RIDE version 7: Onward, upward

Welcome to the seventh annual RIDE issue. We started publishing this mountain-bike section in 2012, when the sport’s popularity was just beginning to explode. Though there was considerable local interest in mountain biking, hardly anyone would have predicted its power as an economic engine, with riders filling hotel rooms, restaurants and pubs, and with bike racks as ubiquitous in the summer as ski racks are in the winter.

Way back, Rick Sokoloff was the evangelist for the Stowe Mountain Bike Club. He and Hardy Avery and a few other hardcore mountain bike believers were doing their magic out in the woods, out of view, and then emerging to tell the world what they had wrought.

The world caught on pretty fast, and the Stowe area became a big attraction for the emerging sport of mountain biking.

The Stowe Mountain Bike Club has evolved into the Stowe Trails Partnership, one of six Vermont mountain-bike organizations that are now working together to link trail networks and expand the vision for what this sport can become.

Inside this issue

• Community’s support for this sport became evident last fall, when a freak windstorm laid waste to 30 percent of the trails in Cady Hill Forest. Scores of people helped clear up hundreds of fallen trees and begin rebuilding the trails. Parts of the forest network will be open this summer. 
• A new trail in Stowe this year honors the memory of Callagy Ross, an intrepid Stowe athlete who died way too young at age 23. 
• One glory of mountain biking is that anyone can do it. 
• Read a rundown on expansion plans for Vermont’s mountain bike trails network.

Our nation is in kind of a crazy news cycle, with a barrage of uncertainty arriving every day and putting people on edge. It’s tough to check your phone while you’re biking over rocks and roots; mountain biking is an opportunity to unplug and to focus on the grandeur of Vermont.

This is also a time of transition for the Stowe Trails Partnership, as Evan Chismark is leaving after two years of moving and shaking as the organization’s executive director. He’s not going anywhere, though; the boom in mountain biking has presented a business opportunity that Evan hopes to take advantage of with Ranch Camp — a bike shop with a taproom and food and lots of conversation. It’s been a pleasure working with Evan on RIDE.

Cheers to another great mountain bike season, and we hope to see you on the trails.

RIDE is a collaboration of the Stowe Reporter and the Stowe Trails Partnership.