Consider yourself warned: there are no B lines on Connecticut’s newest mountain bike trail — known as Satan’s Ridge. “There were people lowering bikes off of the rollers with rope to, like, get around sections,” said Luke Wayne, Head Honcho of the Local 202 group, which built the trail. “It’s definitely the real deal. Like, there’s bands of cliffs you literally can’t go around. There’s no B line, because the cliff split in one spot and allowed us a point to exit.”
This three-mile singletrack loop is filled with trail features inspired by a trip that Wayne and the Local 202 took to British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest. Many of these gnarly obstacles consist of wooden bridges connecting the ample array of rock slabs and boulders into a somewhat rideable trail. However, there are often cliff drops in between, with the largest mandatory drop coming in at about five feet tall (with the ability to send it deeper into the landing).
Wayne emphasized that Satan’s Ridge isn’t “slow tech.” Instead, “it’s big, big moves, you know — rollers, adjustments, large exposure kind of tech. […] It’s big tech. I call it ‘chunder flow.’ There’s a lot of berms between, connecting the rollers and the drops and the bridges.”
“It’s like 10-foot-high skinny to rock slab to giant rock roller to berm to huck,” said Mick Ferraro, Director of Membership and Outreach for the New England Mountain Bike Association (NEMBA). “People go there […] and say it’s the hardest riding that they’ve ever done.”
Illegal trails in Nepaug State Forest were the catalyst for Satan’s Ridge.
The story of Satan’s Ridge begins with nearby Nepaug State Forest located 45 minutes outside of Hartford, CT. For decades, Nepaug has been home to rogue trail building “with kids riding jumps” and locals building gnarly lines, according to Ferraro who, in addition to his role at NEMBA, is a local mountain biker who lives close to Nepaug. When the COVID pandemic hit, “people [started] riding there like crazy, man. It gets on the radar […] and the State Forest caught wind of it, and they were going to shut it down because they were all illegal trails. They were rad — it was pretty advanced riding.”
The Local 202 approached Ferraro and NEMBA for help saving the trails in Nepaug, and thankfully, they were successful, and the trails were legalized. During that same time, the Local 202 was looking for new places to build in case Nepaug got shut down.
The Local 202 isn’t your average group of riders… even if Wayne tends to downplay their role. “It’s not super official,” said Wayne. “Like, we have hats and stickers, and it’s more like a riding bikes, drinking beer guys club that’s been building and riding together for 10 plus years. […] It’s just guys who want to do challenging terrain, drops, jumps, big rollers, technical features.”
A private parcel of land allowed the Local 202 to build brutally-gnarly trails.
Despite not being “official,” the Local 202 got permission from a private landowner whose property abuts Nepaug to begin building extremely technical trails. They began to bring their vision of BC and PNW-style riding — wooden features and massive rock slabs — to the naturally rocky terrain on the cliff-filled Connecticut hillsides.
Nobody in the Local 202 is technically a professional trail builder, and even still, they’ve managed to construct a trail that has riders from across the Northeast raving… mostly through trial and error. Wayne admits that he is “handy,” and that other guys on the crew do work in construction. As the three-year project gained steam, other people joined in, including “the Cowboy,” who “can build anything out of anything.”
While the landowner wants to remain out of the limelight, they’re very pro-recreation, with some motorized use already allowed on the land. Satan’s Ridge is free to ride, and as a result, according to Connecticut law, “from an insurance standpoint, as long as it’s free… then it becomes [a] ‘you assume all risk’ kind of situation,” according to Ferraro.
Wayne notes that there’s no way they could have built Satan’s Ridge on public land. The private landowner is the linchpin that made this project possible.
The trails in Nepaug are critical for accessing Satan’s Ridge.
Even still, the trails in Nepaug State Forest are critical, as riders need to use that network to access Satan’s Ridge. Thankfully, the Local 202 was able to acquire permission for a legal trail access, but like everything at Satan’s Ridge, the access isn’t easy.
To get to Satan’s Ridge, mountain bikers have to pedal to the top of Nepaug State Forest, then descend The Book of 1923 — a one-way downhill trail. A two-way connector, known as Child’s Play, runs over to Satan’s Ridge. Once there, riders will pedal the three-mile Satan’s Ridge loop, pedal back on Child’s Play, and finish descending The Book of 1923 to the trailhead.
In addition to being brutally-technical, the trails on Satan’s Ridge are punchy and steep. Both Ferraro and Wayne emphasized how demanding the riding is. The steep climbing has “definitely attracted a lot of e-bikers, so it’s good to see them having a good time, too,” according to Wayne. “E-biking isn’t really allowed in the state forest on singletrack, so I guess technically it’s illegal. But that’s a whole other story.”
Hartford, Connecticut — a mountain bike destination?
Even though Satan’s Ridge just opened in spring 2024, word of these brutally-gnarly trails is already spreading across the Northeast. At first, many people didn’t believe that Satan’s Ridge was as technical as the locals claimed — as evidenced by the riders lowering bikes down cliffs with ropes. But now, the truth about the difficulty of Satan’s Ridge is becoming widely accepted — and that extreme technical challenge is attracting mountain bikers from across the Northeast to test their mettle.
In Hartford, Connecticut, of all places.
“Connecticut […] has struggled with mountain biking,” said Ferraro. “We just haven’t embraced mountain biking as an economic and tourism vehicle as much as New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont. New England can shine, but Connecticut… people drive through Connecticut to get to those places.”
Even as a local, Ferraro is stunned to see the Hartford area begin to be recognized as a mountain bike destination. “We had a group who wrote this long piece to us that said, ‘We took a four-day mountain bike trip to Hartford.’ We were like, ‘What the fuck, dude, are we the next Sedona? Like, nobody comes to Hartford to go mountain biking.'”
Satan’s Ridge is evidence that at times, trail quality can be so much more important than quantity. That said, the Local 202 isn’t done building yet.
“The goal is to raise enough money to do a machine build on the easier side of the property, which is on the Nepaug side,” said Wayne. “They’re logging it right now. They’re logging an area that’s pretty benign, with just a nice medium grade, and it’s an area we didn’t really build a whole lot on. So since they’re logging it, we’re figuring, ‘man, why not?’ Why not start fresh with a machine? So that’s what we’re hoping for. Definitely got to raise the funds and find the time, so no guarantees, but we usually follow through with what we set our goals to be.”
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