As it turns out, 2020 wasn’t all bad.
About a year and a half ago we started tracking monthly mountain bike trail openings, and this is our first opportunity to celebrate a full calendar year’s worth of fresh dirt. While mountain bike races, festivals, and trips had to be cancelled in 2020, that didn’t stop communities all over the globe from opening new trails for mountain bikers to ride.
388.1 miles of singletrack (and counting)
By our count, 388.1 miles of new singletrack opened to mountain biking this year. And that’s just the trail projects we know about.
In the US, the state of Arkansas added a whopping 77.7 miles of trail. Various groups within that state have clearly prioritized trail building, and have shown they have access to the funds needed to execute large-scale projects.
92 new mountain bike trails and trail systems
If you were to ride one new 2020 trail each day, it would take until April to ride them all. By that time, there would probably be dozens more to explore! Not to mention, you’d get to travel to multiple continents along the way.
We suspect there were many more new trails that flew under our radar in 2020 but for now, 92 is the number to beat in 2021.
18+ skills and bikes parks
Skills and bike parks were hot in 2020. With riders sticking close to home, having a convenient location to work on skills and progression makes a lot of sense.
Another trend we’ve seen over the past few years — ski resorts creating and expanding summer bike parks — continued in 2020 as well. While many parks hosted fewer riders in 2020, all these new and improved parks should be poised to take advantage of a surge in interest in 2021.
In addition to the new trails we tracked in 2020, the Singletracks community and staff added nearly 1,500 additional trails to the worldwide database. As always, if there are trails we missed, please share them with us.
Your turn: Did you help build, or get to ride, a brand new trail in 2020? Tell us about it in the comments.
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