Lift-served biking not far away

Suppose you want the adrenaline of mountain biking without going up the mountain? Many ski resorts are now offering lift-served mountain biking.

Stowe Mountain Resort will not offer lift-served mountain biking this year, but is making plans for the future.

In the meantime, there are other places within an hour or two that will give you a lift.

At Sugarbush Resort, mountain bikers can catch a lift to the top of Lincoln Peak, from which they can ride down 18 miles of trails, 25 trails in all, mellow and loping or high-speed and steep. There’s also a bike park to pull some tricks, East Coast-style.

Killington has the highest start-off point of any mountain bike area in the state, with trails starting at its 4,241-foot summit, attainable by a combination of the K-1 Express Gondola and pedaling. Killington has 45 miles of trails served by the gondola, and on weekends the resort opens up the Snowshed Express Quad for bikers.

In southern Vermont, Mount Snow, the granddaddy of them all, opened up mountain biking access 28 years ago, before mountain biking was cool. It hosted the early Summer X Games and in recent years has been home to the USA Cycling National Championships. But beginners are also welcome, and Mount Snow says it boasts “the only introductory downhill trail in the East,” its Trail 7.

In the Northeast Kingdom, Q Burke Mountain is also part of the downhill game, with three excavated trails from the summit serviced by the Sherburn Express quad. Lower on the mountain, riders can get on flowing singletrack trails to complete their day.

To the south, Okemo Mountain Resort in Ludlow will open its new Evolution Bike Park the weekend of July 4, with lift-served mountain biking and several miles of trails from the top of the South Ridge Quad.