Birmingham has big mountain biking aspirations. The local mountain bike club, the Birmingham Urban Mountain Pedalers (BUMP), is currently building the state’s first real “downhill, gravity-inspired” mountain bike trails at Oak Mountain State Park.
But they aren’t stopping there.
“The biggest adaptive ride center there is”
Inspired by a presentation at a SORBA conference, BUMP decided to transform their trail system at Tannehill Ironworks Historical State Park (“Tannehill” for short) into “the biggest adaptive ride center there is, as far as I know,” according to Chase Draper, President of BUMP.
BUMP had already considered tweaking trails at Oak Mountain State Park to make them more adaptive-friendly, “but you couldn’t piece together a meaningful experience for, you know, 20 or so miles without utilizing fire road,” said Draper. “Then this opportunity came up with this 1,000 acres at Tannehill. So we just wanted to kind of blow it out there. We had this giant blank canvas that we could do whatever we wanted with, and there’s no user interferences out there. There’s no horses or hiking, there’s no argument. There’s just land, and we can develop it how we want.”
On this blank canvas of land at Tannehill, BUMP is creating a purpose-built adaptive trail network while simultaneously working to retrofit the existing trails to work for adaptive mountain bikers.
What’s “adaptive mountain biking?”
An adaptive mountain bike, or “aMTB,” is a special type of mountain bike designed for riders “who typically cannot ride a standard mountain bike and require adapted equipment […] to suit their physical, intellectual, neurological and sensory abilities,” according to BreakTheBoundary.com.au.
aMTBs come in all shapes and sizes to accommodate a variety of physical requirements, but generally speaking, they feature either three or four wheels, with riders lying prone (face-first) or in a recumbent (feet-first) position. In addition to increased width due to their three- or four-wheeled design, they also have a longer wheelbase.
It’s not all that difficult to build a trail that’s fun for everyone, but that can also accommodate aMTBs: it just takes care and attention to detail. The biggest barriers to adaptive bikes are narrow trail widths, large obstacles, and bridges that aren’t wide enough. Trail camber can also cause issues — for instance, off-camber corners or berms on climbing turns can tip adaptive bikes over. And on downhills, aMTBs need larger berms with longer tails to accommodate the wider turning radius.
All the trails at Tannehill are being designed with these factors in mind.
Trails under construction at Tannehill
Tannehill currently has about 14 miles of singletrack, but by the time BUMP is done, it will boast between 25 and 30 miles of singletrack purpose-built for adaptive mountain bikers — that riders of all stripes will still enjoy.
Construction is already underway on 12 additional miles of approved trails, with room for more to be added. “We’ve currently built about four and a half miles of trail. We’re trying to finish up the handwork on that now and get some signage out there and get it tested to find the weak spots,” said Draper.
“The professional crew is going to start working at Tannehill likely next week — or one of them,” said Draper. “There’s going to be two crews out there working in other areas where we aren’t already currently building.” By the time this article is published, professional trail crews from Trail Visions will already be at work.
Not just boring XC trails
As we learned from the Driving Range in Vermont, adaptive riders enjoy challenging trails, too — and BUMP plans to deliver. “The further you get from the trailhead, the harder it gets,” said Draper. “I’ve got six pallets of rocks out there, and we’re gonna start building full-width features and optional lines and drops back there.”
When it comes to trail signage and difficulty ratings, Draper wants to change the paradigm around aMTB difficulties. “The way I’ve seen [aMTB trails] rated was based off of how much assistance you need to navigate that trail. And what I want is to build a trail system that is like, the corners are suited, the tread width is suited, and the trails are rated off of the technical requirements of the features, and not how much help you would need to access them.”
“I believe that we can build trails that are fun for everybody, no matter what style bike you’re on. And that’s what we’re going to do there,” said Draper. “It’s going to be twisty and bouncy and fun and have features and different technical abilities. It’s just all going to be built to the tread width and turn requirements required to ride an adaptive bike on it.”
High school mountain bikers ride and race at Tannehill — and help build the trails, too
Birmingham is home to about half a dozen high school mountain bike race teams in the Alabama Cycling Association (ACA), and Tannehill has hosted the state championship every year. Draper is designing one of the new loops with high school racing in mind. He anticipates that it will be adopted as part of the racecourse or even that the entire racecourse may change to utilize the new trails.
BUMP has also activated the local ACA teams to help with finishing the new trail tread behind the machine. “We […] get them to come out and do a lot of the handwork with the trails — clearing roots and raking out the fresh dirt, since they’re a little closer to the ground,” said William Abner, Vice President of BUMP.
Turning Birmingham into a Silver-Level IMBA Ride Center
The massive trail expansion at Tannehill and the purpose-built gravity trails at Oak Mountain are two of the main projects that BUMP is undertaking to turn Birmingham into a Silver-Level IMBA Ride Center. But this effort to turn the largest metro area in Alabama into a silver-level ride center isn’t just a wild brainchild spawned by the local mountain biking organization. Instead, the inspiration for this trail development has come from the top down.
The Hoover Institute conducted a comprehensive study to determine how Alabama could better attract and retain talent. The study identified that Alabama was “underutilizing our outdoor recreation opportunities versus our neighbors — like the percentage of GDP that we’re pulling in for outdoor recreation trails — Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee, Florida. So they wanted to rectify that,” said Draper
As meetings took place discussing how to enhance outdoor recreation in Alabama, BUMP got involved and made a presentation outlining the region’s current strengths and where the weaknesses were. They then outlined the quickest path to reach silver-level status.
Thanks to this work, BUMP secured grant funding for the current trail construction at Tannehill, which allowed the club to buy a mini excavator to do their own work while also subcontracting some construction out to other local builders. The Tannehill project has also been supported by Shelby County, Rental Works, Wal-Mart, Clayton Industries, Cahaba Brewing, and Motion Industries.
Demand for adaptive mountain bike trails
I was curious to know what demand BUMP has seen for adaptive-friendly mountain bike trails. Building trails that are compatible with aMTB use is a trend sweeping the nation, but just how many prospective riders are out there?
“Birmingham is home to the Lakeshore Foundation, [which is] this huge, awesome foundation, and all they do is try to create activities for people who wouldn’t otherwise be able to do them,” said Draper. “So they have a Paralympic climbing team and basketball teams and rugby teams and track teams. And they have all this equipment and these people. They live on-site. There’s a campus, there are medicals on-site, there’s a gym on-site, and it’s otherworldly. […] One of our members is one of the coaches, and I think she took the rugby team to Paris this year.”
“They actually have bikes that you can go in there and check out and ride, but they’ve never had a meaningful place to do it,” said Draper. Adaptive riders in Birmingham have been relegated to riding fire roads at Red Mountain Park. But now, Tannehill will provide world-class adaptive mountain biking just minutes from the Lakeshore Foundation.
Beyond local riders, “I’d love to see people from all over the country and all over the world come out and do what we have,” said Abner.
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