Howdy San Antonio MTB Community! At long last we have some good news to share with all of you! After a series of logistical and schedule challenges Sean Christoper, Jeff Jordan, and Brenda Gonzales were able to meet with SAPAR and got approval on the final design for the Mac Jumps Rebuild project! We appreciate your patience with the delay – several folks were unavailable to meet at various times since the lines were flagged a few weeks ago. Thankfully we now have approval to move forward, and we anticipate posting dig days very soon.
The final design incorporates a lot of your feedback – there will be four lines with a newly re-shaped return. Each line increases progressively, helping riders master specific skills. Line 1 is essentially for kids and beginners learning to drop in and handle a g-out. Line 2 incorporates a long, flat stone launch to an easy tabletop with a gentle transition, to learn to land under control. Line 3 offers a table top with a pretty significant lip, and the option to hit a right-hip jump rather than the table. Line 4 is the daddy – It offers riders two options. Either jump into a massive tabletop with a small step-up and tabletop at the end, or feed into rollers that can be gapped. Line 4 will end in a big berm to carry speed back into the return (which will also have rollers to help pump back) and there is an optional shark fin into the berm.
The city has agreed to provide water on site during dig days so we can better shape and pack in the jumps, and we do have authorization to bring in outside material as well (rocks, fill, etc.). They’ve also agreed we can use a bobcat to do the big shaping and fill moving, although we haven’t sourced that yet.
There are a couple of hurdles remaining, the first of which is getting the machinery. If you are a San Antonio based contractor and would be willing to volunteer and have a bobcat or equivalent, please contact us through comments here or on social media. You can also message me directly on Messenger (Steve Barish) or hit me up on Facebook. If you do volunteer we will need to work through liability insurance to make sure everyone is protected. As a backup plan, we are going to approach the city about using one of their operators but we all feel the community would be better served by a rider doing the build rather than someone without interest in our sport.
The other issue is the outside materials. The jumps lie in a flood plain, and while the city has said we can bring in material the volume and type is still not completely defined. Our SAPAR rep is working that right now and we expect to have that answer shortly. Once we know how much we can bring in, we can refine the approach and start site prep.
I know this has taken a bit longer than we all hoped, but we are finally making progress and hope to have a massive Chill n’ Grill group ride out there upon project completion soon!