Man crafts ‘boutique’ mountain bikes, ski bikes

Lenz recalls his first run on a ski bike he built.

“I was up at Copper Mountain at the top of the American Flyer lift,” Lenz said. “It’s pretty mellow at first, so you’re steering around and it’s kind of fun. But once it starts getting steeper, putting it on edge, you’re carving. That’s how you go fast, putting it up on edge. I was just cruising around, every run for the first year, just grinning from ear to ear. Jumping was scary, because you didn’t know what was going to happen when you landed.”

That winter of testing — somebody had to do it, after all — showed him his first design needed major improvements.

“It was long and rode like a freight train,” Lenz said. “It just wasn’t very good. I figured I needed to shorten things, making it tighter and lighter, and simplify it. I built that bike, and it was just amazing. It just rode so well. It was really good in the bumps, really quick, fast and agile.”

He buys raw aluminum in 12-foot pieces, cuts them into blanks, shapes the blanks into bike parts he designs with the help of computer-aided drafting and transforms them into components. His computer generates programs that run a milling machine, essentially whittling parts from the blanks.

“It’s super-expensive to have machine parts made,” Lenz said.