Anyone ever tried their unicycle there? Or better yet, I’m thinking a BC Wheel would pair perfectly with a pump track, it’s all about maintaining momentum.
Unicycle on a pump track: check. It’s doable, but compared to a bike with a freewheel it’s not a lot of fun. A pump track is designed to be ridden by pumping with the arms and body and should be able to be ridden on a bike with a freewheel with no pedaling, just pumping.
If you have experience with a BC wheel, you know that they’re very tricky to ride. On curved ramps, a whole lot more so. There are some videos available of people doing it, but it hasn’t really caught on.
If you haven’t tried riding a BC wheel, you should. They can be fun. They can also be a source of spectacular crash footage.
I have an interest in testing out unicycles on pump tracks. There’s a trail I ride that has some pump track elements and I used to practice jumping on the rollers:
You definitely can’t get the same kind of a pump on a unicycle as on a bike but I built up a peg unicycle to see if that would work any better than a pedal unicycle:
The initial results seem to show that I should be able to get a better pump on the peg unicycle compared to my pedal freewheel unicycle but it will take a lot of practice and won’t necessarily get to the point of being able to sustain momentum over the course of a pump track. But it will still be fun!
And folks, do not underestimate the skills of the Waaalrus! He is really good at that. Think riding a freewheel unicycle offroad is only a little bit hard? It isn’t. It’s WAAAY Hard! Kudos to you, Waaalrus for getting so many successful hops off that thing!
Out of curiosity, do you use the brake to aid in balancing or only to control speed?
On my freewheel unicycles I try to use the brake just for controlling my speed but I’ll use it for balance if I’m feeling tired or lazy. While I find it relatively easy to do coasting-braking-pedaling-coasting I still find it challenging to do coasting-braking-coasting. I’m successful most of the time, but it’s more like 60-70% and I’d like to push it to 90-95% with more practice.
On my peg unicycle I only use the brake to slow down after a run. So far I’ve been practicing to overcome my fear of going faster than 12 mph. I’ll need a lot more practice to be able to control my speed during a run with the brake. I’m not even close to the 60-70% success rate that I have on my freewheel unicycles.