The right tractor.........for mountain biking?!

[Headfirst]

Let me first introduce my delimma....I love mountain biking. Part two...we just moved to Wichita Kansas. No mountains. Really no elevation change unless you want to drive 1-2 hours in any direction. My wife is on board with the idea of buying 10-20 acres (I'm thinking more like 40-80), but the point is, I want to make mountain bike trails on this land...

What I'd like to ask is what is the cheapest/most effective way to build 30, 40, even 50' (or taller) hills. They don't have to be massive or incredibly steep (those things help), but basically something to make a winding trail on a flat piece of land. As far as steep, I'd actually rather not have it too steep - it'd probably just make huge ravines with runoff. I'm thinking like overpass type of dirt work where they build up the highway to make room for a bridge/road underneath.

My thoughts: a bulldozer. I've seen a medium sized bulldozer move that kind of earth on a construction site, one side is a long runway (for the bulldozer), and the other side is pretty steep - where the bulldozer pushed the dirt and finished it's run. I'm thinking that RENTING one of these guys would be pretty expensive for 3-4 days. I've seen used bulldozers for sale on purplewave.com but I really don't know what I'm looking for when it comes to size, or if I'd be making a well informed decision.

I also thought that a backhoe would work well, but it would probably take longer....maybe even just a tractor with a loader on the front....but (chime in with your thoughts...) I don't think you can dig down into the dirt with a loader - thus the backhoe - where you could dig, then scoop and move - but I don't see that making very big hills in a short amount of time.

So help me out...I want to make on-ramp size hills (several of them) in a short amount of time, as cheap as I can (either renting for a short period of time or buying old/used/cheap/possibly poorly running machinery.

Yes, I am a complete novice with anything to do with any sort of equipment, and if the resounding suggestion is to hire it done, I'm okay with that...I'm sure an experienced operator could do in an hour what I could do in a week (or more), but give me some opinions...has anyone done this?

Thank you all for your support, and I'm really open to any suggestions!

 

[nybirdman]

50' hill is going to have quite a base;you are talking hundreds of tons moved.Dozer for sure,would take forever even with a very large tractor.

 

[bcp]

Building big hills on flat ground without importing dirt will also create big holes, unless you take an inch or two off of acres of land. Not ideal work for a dozer.

What are you going to do with the holes? (drainage? ponds?)

Bruce

 

[KiotiKowboy]

I was thinking along the same lines. Sounds like you need to create a large pond, or two. Otherwise, you may wind up with some low soggy ground.

 

[Headfirst]

That's what I was wondering...if it's going to take a giant dozer to make it happen in a short time span...then hiring it done would be incredibly expensive....and me renting and operating a medium sized one for thousands of dollars per day versus buying one used and crossing my fingers that it's in good working order. Still, to move the kind of earth I'm talking about, i was thinking it might be better to buy one and figure out how to operate it (or pay someone to come show me) and take my time building the hills up the way that I want.

In a magical world where everything's free, I'd have a D10 (again, I don't know that much about dozers, but that seems to be a pretty huge one), or I'd just have the rocky mountains moved closer to Wichita...

 

[AchingBack]

This is the ticket.
Earth Movers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KQibfmLf0A

 

[Headfirst]

Ponds are a bonus around here...Honestly, it'd be awesome to make one huge pond. My second favorite activity is wakeboarding, so a giant ski lake? Bonus! In all reality, though, I think my wife wouldn't be too upset with a few ponds (as long as someone landscapes them....someone being me of course.)

 

[Headfirst]

AchingBack: Not even joking...I've looked in to this as a hired service. It'd be in the ballpark of $20-30,000 for that much earth moving. I'm thinking I might be able to find a used/auction dozer of medium size for $8-12,000 (again, I may be completely wrong in that statement... check this out...the auction ends on thursday this week. 1981 Fiat-Allis 10C dozer | no-reserve auction on Thursday, December 18, 2014 |

 

[Headfirst]

oh woops, in a few weeks

 

[Headfirst]

BCP - Another thought that came to mind (when you mentioned importing dirt) is concrete waste. I was speaking with our builder in our current house - he mentioned that concrete removal is very expensive because no one wants to take on concrete waste. I was scheming that I might be able to actually charge people to dump their concrete waste, pile it up in the general areas that I want to build these mounds, then take the money made on the concrete to pay for a bulldozer and some fill dirt (maybe there's people that want to get rid of their fill dirt too?). Basically financing my own equipment purchases by using the land as a dump site for a certain amount of time.