Photo: William Abner, BUMP Alabama’s year-round mountain biking season has fostered a passionate local ridership. While historically, Alabama’s trails have been cross-country-oriented, the Birmingham Urban Mountain Pedalers (BUMP) are building the state’s longest purpose-built gravity trails.
Oak Mountain State Park is already Birmingham’s premier mountain bike trail system, with over 40 miles of singletrack. To make this rad network even better, BUMP is adding three new gravity trails to the trail system. Each of the trails will be over a mile in length. The intermediate trails will measure over 400 vertical feet of elevation drop, with the black-diamond trail pegging closer to 500 feet of drop.
“They’re very intentionally built as downhill, gravity-inspired trails,” said William Abner, Vice President of BUMP.
“This stuff is red clay,” said Chase Draper, BUMP President. “Jump lines a mile long, that come off the top of the mountain and run to the bottom, with occasional tech sprinkled in for the fun of it.” The jump lines will feature machine-built berms and sculpted tabletop jumps — something BUMP claims will be all-new for the state.
BUMP is building trails for both intermediate and advanced riders. “The black will be 90% hand-built and more raw, rugged, utilizing what we found there on the mountain,” said Abner.
“We leave them rocky and natural and nasty, and point toward the big rocks with the flag lines,” said Draper. “That’s how the black one’s going to shake out.”
In addition, BUMP is building a natural, backcountry-style connector trail. This new connector will link […]
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