DO A LAKE JUMP

"What better way to extend the season than by jumping your bike into a lake?"

If you’ve ever fallen down the Youtube rabbit hole of bike videos, it ’s likely you caught something produced by The Rise. Run by a group of friends who have been together for more than 10 years, the collective has been steadily growing its following as it works to advance the freestyle scene on the East Coast, which in this case, encompasses Ontario through Quebec to the Maritimes. There are a few branches to this group. Their videos have names such as “The Loop of Doom,” and they run their Partymaster Tours – events that combine freestyle riding with live music. They also have their own

made-in-new Brunswick freestyle bike frames and merch.

One of the videos that is very summery features a lake jump. What better way to extend the season than by jumping your bike into a lake? And how do you make a jump? Stéphane Bélanger, the group’s tour manager, breaks it down.

Bélanger says it starts with safety. If you’re going to do a lake j ump: check the depth of the water to make sure you can j ump safely; wear a life jacket and a helmet; use a bike that you don’t care too much about because it’s going to be soaked in water and it might rust; cover your top tube and handlebars with pool noodles; and have a rope setup to retrieve your bike and/or your friend.

When building a lake jump, the run-in and trajectory are important. Depending on the height, you still need a lot of speed, so you want to have some distance to pedal up to it, says Bélanger. A little bit of carpentry experience is also necessary to determine the arc.

If it’s your first ramp, you’ll want to build it less steep than the one you see in the video. You will need a couple sheets of plywood, 2x4s and a tablesaw to cut the radius. The one shown in the video has a 12-foot radius and a height of five feet.

As a last step, attach the jump to the dock or something solid, so that when you hit the ramp, it doesn’t go with you.