Anyone have personal experience building a backyard pump-track?
I’m in the contemplative stage
Would love to see some pics, as well as any info for “wish I had/wish I hadn’t”
I have the Lee McCormack book on order
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I have one. I haven’t had the time to do maintenance or ride in in the last couple years so it is getting a bit overgrown. I found it takes a fairly significant amount of work to keep it rideable. The old murphy’s law thing, don’t want things to grow on the pump track, means grass/weeds grow there super well.
The right kind of dirt makes a difference. High clay content so it works easy when wet, but packs down hard when it dries.
I found the Lee McCormack book kind of helpful, but unless it has been updated a lot, just going to other pump tracks and riding and looking at the design will give you what you need to design/build.
Mine is pretty small, triangle shaped in the back corner of the yard, about 10m by 8m. Bigger would be nice, if you have the space, but even a small track is fun, and tires you out pretty quick.
Some pictures here just after it was finished back in 2009. https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.278998600256&type=3
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Is that Paul Belhumeur I spy in those pictures?!
awesome, thanks!
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And is that my/your Balfa Minuteman, Brian? That frame is a lot bigger than I remember.
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Yes it is.
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Yup. Still have it. My youngest rides it now.
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I helped Paul build a pumptrack in his backyard in Dartmouth probably a few years after. We never got it quite dialed in though and the fast straight beside a fence led to a pile of crashes from what I remember.
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Yup! We built the Pumptopia design from Lee MacCormack in our backyard in 2021. It’s about 30m x 20m. We spend quite a bit of time each spring refreshing and revising it, and then it’s good to ride the rest of the season, until the end of October at least. I love it. Would love to chat if you’re still thinking about building one.
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oh man, that looks awesome! wish I had the space for that. Curious to know if you did any landscaping or grass around and any special drainage techniques or difficulties you had for wet weather
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Thanks! A smaller one would still be great - lots of benefits to having one in your backyard.
We didn’t do anything for landscaping, just left it all as dirt. I like riding on that better than grass for entry/exit, and not much grows in the clay anyways haha.
For drainage, we just guided everything out in the same direction through three channels. It can handle a lot of water - I’ve seen rivers running off it - and it still dries pretty quickly for riding. We also put a ditch around the outside on the upslope to divert runoff away from it.
The only issue is that some dirt gets pulled down from the top area where we cut into the bank, and it settles between the rollers. Every few weeks we spend maybe half an hour cleaning that out, so not a big deal but I would like to figure out a solution for that.
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