David Waugh and a group of eager volunteers are working hard to revive the dirt jump park that they grew up on in Bellingham, Washington...
---
Words & photos by David Waugh
As everyone knows who rides dirt jumps, the jumps are more or less always in need of some kind of work to keep them running smoothly. The dirt jump park in Bellingham, Washington, is no exception. Although the park is a city park, volunteers keep up the maintenance. The park is now in its fifth year of existence; however, it is in its second phase. Just under two years ago the park was flattened and redesigned. Those who were in charge of it, though, were not on their game and in the end did not invest enough time or interest in the park for the good of the public. About a year ago I was asked by the president of the WMBC (Whatcom Mountain Bike Coalition) to take charge of the work it was me, after all, who had originally had the idea for the park and saw it through at 14 years old.
Upon taking charge of the park I immediately set out plans to finish the work on the new park as fast as possible. I had, for the most part, taken over a mess. It was the start of the fall rainy season at the time and due to poor planning, poor building, or both, there were large puddles in low spots between many of the beginner tabletops. On one of my first days of work I was lucky enough to meet Michael, another volunteer who had a great interest in working on the park with me. Together we set up a drainage plan consisting of creating an outwards slope between all of the lines. The water would sheet off the jumps and down the slope, and then finally down a small trench that would run parallel to the jump lines, ending at the bottom of the park. The base dirt at the park had been machine packed before the new park was started and this made for difficult digging (or chipping with a Pulaski ) and the drainage plan took us all of winter and early spring to complete.
I went away for two months to work in Canada from May to July. I arrived home last week to the reality that there had been very little rain since I had left, and Michael had only just the day before picked up hoses and a water key to hook up to the citys water at the restrooms next to the park. Very little work had been done in the time I was gone. So, now with the drainage out of the way, it was time to finally work on the jumps. The park consists of five lines: Starting from the left, closest to the street, there is the small tabletop line, then the bigger tabletop line, next is the small doubles line, then the medium and the big doubles. The medium line is the most ridden line in the park, and is also in the best shape. On Monday we decided to work on the small and big doubles, since those were the two lines in the worst shape.
We started the day late at 9:15 AM. As we were planning the work for the day, another friend of mine, Brendan, showed up to help. To get much of anything done on the small line weeds had to first be pulled. After about 30 minutes of weeding the dirt was clear and ready to work with. Although the forecast called for rain, it had not happened yet and all of the dirt required the hose so as to not be working with pure dust or sand. The work on the small doubles went relatively quickly and in about an hour Brendan and I had one lip and two landings looking good.
Michael dedicated the day to working on the big line. The problems with this line were multiple. The three biggest issues were, first of all, flow in that the gaps were all built at different distances (not progressive, either), second, they were built pointlessly high off the ground, and third, none of the jumps lined up. The big line is now in the process of getting bigger. We spent most of the rest of the day between the second and third jump in the big line digging the ground down to be half as high as it had been and building the lip and landing to line up more with each other.
After a few hours of this work, after I had finished on the second jumps landing, I went to help Brendan on the berm leading into the small doubles line since it had been nearly non-existent. The rain picked up as the day went on and once the berm was finished we were ready to call it a day since it had started to rain even harder. I helped Michael throw a little more dirt on the big line before we decided that there was no way we would be able to finish the jump until another day. Overall, we had worked a solid day, ending at 5:00, and for three people a significant amount of work was done. Next time we work, we hope to complete our work on the big line so that we can free up some time to work on the pump track, which was started when I was gone. Our goal for the summer is to have the park in the best condition possible in time for the dirt jump competition, which will be returning from a three-year absence in late August.
As more work is done, I will write more updates with photos.