If you judge by numbers, Burke has over a hundred miles of trails on one map. Catamount has about twenty. How many hours in the car extra? But don't limit yourself to Catamount, you can ride from north of Catamount to Sleepy Hollow in Huntington, mostly on trail. That's about forty+ more miles and doesn't include anything in Burlington proper or many of the potential loops.
How is this possible?
The Chittenden County-based Fellowship of the Wheel, a VMBA chapter, has been hard at work building trails and working with land owners. That's right, legal trails with signs and directions. But are they fun? Smooth buff singletrack, with a good mix of scary tech sound good? (Many of these areas are best hit by looping from an access point.) And you can't read about these trails in the NY Times, but you can at
www.fotwheel.org.
My favorites so far are Mobbs Valley/ Hill and the Fairfax Dam trails. Many thanks to Hans Jenny for his vision, energy, organization and implementation. Please support VMBA and the Fellowship by joining or contributing. Info on the Fellowship website and at
www.vmba.org.
BTW, Burke is a place that you don't want to miss. But for a short stay in the Burlington-area, it is a jaunt. Make a full day of it, if you decide to go. Kingdom Trails are also a chapter of VMBA and by far the most successful at building a complete network of multi-use trails. Go KTA!
John
p.s. VMBA Chapters built and protected nearly one hundred miles of trail last year. This year may not be quite that big, but the gains will be very significant and the areas added are some of the best riding in Vermont. They are also important because they are some of the first trails on public land to become legal. Before 2004, there was essentially one bike legal trail on state land in Vermont. Now, we are close to opening four state forests.
Check out this month's edition of Vermont Sports Today for a full rundown on the public land issue.
