How to Build ATV Racetracks

Survey the land. Go out on foot and make a layout of the land in your mind. Learn the borders and know how far you can go to each edge. You are essentially going to be drawing a map, so take in as much detail as you can see.

With your pen and paper, draw a rough sketch of the outer shape of the land you are going to be using. Using the borders as lines, try and recreate that shape on the paper. Exactness to the inch won't matter--just get the basic shape you are going to be working with.

Inside your newly drawn shape, mark as many landscape features as you can find. Make note of the location of trees, hills, dips or humps that you will want to make use of, or avoid. Be as accurate as possible on your drawing of features as far as location goes in relation to the map.

Use a pencil to start drawing in the path you want your track to follow within the boundaries. Be sure to make use of the landscape feature. Start with the most interesting feature, the one you want to define your track. It could be a hill or turn or natural jump. Use that feature as a starting point and wind the track around the other features and back to the starting point.

Refine your design. It may take some time, and several eraser marks, but continue to add in turns. Remember to use different angles for turns; some can be sharper, but most should look like half-circles. In the end, your track will look like several ribbons cutting through the map. Use as much space as your can inside the center, right to the edge. If you see a lot of large areas that are not used, redesign some of the turns to chew up that space. The more turns, the longer your track will be.

With your map in hand, take your can of orange paint and walk the track. Mark as you walk through each turn and section. This will make it easier to ride and test the turns. You will basically be marking an orange trail for you to follow later.

Get on your ATV and ride along the track you just walked, at slow speed. Take note of the turns; at slow speeds they should be very easy and not too sharp. Remember that as speed picks up, the turns will seem tighter so at low speeds they should seem wide and easy to navigate. If any are too tight, widen them as needed.

Ride some more, and some more, and some more. The key to building any ATV racetrack is riding on it. No matter what you draw on the map, you will find that some of it does not work exactly as you wanted. So you will be constantly refining things, adding turns or taking them away. Once you become comfortable that you have a good design, you can compare what you've ridden to what you've drawn. They will be very close but probably not exact--that is fine.

Keep building. Once you have the basic layout, what you do beyond that is up to you. If you are looking for professional quality, you will need to rent heavy machines, such as a backhoe and a bulldozer. The bulldozer can be used to cut and flatten the track as desired, and push dirt into piles that can be shaped into jumps. What you do with this heavy equipment is limited only by your imagination. Sculpt the land in any you want. Building a track is really a never-ending process as you will be constantly adding things into the design.