Allez! Allez! ADK Roubaix!

In 1985, he moved to San Francisco and worked as a bike mechanic in a shop where he met some of the pioneers of mountain biking, including Gary Fisher, Joe Breeze, and Tom Ritchey. These three built and raced some of the first mountain bikes in the 1970s.

Dimon moved to the Adirondacks in 1987 and went to work at High Peaks Cyclery in Lake Placid. “There were a lot of people mountain biking,” he recalls “It was really exploding.”

This was many years before the Barkeater Trails Alliance and similar groups started building bike-trail networks in and around the Adirondack Park. So Dimon and his friends rode on hiking trails, truck trails, dirt roads, and when necessary, pavement.

Whether on a road or mountain bike, Dimon always had a penchant for long rides. In his first year in Lake Placid, he organized an endurance ride that he dubbed Placid Roubaix in a nod to the Paris-Roubaix, a grueling road-bike race held every spring in France. 

Like the Paris-Roubaix, the Placid Roubaix took place in early April. Unlike the Paris-Roubaix, it did not attract scores of riders. John can recall only four other participants besides himself. One was Joe Moore, who also worked at High Peaks Cyclery (he now owns Placid Boatworks).

The route went like this: Starting at the Olympic ski jumps, they went down River Road, climbed to the Deerwood Hills housing development, followed a hunter’s trail to the Craig Wood Golf Course, biked through the Cascade Cross-Country Ski Center, took Old Mountain Road, Alstead Road, Bartlett Road, and Lacy Road to State Route 9N, ascended Styles Brook Road, went up Jay Mountain Road and down the other side to Lewis, and then followed various roads back to the beginning. In all, they pedaled nearly 60 miles and ascended 5,825 feet.

On the Jay Mountain Road, they encountered mud, snow, and ice. At the height of land, the snow was up to two feet deep, forcing them to push their bikes partway uphill. On the descent, they rocketed down giant ruts made by a log skidder. One rider lost control and broke his glasses.

“It was a death ride,” Dimon said. “It took so long to do the first one we were two hours late for work. We almost got fired.”

The Placid Roubaix lived on for another four years, never attracting more than a half-dozen hard-core riders. 

It may not have had a huge following, but the Placid Roubaix epitomized the spirit of Adirondack mountain bikers back in the day before bike-specific trails. These pioneers designed their own adventures and often had to deal with stream crossings, blowdown, rocks, and other obstacles--usually on bikes without any suspension.

“Once you’re carrying your bike more than riding it, it’s no longer that much fun,” remarked Paul Capone, one of the early mountain bikers. “We did a lot of adventure riding and pretty quickly figured out what was suitable.”

Capone, who grew up in Ray Brook, preferred biking on non-technical terrain such as truck trails, woods roads, and jeep trails. He frequently rode on the trails near Scarface Mountain as they were close to his home. His favorite rides included the Marcy Dam Truck Trail, Connery Pond trail, and the McKenzie Pass trail (now part of the Jackrabbit Trail). He also enjoyed long loops in the Five Ponds Wilderness and the western High Peaks Wilderness.

Biking is now banned in Wilderness Areas, but no such prohibition existed in the 1980s. The original Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan, which governs the Forest Preserve, made no mention of mountain bikes. In 1987, the plan was amended to prohibit bikes in Wilderness Areas. Even then, a legal gray area existed for several years until state officials drafted regulations to enforce the ban.

Capone and others formed Adirondack Region Bike Club to push back. The club estimated that the ban would close 125 miles of truck trails that were suitable for biking.

“It concerns me that this bicycle policy was adopted prior to any significant mountain bicycle use in the Adirondack Park and when the sport was in its infancy,” Capone wrote in 1993 to state Department of Environmental Conservation.

The following year, in a last-ditch effort to stave off the ban, about two dozen protesters biked to Marcy Dam. They drew attention to their cause, but the prohibition went into effect that year. Biking, however, is allowed in Wild Forest Areas.

The do-it-yourself spirit of early Adirondack mountain bikers lives on in events such as the Over Easy bike race (93 miles, 11,500 feet of ascent) and the Adirondack Trail Ride, a 585-mile bike-packing trek. The races take place in June and September, respectively.

But an adventure ride need not be a sufferfest. There are hundreds of miles of dirt roads and logging roads in the Adirondacks, including on easement lands, that are open to bikers. Many, perhaps most, are mellow enough for gravel bikes. Indeed, gravel biking, though a relatively new niche, bears similarities to old-school mountain biking: its adherents aim to ride a long distance and explore the world far from the pavement.

Spring is coming. Get out a map and plan your own Placid Roubaix.

Phil Brown edited the Adirondack Explorer newsmagazine for 19 years before retiring in 2018. He is the author of Adirondack Paddling: 65 Great Flatwater Adventures and publisher of Adirondack Birding: 60 Great Places to Find Birds. He also collected and annotated the regional writings of Bob Marshall in Bob Marshall in the Adirondacks. He continues to write for the Explorer as well as BikeADK and other outlets. When he isn’t at the computer, he’s usually doing something important such as climbing a slide, skiing the Jackrabbit Trail or riding the BETA trails.