EAST BURKE, Vt. - Jake veered left off the road and, like a good dad, I followed his lead, riding on a soft dirt path in a forest rich with the smell of pine. A right turn on the trail, Coronary Bypass, and we were soon flying downhill on a gem of a narrow run, banking corners and bouncing over roots as the path snaked back and forth through a pocket of trees. Less than 30 minutes into our mountain biking jaunt, we were covered in sweat and that perfect Vermont souvenir, mud.
Freewheeling
After years in the making, Kingdom Trails rules with mountain bikers looking for thrills, scenery, the scent of pines and, at the end, their badge of mud
“I think I like this better than skiing,’’ yelled my 12-year-old son as he became a blur through the woods.
In 1997, I had a magazine assignment to preview a network of mountain biking trails being created in the northeast corner of Vermont. Biking with one of the route’s designers, Jeff Hale, and his golden retriever, I quickly saw the potential for an off-road biking route through this rural part of the state. On a spongy mat of trails dusted with pine needles, we cruised past century-old barns and small, dilapidated sugar shacks lost in the countryside. Yet, even though the scenery was pure Currier and Ives, the trails felt very raw, as evidenced by the mud bog we ended up in, sludge up to our knees.
Today, Kingdom Trails is the preeminent mountain biking route in the Northeast, a 150-mile circuit of former farming roads and slender singletracks that climb and dip with the countryside. According to the Kingdom Trails Association, there were over 32,000 daily visits in 2008, and judging from the license plates we saw in the parking lot, bikers come from all over the Northeast and Quebec.
“It’s like a Six Flags for mountain bikers,’’ says Kevin Corcino, 36, of Sutton, Mass., noting that the biking is so good he’s been known to drive the three hours up to the Northeast Kingdom, bike to his heart’s content, then make the return trip home the same day.
The network might extend deeper into the state now that surrounding farmers, once hesitant to donate land, are jumping on the biking bandwagon.
“Landowners come to us to put trails on their land, knowing that it’s good for the local economy,’’ says Tim Tierney, executive director of the association, in his headquarters just behind the country store in East Burke. Tierney tells Jake, a novice at the sport, to warm up at the local pump track behind East Burke Sports. The store’s owner, John Worth, was another local instrumental in putting the Kingdom Trails on the map. As Jake gets his bike legs on by catching air on the large mounds of dirt, Tierney and I go over a detailed route for the day.
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