attempts to get a nice shape, so try to avoid building on it unless necessary. It may be better to use a low berm on these corners, more to catch riders sliding out than as a railing point.

3. Concrete dust is useless for hardening most realistically sized berms, save your dollars.

2. Try and make the height of the berm proportional to speed, no point building a great big berm if people are only going to go 6 inches up it.

3. Berms are best on off-camber corners that need to be fast, use sparingly on flat corners.

4. I've never seen anyone use discarded carpets as an underlay on berms the way they do on jumps, but I was mulling over it the other day as a solution for some hard-worn berms. If anyone has tried it. let us know whether it showed potential!

5. If people need to brake hard on or through a high berm, it will be torn apart really quickly (especially at the turn-in point). Try to force down the rider's speed with a curvy section before they hit the berm so destructive braking forces are minimised.

Edit: I was thinking about DH tracks, which are lower maintenance and ridden in all weather conditions more than jump tracks, which get a lot more love and care

 

[Dozer]

What about cutting into the ground, even just slightly?

Absolutely, that is the best way to build a berm (if it is do-able of course) Hey Quint, some of the best berms I've built have been cut into the ground about one foot deep 4 or 5 feet before and after the berm to keep the direction going. The middle of the corner should have the same depth cut with the usual logs and rocks and shit to hold it together with a bit extra dug out across ways to prevent pedals digging in (if you lay it over that much!). If you lay logs and rocks in a way that they'll hold the dirt that you've dug out, it should hold firm with some good packing down. Watering is good after a few tyres have run over it too. I've found that if you build a steep banked berm, it changes a bit in the early days and holds reasonably well. When the berm sets you can dig a bit more into the ground and steepen it up even more for some hot railing action.

 

[technoboy]

definately dig them into the ground,
puddles pfft you should be ridding the wall of the berm not the bottom...

I recon build your berm first then once you have packed it all down stand on the top and then start digging out the base...
throw all the dirt from the base on the berm when you are happy wet her down then re shape it then your away...
the more you dig out of the bottom the faster it will be because its more like a curved wallride
here's one i built...

 

[Inverted]

Most berms have a slight downslope anyway so excess water wont really affect it. Like dale said you ride the wall not the bottom.

 

[Quintin]

yeah i have noticed some berms have had puddles at the bottom of them but they are on reasonably flat secitons of the track. in these cases the puddles can be missed by riding high but its a bit scary if you aint got the speed.

the sections of track that you built dozer at hte bottom of coffs spent a bit of time a little "soft" due to being a bit wet. runoff has to be considered i spose.

i think another thing is that it will take a lot more work to get it right than most people are prepared to actually put in. i dug for an hour one day, didnt look like i go much done and i was beat.

 

[technoboy]

yeah i have noticed some berms have had puddles at the bottom of them but they are on reasonably flat secitons of the track. in these cases the puddles can be missed by riding high but its a bit scary if you aint got the speed.

the sections of track that you built dozer at hte bottom of coffs spent a bit of time a little "soft" due to being a bit wet. runoff has to be considered i spose.

i think another thing is that it will take a lot more work to get it right than most people are prepared to actually put in. i dug for an hour one day, didnt look like i go much done and i was beat.

yeah it takes it out of ya thats for sure!!!
we have been digging for years and its only been the last year or two that we can actually ride and dig all day...

 

[bowzaa]

While not the smartest idea, we've found packing berms is pretty hard, so we try and ride them in the wet to get all the dirt to stick together. It normally gives a rutted out berm but then we work over that as it gives a hard base to shape your berm smoothly around.

 

[Reubs]

definately dig them into the ground,
puddles pfft you should be ridding the wall of the berm not the bottom...

I recon build your berm first then once you have packed it all down stand on the top and then start digging out the base...
throw all the dirt from the base on the berm when you are happy wet her down then re shape it then your away...
the more you dig out of the bottom the faster it will be because its more like a curved wallride
here's one i built...

Tidy work tiger!

Obviously everyone will have differing views as to the "best" way to make a berm depending on what your local trails/ soil/ weather conditions are. In the 'gong we have some pretty steep slippery (when wet) hills where simply building it up wont work.
The easiest way to rid your handy work of puddles is to build a drainage pit on the lowest part of the corner. By this I DONT MEAN A MASSIVE HOLE! (a la the middle of most dirt jumps). As you start to dig your berm, dig a pit with a drainage line to the outside of the berm and then fill it with rocks then back fill with soil over the top. This will drain water hella-quick compared to without (ask any plumber or landscaper). The best demo i've seen of this is on Digger's NSX6 "diggin' it" DVD in the bonus section he has sped up footage showing the building of a mad jump line with a creek running through it. track it down if you can... worth a look if you are serious about doing it right the first time.

 

[Daver]

As i've said before, the easiest way to build a berm is to ride one in. Make a turn (in your mind) and then hit it as a flat turn. After a few goes you'll dig in a rut, which will get deeper and deeper. The only time you'll need a shovel will be to cut away the inside of the rut so you can lean more.

 

[Winkie]

Obviously everyone will have differing views as to the "best" way to make a berm depending on what your local trails/ soil/ weather conditions are. In the 'gong we have some pretty steep slippery (when wet) hills where simply building it up wont work.
QUOTE]

Tru that! we built a dam good set of burms that were completely dug into the ground and they were sweet as!!

 

[benmwatkins]

Berms

Alot of the obove mentioned ideas on berm building are pretty good, and many ideas work.

At Barjarg for the top three berms right near the start, I first worked out the radius (shape) of the berms, then dug the semi-circle shape into the groung (not super deep) where they were roughly going to go to give me a working outline. This alows you to stand well back and evaluate how hard/fast you will hit them and if the radius is too sharp/round/flat. I then got logs and laid along the back of the berms, then used metal star pickets and drove three into the ground against each log (about twenty pickets for three consecutive berms) to stop them moving, and then used four inch nails to fix the pickets to the logs.

Then I added some rocks in the base along the front of the logs, and also dug slightly into the ground and heaped up the dirt to the height of the top of the logs (about two feet high). While heaping up the dirt/shaping the face of the berms, I use garden style watering cans (fourty litre) so that I can constantly water on the dirt to make it pack in real good. Berms and jump wont pack in without water. This means the logs wont move, the rocks wont move and the dirt is rock hard a day or two later.

There's lots of ways to do it, and some of the new berms im building ill be digging about a meter into the ground as the land is quite steep, so the drainage will be good so the water wont sit in the base of them as the ground is sloping and allow the water to drain out at the bottom of your berm and away from the trail.

 

[20inches]

i tend to find that on jumps and berms that are made out off clay when you get a heavy down poor it turns back to slop so i put a light layer of road base on them and as it gets wet and people ride it its turns rock hard but thats just my opinion

 

[RevellBikes]

at our track when we make burms me cut down trees and shit and like make the burm out of wood first, like shape the burm out and build it up high then put rocks and shit in it to stable it out then we put dirt all over it and like dig a rut sort of thing. works realy good,and the burms end up beng a good size, could make then way bigger but there is no point, can hit them realy realy quick too! i will try and get some pics to put and show you some of the finished burms at our track

 

[Nukid]

Well i got a DH track in my back yard and me and my mates bulid burms by puttin woods and logs at the base and building the wood up to the hight of that we want. We then start to put dirt on them and we fill all the holes and then once the dirts on we stake the wood so it doesnt callapese. Then we shape the burm and flatten it. We have never had a soft burm doing it this way!!

 

[benmwatkins]

berms

atome lab and any one else out there who does this and I quote "at our track when we make burms me cut down trees and shit" you are not only really stupid, but you make all mountain bikers look stupid too. Even if you do this on your own land, why cant you use dead or already fallen logs??? Why kill trees??? When rangers close our trails, this is one of the main reasons why. Think about it.

 

[bmgal666]

when my mates got lazy they brought the motos lol. it got funny when the wheels grabbed

 

[Reubs]

berms, jumps and whatnot

well i am typing this from summery south dakota USA-holes. i spent a bit over a week up at my friends place in Manitoba, canada riding, drinking and doing a bit of digging. They have some crazy big jumps there on a friends farm. since they've used topsoil that has been farmed for like 100 years it is super-dark (like what you see on dirty potatoes). We reshaped some of the lips on the jumps and i was amazed at how perfect you could get that soil to look. the rhythms looked just like you'd see in a dvd. Half an hours work and all the lips were imacculate, square topped and smooth. And the best bit is you only needed a steel rake! I could only wish we had soil like that at home, but then again they wish for some better hills (manitoba is flat farmland for the most part...)

check out the jumps and a 20foot high wall ride on pinkbike under the user name of jtscott