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 the Belcher Property—a 1,644-acre addition to Oak Mountain State Park, purchased in 2022 —to the core of the existing trail system.
Who has been contracted to build the trails?
Trail Visions is the general contractor on the flow trails project, and other local builders are also subcontracting. BUMP is overseeing the entire project — and they’re personally tackling the construction of the advanced, technical gravity line. Draper and Abner are themselves accomplished trail builders, and volunteers from BUMP turn out in droves to help build and finish trails.
How will these new gravity lines differ from the trails at Coldwater Mountain and RideBHM?
The expansive 40-mile mountain bike trail system at Coldwater Mountain in Anniston has been touted as the state’s premier purpose-built mountain bike trail system, with some claiming that the area offers shuttleable gravity runs. But BUMP doesn’t see it that way.
“Out at Coldwater, it’s more like a trail system that has descents in the trail system,” said Abner. “These [new trails at Oak Mountain] are more intentional in their descent.”
“[Coldwater] has, you know, more of an enduro feel to it. It’s very chattery,” said Draper. “There’s fun descents there. But they’re not jump trails, they’re not flow trails, they’re just trails, and they’re completely covered from top to bottom in rocks.”
While RideBHM already offers bike park-style riding in Birmingham, the pay-to-play park costs $29 for a day pass, and the runs are only 0.3 miles long. In contrast, Oak Mountain is free for everyone to ride (once you’ve paid the state park entry fee), and all of the runs will be over three times as long.
Turning Birmingham into a Silver-Level IMBA Ride Center
The new gravity trails are just one of the projects that BUMP is undertaking to turn Birmingham into a Silver-Level IMBA Ride Center. A skills park is also planned for Oak Mountain, with a progressive dirt jump area, a skills development zone, and a paved pump track. In addition, BUMP is working on trail development at other trail networks as well.
But this project 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.
The state got on board and put their money where their mouth is: Innovate Alabama funded the work at Oak Mountain with a $1.1 million grant.
11 miles of new singletrack will be ready to ride soon
In total, BUMP is working on between 11 and 12 miles of new singletrack at Oak Mountain across these various projects. As noted above, the trails are already under construction, and some of the first trails should be rideable this year. Thanks to all of the irons that BUMP has in the fire, mountain biking in Birmingham has never been better!
3 Comments
Mar 1, 2025
3 weeks ago
The thing is, Coldwater and Oak Mtn are not in competition with one another. They're only an hour apart. An easy drive for out of towners to come to the Birmingham area and do both, and doing both is what I would recommend if you are in town for the weekend.
3 weeks ago
I am excited for new trails in this area, more is always better!