Dryslope Senior Project

elm.

elm.

Active member
Last year I got more into skiing than any other year snowboarding (converted). After the season ended, I was thirsty for more skiing, but living in Seattle, WA, there was no where I could ski besides Timberline and Whistler which was out of the question. I knew about dry slopes before and did some research online. I found that there was no real good guide to build a dry slope. I ended up building a great dry slope after several failures.



I'm hoping that my advice, and pictures will help anyone building a dry slope.





Total cost = around $70

1st failure - I was extremely impatient and my design shows it. It was my dad's idea to use a table with two legs folded down. I gave it extra support underneath, and built a jump at the end. The main problem was not enough speed and that the jump was not above the ground. I was happy in the end with this failure, though. It costed me almost nothing and I had a rail finished, and astroturf to work with on my second attempt. I learned a lot from this failure.

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2nd attempt - success (after one month of building, tweaking, and modifying). Unfortunately I don't have the early pictures of building this dry slope. My plan was to use this as a model, but put it much higher off the ground (lowest part of dry slope is 1 1/2 feet off the ground).

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I liked the idea of a large, comfortable platform to stand on at the top, and a wide area to ski down with a gradual curved transition as the lip.

This is a picture when I am about halfway finished

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I bought most of my wood from Home Depot and Dunn Lumber, and the wood scrapyard. I got the cheapest 2X4's I could buy (about $2.50 for an 8 footer) I met a very helpful friend at Dunn Lumber. He is a college student at Whitman college who had built a dry slope of his own in his yard and a fellow NS'er. I was fortunate enough to inherit some of his scraps including lattice fencing and thick astroturf. This cut my costs down by about $30.

Through this project I learned some essential woodworking skills including toenailing, how to use a power saw, measuring, and leveling.

Even at the end, the dry slope was still too slow. Luckily this was easy to fix with more lattice fencing and soap.

The final Product

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I also ended up building 4 different rails, with the black tube the smoothest and most successful.

Here's my edit. I learned many other tricks not shown in the video. More than 10 of my friends skied it over the summer and improved their rail skills.

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In the end I learned a great deal. I will use these new carpentry skills again hopefully to build more jibs and jumps and other things. My rail game has improved a lot. The best part was building it and having a great time skiing with my friends over the summer. Hopefully posting this project will help anyone else in the future building a dry slope.

 
Might want to add some cross bracing. Depending on how well your 2x4s are fitted it might not be needed but why not. 2x4s are cheap and a couple places properly and pounded into place then nailed or screwed could make that thing rigid.
 
that was the best picture I could find. Most of this project was improvised and done by eye of other dry slopes I had seen.

The slope is 7 feet tall, 4 feet wide, and 15 feet long with a descent angle of 35 degrees. The lip angle is around 15 degrees.

That's the best I can do. I drew up my own plans that would be very hard to understand through the eyes of someone else, as I do not know proper blueprinting.
 
Hit up build a jib cult. There's a billion tutorials, pictures, plans and whatever else.

Or get a mite saw and a bunch of 2x4s and just go to town.
 
good call. these are fantastic. I wish I had known about this before making mine.

https://www.newschoolers.com/ns/cult/forumthread/thread_id/471848/

 
If you have a fence or something macbe you can put it up against that. Throw some lattice on the sides or some extra fence. Then maybe some flower boxes on the house side to block the drop in. Then you could just toss the rail somewhere.

Your mom would like I still have a yard that looks good and you'd be like I can still shred and thats good and errrrbody would be happy.

Not sure if that would work but sometimes a little compromise is needed. Regardless keep after it. Be a good kid, and don't be a dick about it just remind them how much it would mean to you. Most people only rock their drop in for 5 or so years. That's a long time but there are a lot of thing around the house that aren't as perfect as mom would like them when the kids are that age.

It took me a year to convince them to let me buy myself a trampoline. Eventually got 3. Then only a week to convince them to let me build a 12' wide mini in the driveway. The mini in the garage I never told them I was building.

Also big plus if you have the money. 2x4s are dirt cheap same with pvc. 2x4s will cost you around $2.50 for 8's and I think 10' Pvc pipes are still under 5. Haven't bought pvc in a long time. If you have $50- $100 saved just be like MOMMMMM PLEASSSSSEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

Don't hesitate to beg if it'll get you the ok. Maybe buy some stain for the side as well to make it look extra purty. Or put some doors on the tower part of it and make it into a little storage shred combo.
 
It's sad others are so unoriginal they have to quote what other people say. If you can't quote your own shit, it wasn't worth saying....when your this fucking good you can quote your own babble.
 
We also made a dry slope for our senior project, in 2009 lol, anyways one major issue I noticed with the OP setup was the lack of speed... They focused so much on making a smooth transition that they did not have a steep enough incline to generate enough speed to allow for flexibility with the rail setup. Also note I am not trying to hate or anything, just figured I would share some knowledge.

Anyways what we learned is that having a quick tranny allows you to conserve a lot of your speed. And you may think having little transition will "throw you off," what we realized is that after hitting it so many times you get really used to it.

Here is a pic of what we made years ago, worked pretty well, you could hit 20 foot rail and still carry a considerable amount of speed at the end.

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The only thing more sacred than the lawn is the fence. Luckily I have a grandpa that owns a lot of land. And as far as ass kissing goes I really can't be a better kid. Maybe I'll build something behind the house though
 
Maybe invisible paint will be invented soon.

Also OP you bight want to throw some bracing under the ply looks like it's just a 4x8 sheet only attached on the sides by a little bit. If anyone's building one in the future it's easier if you have the 2x4s on the sides vertical then you can screw in 2x4s across every foot or so. It'll make the whole thing more stable.

Especially if you're talking 4 seasons of abuse and throwing water on it with a hose. If that wood starts to go and there's no support the middle will cave
 
May not be the right place to post this but I am currently building a summer setup and the problem I'm having is attaching the ramp part to the frame. Ill try too explain this without pics so bear with me.

I have a six foot tall square frame that will be used to climb up onto and go down (obviously) I also have two pieces of 12 foor 2 by fours that will serve as the ramp once I connect em with plywood. The bit thing is that I can't cut the 12 footers at an angle and just drill em in to the frame. The ramp has to be detachable.

I was thinking about attaching a 2 by four horizontally in the front of the 6 foot frame, cutting notches in the 12 footers, and hanging them on there, but I seriously doubt the stability of that. I also thought of using bolts through the 2 by fours on the 6 foot frame to hang the ramp on but it would not be detachable as the ramp can't bend to come off them.

Seriously help me with this shizz
 
You could drill holes on the outside and throw a few big old bolts through your drop in and the platform. That should be plenty to hold you sliding down it. Could build a little shelf and notch the top as well to really make sure. Wouldn't take you very long to pull out a couple bolts and then move it wherever you need to.

Thought of some other ways but IMO that's plenty good enough and probably one of the easiest.

 
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these were out plans last summer incase you dont have a back yard to use or cant make a drop in, you can always go portable and use a banshee bungee
 
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