Volunteers reshape track where novice and expert riders alike can polish their skills
By Morgan Rothborne, Ashland.news
Around a dozen people were working to shape a series of mounds of earth at the Ashland Dirt Jumps park Sunday for what will become a new pump track skills area on a strip of land just west of the Bear Creek Greenway’s southern terminus near the Ashland Dog Park, just south of the Ashland Wastewater Treatment Plant and behind houses along Almeda Drive.
As morning wore into afternoon, the volunteers pulled rake-like tools over the top of pill-shaped mounds. Brian Samhammer took a break from working with the others to explain the park gives beginners a place to learn and experienced riders a place to improve.
Standing near the park entrance, he gestured to where a small hill would drop riders into the track. As they move over the earthworks, beginners can learn to “pump” their bodies.
“It’s body mechanics — you move your body to gain speed without pedaling,” he said
The Ashland watershed is at a steep incline. Most trails require advanced knowledge of the mechanics of how to move with the bike to gain or reduce speed, move over hills and in or out of turns.
“Every mountain biker would love to get their kids on trails, but you can’t just get your 5-year-old out there,” he said.
Matt Weis, trails director for the Rogue Valley Mountain Bike Association, split his focus between helping his fellow volunteers and a busy 2-and-a-half year old on his tiny bike.
Bikes for preschoolers and below often don’t have brakes because “they’re so low to the ground, they drag their feet,” he said. His son — like other beginners — was still learning the feeling of the cycle and how to relate his body to it.
When Weis first brought his son to the park to learn, it was obvious work could be done to improve the resource and that Samhammer could use some help doing it.
Since becoming volunteer caretaker of the property in 2022, Samhammer said he spends a couple hundred hours a year maintaining it.
The project for the skills park has been a long time in the making. Samhammer said he personally jumped through various hoops for city approval and worked with the Rogue Valley Mountain Bike Association to coordinate volunteers to do the work, raising $3,000 for the project, leading to delivery of 80 yards of decomposed granite soil to the site March 21.
But before any of these efforts, dirt for a project had been abandoned there a long time ago, Samhammer said.
“There were two dads, and their kids rode and they wanted to fix it up for their kids. They got the approval, the dirt got delivered and there was some kind of falling out between the dads and it never got done. That was the story that I was told,” he said.
Samhammer was in the project for his two girls. He stood up a little straighter to say they both race BMX. While working that afternoon, Weis successfully convinced his son to wear a helmet before both toddler and bike went down in the dirt and came up again twice.
The track was designed with professional help creating a schematic, then lines were spray-painted on the ground for the dirt drop, Samhammer said. The lines ensured the right volume was dropped in the right places before Sunday’s volunteer work party to perfect or “groom” the track into shape.
At the edge of a lipped berm in front of him, Samhammer picked up clods of dirt — from large to very small — as he identified which pieces needed to be pulled away. The final surface should be packed so completely flat and smooth it would take tools to break it apart and make any changes.
“We’re going to do it right the first time,” he said.
When the park is finished, it will be “the bunny hill,” Weis said. But as mountain biking and cycling sports have expanded and contracted in recent years, skills parks akin to this pump track have become more sophisticated. This bunny hill is designed to be fun for experienced riders who know how to pump and use the earthworks to practice jumps and other skills, he said.
Samhammer said those who want to help with the project or support the park can start at Ashland Dirt Jumps on Facebook or Instagram. RVMBA welcomes local businesses, individual donors, volunteers and cyclists to participate in its efforts.
Email Ashland.news reporter Morgan Rothborne at [email protected].
