In this episode of the Singletracks podcast we’re going to be discussing some of the latest news and trends from the world of mountain bike trail development. A complete transcript is available below.
We discuss:
- A recent meta-analysis of mountain bike tourism by IMBA and the Trust for Public Land
- The use of private land for trail development
- Threats to existing trail systems
- What’s happening in Arkansas
- What to expect in 2025 and beyond
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Automated transcript
Jeff Barber 0:00
Hey everybody, welcome to the Singletracks podcast. My name is Jeff, and today Greg and I are going to be discussing some of the latest news and trends from the world of mountain bike trail development. For those who don’t know him, Greg is the managing editor for Singletracks, and he focuses primarily on trail news and coverage from around the world. He also used to be a regular on the Singletracks podcast back when we got started in 2015 I believe. Welcome back, Greg.
Greg Heil 0:30
Good to be back on the pod. Yeah, I can’t believe we started that back in 2015 that sounds like a long time ago now.
Jeff Barber 0:37
I wonder how many people listening remember you from the podcast, because I think also I was looking back. I think the last episode you were on was like 2018 maybe. So yeah, it’s been like seven years, I think.
Greg Heil
Well, thanks for having me back.
Jeff Barber
Yes, yeah, super stoked for you to be here as well. So mountain bike tourism these days can be a pretty significant economic driver, and you recently shared a meta analysis by IMBA and the Trust for Public Land that looked at just how significant that impact is. Did anything in the report stand out to you or surprise you?
Greg Heil 1:15
There were a ton of numbers in that report, which I realize numbers could be tough on a podcast, but the high level from some of the economic impact the destinations profiled were really interesting. So couple examples. One was big examples, at least one was the GMUG area in Colorado, which is a combination of a bunch of national forests and includes iconic destinations such as Crested Butte. And they calculated that across the GMUG mountain biking had about a $30 million a year annual impact. Wow. And there’s also, like a bigger level study from the state of Washington that estimated that mountain biking had a $435 million annual impact in the state. So, of course, some of those big numbers, like, you know, jump out at you for each destination.
Jeff Barber 2:09
And what kind of stuff does that include? I mean, I guess it’s not standardized, right? Like some of them look at spending, direct spending on, like lodging and gas and stuff like that. But then also maybe, do they like project that out and say, like, oh, well, this supports a job, and then that person spends money. And is there any way to, like, compare destinations using that data?
Greg Heil 2:34
So there’s definitely, if you want to get into the weeds, there’s a lot of that info in this, in the analysis, and they did spend some time, even in the summary, discussing like, what is direct economic impact and what is indirect economic impact, and how those two things differ. Most of these numbers are direct economic impact. So examples of indirect impact are things like mountain bikers being healthier and costing, like the healthcare system, less or things of that nature. So direct economic impact is generally includes direct spending lodging, but also this job support that you talk about. So in some of the studies, they also pull out direct spending versus total economic impact, direct economic impact, and break it out further. So a couple of those studies I thought were really interesting, actually concerned standalone events. So I’ve debated this with my friends before. Like, how much does a single race actually benefit a local community, if only happens, say, on one weekend per year, because we hear from these race directors and these organizers, like, oh, this has a great impact on the local community. And from my perspective, I’m like, you’re only there for a weekend. But there’s some really interesting studies in here that actually gave some numbers. So two that jumped out at me were the one was the Iceman Cometh, which is the largest point to point mountain bike race in the USA. Apparently, I didn’t realize how big it was. I haven’t been there to do it myself yet, but that study broke out direct spending versus total economic impact, and it found that the Iceman Cometh, which is basically a weekend as far as I’m aware, like type thing, it generates $5 million of direct spending in that county, with a total impact of $7.2 million per year. So that total impact number, the additional 2.2 million includes things like the jobs created by this directly.
Jeff Barber 4:41
Yeah, I thought it was really interesting, getting back to what you’re saying about the indirect there was that northwest Arkansas study where they included, like you’re saying, the health care benefits, like people being more fit and active helps reduce medical costs. US, which, I mean, it’s probably true, and that’s interesting, that someone you know was able to, like quantify that. And I guess as mountain bikers, that’s great. That’s like, a great idea for us to kind of like, really quantify how much impact we have, and hopefully get more trails built.
Greg Heil 5:18
Having hard numbers to point to, I think will really help different communities get these trails built. We hear these things all the time, like, when I’m interviewing different local advocates who are working on trails, even if they can’t necessarily fund an economic study in their area, they’ll often point to an economic study that somebody else has done, like, say, like, a couple hours away, and draw equivalencies and say things like, well, we’re roughly the same size town. We’re planning to build roughly the same amount of trails. So they said they’re going to generate 7 million. So, you know, we can expect 7 million too. So people are already doing this, but imba and TPL rounding up 50 different studies into the Yeah, different studies into this one big meta analysis is really like fantastic data that can be used by these advocates.
Jeff Barber 6:09
Yeah. Another example I recently came across, and I’m working on a story that’ll probably be published sometime after this podcast. But you know, Coldwater Mountain in Anniston recently announced that they’re going to have a lifetime Leadville qualifying race there. And I forget how many people they expect. I think, I think they’re hoping for close to a thousand people. It’s like a trail running and mountain biking thing, but they’re using that event, you know, not only did it promote the town, but they’re using the event to get new trails built, they’re actually building extra trails to make that event work. And so yeah, it seems like this virtuous cycle where, like investment in events can help tourism, which helps the trails, and if you have more trails, you’re going to attract more tourism. And so, yeah, it’s all super interrelated, which I think is interesting. Speaking of money and big numbers, you know, we’ve, we’ve covered a few million dollar plus trail projects over the past year. I guess so many that they’re not all that in common anymore. One of the ones I’m thinking of is $12 million for 50 miles in Ely, Nevada, over a million dollars for a project in Washington State, and again, the one at cold water in Alabama. They’re also investing over a million dollars. There’s even here in Atlanta, we covered a bike park that is going to cost $15 million which is like an eye popping amount, especially for just a few miles of trails. Obviously, that’s going to include other stuff too, infrastructure and Trailhead stuff, but that’s a lot of money. Why are these projects so expensive? You have any insight into that?
Greg Heil 7:59
Definitely, so compared to the way some trails were built, say, 20 years ago, the amount of planning that goes into these projects is exceptional. So a lot of these projects might have, you know, $100,000 in plans done. 100,000 might be on the high end, but we’re talking like 10s of 1000s of dollars just in planning, trail design, conceptual design, architectural things before you know, some of these trails are even approved, right? And once they’re approved, you know, we’ve got, I’ll spare you all the details. But of course, there’s the different ologist work and approvals, but then we get into professional construction, and very often, like, who does the design and who does the construction are not the same people. So we’ve got those going on, right? But then another thing we should really talk about is the additional infrastructure that goes into it. So for a lot of the trail systems you’re talking about here, these are brand new networks or developments being built from the ground up, right? And when you’re building from the ground up, you have to think about a lot more than just putting trails in the dirt. You have to think about how people are getting there, where they’re putting their cars, and unsexy things like toilet facilities, parking lots, access roads, all these things. And for a lot of people I’ve been talking to, it’s amazing how much of a part of the budget those Trailhead facilities can make up. I mean, it’s not uncommon, like, if we’re, say, talking like a million dollar project, which is almost like just table stakes at this point, like for half of that to be, you know, Trailhead infrastructure, yeah, and on some of the projects we’ve talked to, it’s even higher. One example that is, I will say this is exceptional, but the Baileys trail system in Ohio, the total investment in that project is roughly about, I might there’s a few different grants and numbers being thrown around, but, you know, it’s 16 to $17 million Wow. But I. Based on some of the numbers that, like gave me one of the major trailheads, just one of the trailheads is going to be a $9 million facility. Wow, just for one of the trailheads, that’s the most I ever heard for a trailhead facility. But that just kind of Yeah, puts the point home that these aren’t just trails. Greg Mazu mentioned on his podcast interview with you that we need to think about trails as public infrastructure the same way that we think about roads and bike paths. These things public infrastructure, trails are the same thing, and the access to the trails is a critical part of that. So when you’re considering that into the overall cost, yeah, it definitely, inflates cost.
Jeff Barber 10:41
Yeah. I was thinking about that conversation with Greg, and also the recent one with Tom Schoen out in British Columbia, saying the same thing, that Trailhead facilities are super important. And I mean, I think what you’re getting at too is like mountain bikers, we have higher expectations. Now, I don’t want to say we’re like, high maintenance and we’re like, I won’t ride there unless the trailhead is nice and, you know, the trail is like first class. But I mean, there are a lot of choices now, and so when these projects do get, you know, proposed, people are thinking about like, we want our trail to stand out. We want our trail to be quality, because there’s all these other places that people can visit, and so it’s not going to work as a tourism draw if your trail is just so, so, right? So it’s interesting, you know, it looks to me like a lot of these projects too, they’re spending money on things that we didn’t used to spend money on, you know, like, rock work and, like, cool, you know, like, like, you’re saying architectural kind of stuff that’s memorable, and that’s going to, like, make the trail stand out from another place. And so, yeah, that stuff adds up. I was looking back at some interviews I’ve done with with other trail builders over the years. And I think this is probably just a few years ago, some of the trail builders were saying the cost to build a trail is like three to $5 per foot, and so that works out to like 15,000 to 25,000 per mile. But like, we’re way past that right now, wouldn’t you say?
Speaker 1 12:19
Oh, we’re way past that. That’s not even even in the in the ballpark anymore.
Jeff Barber 12:24
Yeah. $100,000 a mile is, like, seems pretty common these days, from what I’ve seen.
Greg Heil 12:31
I think the tough part now is, like, it’s hard to get anybody to even give you a per mile, like, average, because it varies so much depending on what type of trail you’re building, ultimately. So if you’re building, you know, a top tier, manicured flow trail with massive tabletop jumps and huge berms and rock work and these sorts of things that adds up really quickly. If you’re building machine built XC trail, and there’s not like big obstacles you have to overcome that’s going to be cheaper, but Right? You know when people I should specify, when trail builders bid these projects. You know, they’re very much getting all this information beforehand. And like, understanding, okay, this you want this trail to be this way, okay, this is going to cost this much, right? So, like, different sections of the network can have different costs associated with them, depending on how you know, kind of intense that they are to build, right?
Jeff Barber 13:22
Yeah, well, so, I mean, it kind of sounds like we’re past the days of, of like volunteers going out and building trails by hand on the weekend, right? I mean, like, pretty much every new trail project that we’re seeing is built by professionals, right? And so that adds to the cost.
Greg Heil 13:40
We’re a bit past, yeah, the the building trails by hand. One thing I think we’re seeing in some areas is still a bit of a hybrid. So what some people don’t realize with machine belt Trails is that there’s still a lot of hand work to be done, right? So, you know, the machine will do the initial cut, will dig the big features, but there is hand finishing that needs to be done to make these trails really rideable. This point was really driven home as I was out sampling with permission some under construction trails in posh Nevada. We’re riding up a trail, and it was just extremely obvious where the line of the hand finishing ended, and we ended up on, like the rough cut, like the machine cut, which was still see the trail, but it’s not the finished product you’re expecting. So literally, right before this call, I was talking with SC MTS out of Santa Cruz, and they were doing a new rebuild on the iconic demo forest flow trail. And for a lot of the rebuild their, you know, their pro crew is, you know, say, completely deconstructing and rebuilding berms. But then they’re organizing volunteer effort to come in and do the hand work. So we’re seeing people kind of do, like a both hand approach.
Jeff Barber 14:54
Yeah. That’s funny. You mentioned that, for a lot of people, when you hear brand new trail, you’re like, oh, that must be so cool to be like, the first person to ride a trail. And I actually wrote about this in our email newsletter exclusive a few weeks back. But like, trails are pretty rough when they’re brand new, and especially if that finishing work hasn’t been done. So, yeah, one, get permission, like you said, and two, volunteer, because, you know, once the machines move out, they still need a ton of work. And it’s like every inch of the trail somebody’s going to go over it by hand, in most cases, and cut out the little roots and smooth out the bumps and all that stuff. So, yeah, good point. So we mentioned some destinations that are investing a lot of money recently. Are there any others that are notable that we’ve covered on Singletracks in the last few months?
Greg Heil 15:53
Some of the big ones that really stand out are the aforementioned Baileys in Ohio. They’re building what they’re calling the largest contiguous mountain bike optimized trail system east of the Mississippi River. It’s a lot of qualifiers, but the net, net is big, like 80 plus miles of trail, close to $17 million investment. It’s a big trail system, and it thinks it’s almost done like they’re on the final stages, so they’ve already been building there for years. Pretty, pretty exciting project. Yeah, Tulsa, Oklahoma is also on our radar, with around a $10.6 million investment into was already in a trail system. But like redoing trails, building new ones, building bike park specific features, it’s dramatic. The Dragon in Michigan was just finished. It’s a big, 40 plus mile loop around a lake in Michigan. And that was, like, close to a $3 million project. And the list just keeps going on. I mean, everywhere in Arkansas, we’ll get to Arkansas, maybe a bit more, just huge amounts of money. Some projects, like, don’t always, aren’t always willing to share, like, a big, high level dollar amounts, but you still know that the amount being invested is substantial. So previously, Jeff, you said, like, Oh, lots of projects, like, over a million dollars. And at this point it’s almost like any project can get to a million so quickly, like even so, an article I was just working on about a new trail in Oregon. They put about a million dollars into land acquisition the city did, and then about another million just into the first half of the network. So about a million dollars to build roughly 12 miles of trail there. Wow. So yeah, and again, already a million in land. So that’s already $2 million project, and they’re halfway through. So yeah, you know it’s, yeah, it adds up fast, right?
Jeff Barber 17:49
All over the country. Another one I just remembered was Redhead Mountain in Minnesota, which I think at this point is a multi million dollar project. And we covered kind of the start of that, but they’ve been working like ever since for years, and so hopefully we’ll get up there and be able to check that out and cover it in the next year or so. But yeah, no shortage of big projects. So another trend that we’re seeing is the use of private land for trail development projects. One of the recent ones that was super popular story on the site was about a multi million dollar project in Western Massachusetts that is in this area where there’s not a lot of public land or public trails, and so the folks behind that project were able to find private land to get the project done and are starting in on that. And then we also heard about a group in Utah that’s offering up their private land to help connect the Bonneville shoreline Trail, which is going to be eventually this massive trail that goes all the way around the Bonneville Lake area in Utah. So what’s behind this, and what are some other projects maybe that I missed that are taking this path?
Greg Heil 19:09
So, it’s definitely a trend. A few other projects that jump to mind are the platen peaks, trails that we covered in Missouri, which is really a truly visionary private development that’s going to go beyond just trails in my backyard here, the Durango Mesa Park project promises to be largest municipal bike park in the nation, along with building a ton of non bike park trails on a 1800 acres that a private donor acquired. And then, of course, lots going on in Arkansas and private land. The Waltons in the runway group are constantly acquiring land, which we might talk a bit more about later in the episode. But yeah, this is definitely like a nationwide trend. So the reasons vary from place to place, but I think it boils down to two main challenges. Either, there’s actually. A lack of public land in the some area, in these areas, or there’s too much red tape to building mountain bike trails on public land. But honestly, looking at this list, I think the trend that keeps coming up is there’s not actually public land available in some areas. Arkansas is a great example. The Durango Mesa Park is another great example, where, I guess there’s, there’s public land all around Durango, but this 1800 acre parcel is like directly adjacent to two of the existing trail systems, directly adjacent to downtown. It’s like this incredible piece of land that the only way you’re going to get it is if you out and spend several million dollars and buy it, right? So I think we’re seeing that in a lot of areas. Yeah,
Jeff Barber 20:47
Another one that I just thought of when you’re talking about that too, is the Station Mountain bike park in Texas. Texas is a place where there’s not a lot of public land, and so, yeah, there’s definitely, like a need and a demand for trails in a lot of these areas. And like you said, you know, either there’s no land or there it’s just going to take too long, or is going to be too difficult to build trails. What are some of the other advantages, though, of building trails on public land, aside from from those two?
Greg Heil 21:21
So other advantages to building on privately acquired land include things like fewer ologist studies. The builders like to just lump all the ologists together, but when you build on public land, there’s generally a series of scientific overviews. These include different types of ecologists and botanists and hydrologists, different things like that, but also includes archeologists and to check to see like there’s no like historic sites or archeological sites that will be impacted by these studies. And honestly, most mountain bike trail builders will tell you, these all just studies are super, super important. I was just talking with Eddie Kessler, the owner of tarnian trails, a couple days ago, and he emphasized this, and he’s like, we’re not saying the all just studies are bad by any means, like they need to be done. You know, we need to avoid archeological sites, but it makes it really difficult to to actually get trails built. Another big benefit is the freedom to build more aggressive features, like big jumps, wooden stunts. This is why we did article some months ago about the rise of the private bike parks being built on private land, and often like served by a shuttle system of some sort. And that’s very often, because even if you do get the permission to build trails on on public land, getting permission to build really big jumps and really aggressive features is is another step beyond that, right? Sometimes doesn’t happen and sometimes might never happen. So there’s, there’s often a difference between, can you get a trail belt, or can you get a black diamond jump line the size of a line built? And those are two very different things, right?
Jeff Barber 23:09
And even, I mean that that part is even a challenge on private land, and we saw like in the Arkansas development, that stuff that they’re doing with bike parks and chair lifts, I mean, they had to get, like, the state laws changed to make it easier and to, like, reduce liability in those cases. And so, yeah, even going the private route is, is not always easy for some of these projects. Another thing that I noticed, you know, living here in the southeast, we get a lot of rain, and so, like a lot of public trails end up getting closed due to rain, and the private bike places, bike parks, they don’t have that same requirement, and so they’re able to offer trail riding, like kind of all year round, whereas you can’t necessarily get that on public land And so, but I guess we should also distinguish between trails that are on private land and that you need to pay a fee to access, versus some of these projects where, you know the land is is privately acquired, but then then the trails are just open for public access. And so I guess we’re seeing a mix of both for sure out there, and so it is just going to depend on what exactly the situation is.
Greg Heil 24:27
One thing to piggyback off of what you’re saying, Jeff about, you know, paying a fee private land, privately acquired. Another thing we should acknowledge is in a lot of places we’re seeing like wealthy donors acquiring private land. Like they go and purchase it, they then, there’s a few different ways this happens, but lots of times they’ll then build the trails, and they don’t need to overview and then turn around and gift that land to the public. So they will literally give that land to. City, the county, some sort of public agency, and then that land moves into public ownership. So we’ve seen that happen in Arkansas, and that’s currently what’s happening here in Durango with this 1800 acre parcel is like, it’s not going to remain private, it’s going to be donated to the public, and then and then owned by the city and run by the city. So it’s pretty cool to see that happen. To see land literally being changed from private in the public in the east, we see this happen with lots of land conservancies. So there’s some big ones we’ve talked about in North Carolina and in Maine, where these nonprofit orgs go out and buy land in order to conserve it and then also use it for recreation. So yeah, there’s a lot of different dynamics at play, depending on where you’re at.
Jeff Barber 25:52
For sure, I want to say in Durango too, that when I talked to Ned Overend on the podcast, he said that the trails there that are named for him. That was his land. I think he donated it and they built the trail. And his buddy, yeah, and his buddy was like, we want to name it after you. And he was like, oh, no, no, it’s all right, but they did anyway. And, yeah, super cool. So what about disadvantages? I mean, this seems like the perfect way to get a trail bill. I mean, assuming you have the money, or, you know, some donor willing to pay for it. But are there? Are there disadvantages to building trails on private land?
Greg Heil 26:29
I think we’ve maybe touched on them briefly already, but you said, assuming you have the money. I mean, could be a fairly big assumption to say you’ve got, like, you know, $5 million sitting around to buy this piece of land, depending on what it is. So that’s, that’s a big barrier. And you also mentioned liability. So liability is, is also a substantial barrier, but that varies greatly depending on which state you’re in and where you are. So like, for instance, one of the, I think one of the reasons we see this model working in Texas is that they’re not as liable for certain things as you might be in some other states. Yeah. But then one of the final ones I have, I’m curious to hear, if you have any others that come to mind, is you’re still not entirely free of government oversight, even if you’re building on private land, as we spoke or wrote about, I guess, with the platin peaks trails in Missouri, they had to go through an extensive process to get the land rezoned in order to do what they wanted to do. A lot of it was because they wanted to put some commercial interests out there. But we’ve even seen this with the bike park in Jefferson County, Colorado that has run into they’ve been actually been shut down by by zoning right? County Zoning boards, so just because you have private land doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want on it, right?
Jeff Barber 27:55
Yeah. I mean, there’s all kinds of rules. I mean, especially the closer you are to like a city or some, like developed area, and then, I mean, there’s always been these, like soil and water conservation rules and laws that, you know. I mean, you can’t just go in and clear cut acres of land somewhere and let all the runoff, you know, go into streams. I mean, you still do have have those rules. It’s, let’s be clear that it’s not like a free for all in terms of, like, what you can do on private land. And then, I mean, for me, you know, I’m an old school mountain biker. I mean, you’ve been mountain biking probably just as long as me, but like, you know, starting out, like 20 years ago, everything was free. I mean, there were probably a few, like bike parks at ski resorts, like popping up around that time. But like, you know, there is something about just, you know, and especially, again, we’re talking just about the like, private owned land, where people charge a fee for access to the trails. In a way, it’s a bit like going to play around a golf like at your private local club. And so, yeah, I mean, it’s it’s different, for sure, and I think it’s good to have a miss mix and a good of to have options in terms of, like, public trails to ride that are free to access for everyone. And then if you want to do something different, or you’re in an area where that just doesn’t exist, then I do think private trails are a good option.
So though we are living in this golden age of trail development, which I think maybe you coined that phrase a while ago, so this age has been going on for a bit, but we’re still in it. I feel for sure, maybe we’re in the platinum age now, I don’t know, but there’s still these development threats to popular trail systems and even trail systems that have been established for very long time, since the late 90s, early 2000s one of the stories that we cover. One was about some land outside of the Zion National Park in Utah, the St George area, and then another at a county park in North Carolina. In both cases, where this was, I think in both cases, it was like government public land that was being sold off to developers, or was being like, traded and so I’m curious. Like, I mean, this has been going on forever. Mountain bikers building trails places and then losing access to the land. A lot of times it was because we were building on land that that wasn’t ours, or that we didn’t have permission to but Have things changed. Like, do you think mountain bikers are better positioned to resist these types of threats? What what seems to be working when this kind of thing happens?
Greg Heil 30:50
I’d like to think we’re better positioned than ever before. I mean, thanks in part, to data collected in, like the studies we talked about from embedded in the TPL that like mountain bikers can point to, like, hard data that’s been rigorously collected to indicate like, hey, these trails make a big difference for our local community, as I discussed with Ashley kornblatt from public land solutions while back now, but we did an Article featuring her input, these cities and counties need a source of future tax income, especially a lot of the small ones we’re talking about, and mountain bike trails can provide it, and we now have the data to show that another thing that’s really working and has potential working even better is a new trend of mountain bikers banded together with other user groups, instead of just going on our own, like, we’re so much stronger when we’re working together. So a lot of these trails are multi use, like for hiking, biking, trail running, and when mountain bikers get together with all these other groups, we’re so much more powerful. There’s so many more people, and you’re not appealing to just like kind of one, what some people might view as like one niche interest, and there’s there. There are groups actively coordinating this too. Now, which is really cool, a new group on the scene is the outdoor Alliance, and they’re proving really successful in helping disparate outdoors groups get together and unite. And as an example, the mountain bike side embass Partnering really closely with them, but the outdoor Alliance, you know, partners with all types of human powered groups. A really key example is in the St George development, that development is going to knock out some iconic mountain bike trails, but it’s also going to impact some of the best rock climbing in the region. So mountain bikers and rock climbers are really united on this opposition, because it’s going to affect both groups. So I think whenever we can do that, like getting together with other people, man, we’re so much stronger.
Jeff Barber 32:53
Yeah. And getting back to what we’ve started talking about, the economic studies. I mean, a lot of these are economic decisions, right? It’s like, oh, we have this land, like, what’s the best use for it? And then, years past, it would have been like anything but mountain biking. But now we have these studies like you’re saying to point to and say, no, no. Like, this is, this is a really important asset that contributes to the economy, and people like it. I mean, we band together with everyone who uses these parks and trails, and yeah, I agree with you. Like you said, I think we are in a better position than ever before to resist these types of threats. And I think in both of those cases, we’re still waiting to hear what’s going to happen, right? Neither of those have been resolved as of yet?
Greg Heil 33:41
As far as I’m aware, neither have been resolved, and that’s it. I think that’s one of the frustrating things, though, with a lot of these threats, is very rarely are they resolved, right? Like the the one in St George has sort of simmered for a lot of years, and it only is in recent months that it kind of came back to the forefront. And the possibility of land getting sold, it’s kind of like was reintroduced. And unfortunately, if we take a more macro look like, right now, we’re facing the threats of the sales of lots of public lands, and that that’s not it is right now a really big problem, and there’s legislation being trying to be passed in the Senate that could open up the sale of more public lands. But this problem of public land sales is not new, right? Like the controversy around Bears Ears has been going on for we had decades, I think decades. I mean, yeah, really long time. Yeah. So the problem is, I think some of these things never really go away, right?
Jeff Barber 34:46
Yeah. Well, either way, I mean, we’ll continue to cover it, and if there are updates, we’ll definitely be be posting about that.
So we mentioned some of the stuff that’s going on in Arkansas. And I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again if, if you want to see the future of mountain bike trail development, just look at what’s happening in Arkansas, because it’s going to come to other areas of the country and the world eventually. Obviously, they have way more money and and willpower, frankly, to do a lot of these projects. And so there what’s going on there is really the forefront of of what we’re seeing everywhere else. So let’s talk about what’s happening in Arkansas right now. One of the I guess, we’ll start with some land acquisition in Bella Vista. So Bella Vista, for those who haven’t visited Bentonville or northwest Arkansas, is a smaller town, city, town, sort of not too far north of Bentonville. And there was, there was a big land acquisition there that’s potentially related to mountain biking, right?
Greg Heil 36:00
Yeah. Early in 2024 the runway group, which Tom Walton is the CEO of, purchased about 2700 acres of land in Bella Vista. And I talked to some of the runway group leadership about a month ago about a different project. Touch on a second but what I found super interesting. I asked about this land acquisition, and they they said, Look, we bought this and we with no plans. We still have no plans for this land. And they’re very adamant.
Jeff Barber 36:29
Like, so not even mountain bike really, necessarily? I mean, I thought that’s what initially some people reported. But it sounds like maybe not.
Greg Heil 36:38
They claim to have no plans. Okay, I don’t know how true that is, but I mean, connecting it to mountain biking is fairly easy to do, because it was a subsidiary of the runway group that acquired it, and the runway group, you know, headed by Tom Walton, with, uh Stewart, his brother also, like, heavily involved, like, is one of the groups has done the most for mountain biking northwest Arkansas. It’s not a big leap, but yeah, we don’t have any concrete plans out of them yet for that parcel of land, but it’s pretty incredible for, you know, group to like, go up and just buy almost 3000 acres, which you know, of potentially prime real estate. No plans just to be like, we have this just in case for the next thing.
Jeff Barber 37:25
Well, and so the other thing that came out more recently in that, yeah, a lot of people thought was connected. But to be clear is is not after your conversation with the runway group, is this idea of and these plans for building a bike park with chair lifts. Is that right in in Bella Vista or the Bentonville area?
Greg Heil 37:49
Yeah, the Oz Trails Bike Park. And be clear, it’s more than just plans. They’re already, they’re already at work. Yeah? Wow. Australia’s bike park also by the Runway Group. So you can see some of the confusion. But it’s not, it’s on a different parcel of land, okay, also in Bella Vista. But, yeah, they are building a high speed quad to serve this bike park. Wow. And they’ve hired some of the best downhill mountain bike trail builders in the world to construct 20 miles of downhill lines. So they hired, yeah, gravity logic to do the design I am. It is a bit unclear how many actual trails gravity logic will be building, versus rock solid trails, which is, you know, an iconic trail built company also has one of their headquarters in Bentonville area, but is very common for gravity logic to work with and subcontract their work in different areas of the world. So, but we’ve got some of the best in the world like working on this project. So, you know, runway was, you know, very much adamant like these are going to be high quality, top tier downhill trails. The catch is, there is only 330 vertical feet.
Jeff Barber 39:01
Not a lot and, but still, more than a lot of places have. And there are examples of shuttle served bike parks that have roughly the same amount of vertical I mean, I think, yeah, you did a good job asking those questions of the folks involved. And, I mean, they had pretty good argument that for most people, that’s long enough for a run. You know, if you go to, like, a big bike park out west, there’s kind of these, you know, you’ll go, you’ll descend for 300 feet or so, and then there’s usually, like, you know, a little, what do you call it, a liaison zone, or whatever, where you can kind of like rest and get your breath before you do another one. And so they’re kind of arguing that it’s, it’s pretty similar to that, but it’s just, you just jump back on the lift after your 300-foot run.
Greg Heil 39:52
Yeah, they say, with high speed detachable lift, that’s a three minute ride to the top. So that’s pretty darn quick, you know? Just, you’d be running lap after lap on that stuff.
Jeff Barber 40:02
And hopefully, if the lines are short too, yeah, it’s just a constant downhill. That’s awesome. So there’s actually has have been plans or proposals for an even bigger lift served bike park or trail network in another part of the state, at Mena, Arkansas, and that one, actually, when we heard the rumors of this, the shuttle or chair lift serve bike park, we’re thinking it was the one at Mena, which we’ve heard about for a little over a year, maybe two years now. But Mena has been proposed for a while. I think it’s on forest service land. And over there, there’s like over a thousand feet of vertical, is that right?
Greg Heil 40:46
Yeah, the trails around Mena, or the mountains around MENA are some of the biggest mountains in in the state. So there’s about 1300 feet of Vert from the top to the bottom of that parcel land. So we’re talking a whole different scope. And the scope of the proposal is, is giant. So there could be as much as 100 new miles of single track and five different chair lifts in that area. Wow, most likely not all of that will be built or developed. But you know, even if you get like, 60% of that, like three lifts, 60 miles of trail. Like, that’s, I don’t know of another, like, lift trail infrastructure proposal of that scale, yeah? Like, it’s, it’s insane. Like, it’s hard to wrap your head around.
Jeff Barber 41:32
Yeah, there’s no snow potential there. I mean, this isn’t like, for any kind of winter use. This is bike only.
Greg Heil 41:39
Yes exactly. And they were talking like, this could be for professional downhill riders. This could be like a winter training mecca for professional downhillers in North America, yeah. Like, this is so some of the first trails are currently under development in the ward Lake zone, and that’s just kind of a feeder area to, like, access the major trail network. It’s kind of like the trails close to the town of Mina, but they’re just the very first trails. So this project is, again, we’re talking about the the difference between private and public. This project’s taking place on public land. They need to raise funds. Versus oz Trails is like under construction, and the bike parks probably gonna be over the next year, you know. So there’s two very different like, probably timelines and development here.
Jeff Barber 42:30
Yeah, for sure. And to give folks an idea of like, where this site is in relation to Bentonville, it looks like it’s about 160 miles south of Bentonville, and like, a three hour drive. So this isn’t, you know, when people, I think a lot of us, were just like, Oh, I’ve heard Arkansas has good trails, and usually we’re talking about, like that northwest corner where Bentonville is, and so this is in a different area. It’s kind of close. It’s closer to Mount Ida, where there’s already the good bit of riding there. But as usual, there, there’s a lot of trail construction going on all over the state, in fact. And I want to talk about some of the projects that are going on. And just for full transparency, we are actually working with the state of Arkansas on some sponsored content. They’re an advertiser. And one of the stories that we’re going to be working on is these new trail systems going out and visiting some of the newer ones and seeing what they’re about, sharing photos and details about them. But yeah, can you give us a little bit of a preview, Greg, of some of these, like noteworthy trail systems that are being developed.
Greg Heil 43:44
I think, swing all the way back to your comment that what happens in Arkansas we’re gonna see happening everywhere else. This is a trend I think we’re seeing in Arkansas and other places, where the major hubs like Bentonville are doing something big, and then the smaller towns nearby are saying, hey, we want to get in on that too. Yeah. So we’re seeing that happen all across Arkansas, where now these smaller communities mean as a example of a huge potential, but other smaller communities are they might not be able to build as much as Bentonville, but they’re getting in on the action. Yeah. So a community right on the border with Oklahoma. Siloam Springs is, or has built a bunch of trails at the whitewater park there, okay, which we’ve covered on the site and is turning into quite the cool little trail system. An area called horseshoe Canyon Ranch is been building a substantial amount of trails near the community of Jasper. And that is, I did get confirmation is a subsidy area runway group as well. But it’s several hours from from Bentonville. Then even in other parts of the state entirely, we’re seeing some new trails go in. So Jonesboro in Northeast Arkansas. We’re talking not even anywhere. Close to Bentonville has been building a bunch of trails, and has a network of over 20 miles trails. So seeing a lot of these small towns say, hey, well, Bentonville is doing it. Maybe we can’t build hundreds of miles, but we can do 20, you know, 15 and, you know, and good quality trail that.
Jeff Barber 45:19
Yeah, awesome. Well, yeah, as we said. I mean, looking at Arkansas kind of gives us a preview of what might be happening in the larger world of trail development. But what else is on the horizon? Are we going to see more of the same kind of these trends we’re talking about, or are we going to see changes maybe in the years to come?
Greg Heil 45:39
Right now, mountain bike trail development federal lands is facing some serious headwinds, which we have also covered on the site a bit from the federal government. So grant funding for a lot of trail development is threatened and or has dried up. Every day you check the news and something new has happened, IEC tariffs and everything therein. So grant funding is severely threatened, and a lot of trail projects happening this year have already had their money allocated. So when I’ve been taught this is a question I’ve been asking people. A lot of those projects already have their money allocated. They’re good to go. Okay? So I think we might, we’re really curious about is what’s happening next year? Because most of these projects take, you can take a decade, take it, you know, to, you know, boots or shovels in the ground, right five to 10 years. So there’s a lot of stuff that’s happening right now. It’s still happening, but next year it’s like, okay, is that going to happen? Another thing we are we were talking about the slowness of getting the ologists to get their work done. Well, lots of employees in the US Forest Service have been laid off or have quit and taken the fork in the road, and I just actually spoke with Eddie Kessler for timergan trails about a project he’s been working on in Oregon for several years. They’ve already invested $60,000 into trail planning for this project, but they are now bogged down and installed out because they can’t get the NEPA studies done, because there’s no staff to do them or do the oversight on these projects, and it’s a big problem. And these projects, it’s like, you know that sound amazing. They already have a lot of money invested into them. It’s like, nobody actually, really knows what’s going to happen in that department, specifically like that for service district 11 of 38 people had been, had been let go, and now some of them are back because that layoff was halted, but it was only for a certain amount of time, so nobody really knows. Again, the outdoor alliance is trying to advocate for, you know, these people to keep their jobs, but it’s uncertain.
Jeff Barber 48:11
Yeah. And, I mean, this is new, but it’s also like, not new, in that, you know, I remember we had Todd Branham on the podcast, he’s a trail builder, maybe it was a year or two ago. It was like, just maybe during COVID, or as we were coming out of COVID, and he was saying the same thing, that, like the Forest Service, even then, was having a hard time retaining employees. You know, the job doesn’t pay great, and so a lot of people are choosing to retire early, or, you know, it’s just, it’s always been hard to get a number of employees there to just to keep things moving along. And yeah, it sounds like this potentially could make it even harder. And I wonder, too, like a lot of these studies, it seems like, you know, we talked about the using private land to get projects going. I mean, I wonder about private studies, and like, you know, are we going to get into this mode where maybe we’re able to pay for like, some third party to do NEPA studies or whatever? Because, yeah, it does seem like the the government is, like, getting out of that business. And so we’re gonna have to find other ways to get projects done.
Greg Heil 49:24
That’s what Kester said is, is what they’re pursuing for this. This wild horse trails project in Oregon is in funding the studies. So we talked about federal funding and grant funding, and it gets complicated because some projects are funded by the federal government. Others are not so on this wild horse, one like the $60,000 invest into planning now that single dollars come from the feds, right, and now they’re faced with maybe having to raise money to get the ologist studies done. And that’s even before we even get to you’re raising money to build all these trails that they’re proposing. Yeah. So you wonder how we get into the millions of dollars. This is how it happens, right? Yeah, but I think you know, it’s possible that these challenges, these headwinds, are going to accelerate some of the other trends we’ve already been talking about, such as acquire people, acquiring private property and building trails on private land. You know, if, if the headwinds and the red tape public land get that bad, like, we’re only going to see more of these private land acquisitions, in my opinion, yeah, so, you know, if you’re we’re trying to, like, look at our crystal ball, like, that seems like a way to get things done, even in the face of all these challenges. I think if there’s one thing we can count on, it’s a resourcefulness of mountain bikers, right? Like building trails since the dawn of mountain biking not going to stop anytime soon.
Jeff Barber 50:50
Yeah. And we’re always looking for new places to ride. I mean, I think that’s what maybe surprises people who aren’t mountain bikers, that Yeah. I mean, we’re always we want new trails, we want better trails, we want more trails, and and we’re willing to travel to visit them. And so, yeah, that it’s great that we’re finally able to, like, point to economic studies that kind of explain that, and these great projects that are happening and the success of those. And yeah, I agree with you that we’ll continue to build on that, and we’re resourceful bunch. We’ll find a way to keep going. Well, it’s been awesome talking about all these projects. Hard to believe that. I mean, most of this stuff is within the last year, maybe the last six months so, and we’ll continue to cover these types of projects and the latest developments on Singletracks, and hopefully on the podcast as well. So drop us a note if you enjoy this kind of content on the podcast, let us know.
You can keep up with the latest mountain bike trail news at Singletracks DotCom and also on our Instagram page. That’s all we’ve got this time. We’ll talk to you again next time.
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