Could the ADK Rail Trail Create "Epic" Ride Options?
Story by Phil Brown with images from Eric Teed.
This spring I brought my mountain bike on a road trip to Phoenix to visit my son. I got in some great rides in the woods of Tennessee, a canyon in Texas, a city park in Tulsa, a high mesa in New Mexico, and the Sonoran desert in Arizona, among other locales.
One of my goals was to bike one of the International Mountain Bicycling Association’s (IMBA) “Epics.” Only 42 trails in the United States and 11 in other countries have earned that designation.
Most of the Epics in the U.S. are located out west. The only one in New York State is near Ellicottville, south of Buffalo. This raises some questions. Why don’t we have an Epic in the Adirondacks? Could we establish one here?
The IMBA defines an Epic as a backcountry ride that is “technically and physically challenging, beautiful to behold and worthy of celebration.” Epics must be at least 20 miles long and mostly single-track. The longest, in Arkansas, is 108 miles.
My Epic was the 25-mile Hurricane Cliffs Rim Loop in southwestern Utah, just outside Zion National Park. It lived up to expectations. I rode the loop counterclockwise, starting on the rim of the Virgin River canyon. At times, I was a mere foot or two from a precipitous drop into the river’s green water. The trail meandered back and forth for miles along smaller canyons before crossing a highway and heading up a dirt road to twisting single-track on a high mesa. After passing an old corral, I crossed the highway again and finished on a long, fun downhill through more desert terrain, with the magnificent sandstone cliffs of Zion rising in the distance.
We don’t have mesas, buttes, and cacti in the Adirondacks, but our region is blessed with its own natural beauty: vast tracts of hardwood forest, thousands of lakes and ponds, crystal-clear trout streams, and mountains built of solid anorthosite and gneiss.
It would seem that the Adirondacks is an ideal setting for an Epic bike ride. However, creating such a trail in the forever-wild Forest Preserve meeting the IMBA criteria would be problematic.
For starters, biking is not allowed on Forest Preserve designated as Wilderness. That eliminates about 46 percent of the state land in the Adirondack Park from consideration, including the park’s largest tracts unbroken by roads.
Biking is allowed on land designated Wild Forest, which accounts for half of the Forest Preserve. However, a spokesperson for the state Department of Environmental Conservation told BikeADK that it would be difficult to construct a 20-mile ride within a Wild Forest Area without using some trails more than once. DEC also says a local organization would need to be on board to help construct and maintain the route.
Josh Wilson, executive director of the Barkeater Trails Alliance (BETA), has thought about trying to create an Epic ride in the Adirondacks, but he agrees it would be difficult, owing to Forest Preserve regulations, logistical considerations and cost.
To date, BETA has focused on constructing dense networks of trails (sometimes called nested or stacked trails) in the communities of Wilmington, Lake Placid, Saranac Lake and Elizabethtown. It plans to build a similar network in Keene. These networks might enable a mountain biker to ride several miles within a small area, but unlike the IMBA Epics, they do not provide the opportunity for long-distance riding across a landscape.
BETA does have one long-distance route in mind: a nine-mile trail around Scarface Mountain. But this work is not expected to begin for several years, after higher-priority trail projects are finished. “It’s on our long-term list but not something we’re rushing to do,” Wilson said.
By itself, the Scarface bike trail would not meet the criteria for an Epic, but riders could use the Adirondack Rail Trail (now under construction) to reach nested trails in Saranac Lake and Lake Placid. Thus, it might be possible to extend the ride to 20 miles, but it’s questionable whether such a route would meet IMBA’s other criteria.
Of course, it’s possible to put together long mountain-bike rides in the Adirondacks now that are challenging and scenic even if they fail to meet all of IMBA’s criteria.
One is called Over Easy, a grueling ride between Lake Placid and Elizabethtown that covers 92 miles and entails nearly 10,000 feet of elevation gain. Almost a third of the ride is on paved roads, which would disqualify it as an Epic in IMBA’s eyes.
An even more arduous route is the Adirondack Trail Ride: 585 miles, with 51,650 feet of vertical gain. It’s a mix of single-track, double-track, dirt roads, highways and bushwhacking. Those who manage to finish the route take several days. This also is not what IMBA has in mind.
Wilson said mountain bikers can look at a map and come up with own ideas for long-distance riding. Chances are it will require riding on pavement or dirt roads, but so be it. This sort of do-it-yourself adventure seems quintessentially Adirondack. I have a few ideas of my own that I hope to write about in future columns. As Wilson remarked, “It doesn’t have to be Epic to be epic.”
