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Photo by Pat Hendrick |
Judi and Lee Borland
want to spread the joy of mountain biking around the Adirondacks. |
Mountain bike mission
Lake Placid couple advocates for off-road
cycling throughout the Adirondack Park
By Alan Wechsler
The idea that might change mountain biking
in the Adirondack Park can be traced to a weekend in Colorado three
summers ago. Lee and Judi Borland, a retired couple from Lake Placid,
flew to Breckenridge for a wedding and later rented mountain bikes
to ex-plore the region west of the city.
Using a free map of bike trails, they spent two days riding around
the mountains. On the second day, they biked 2,500 feet uphill to
Boreas Pass. When they returned to Lake Placid, they immediately
went out and bought mountain bikes. But where to ride? At the time,
there was only one guidebook to riding in the Adirondacks; it was
hard to find and mostly recommended dirt roads—and short ones,
at that. They discovered that finding good places to ride their
new bikes would not be easy.
The Borlands decided to change that. In fact, they wanted to change
many things about mountain biking, including the name of the sport’s
two-wheeled machine. “It should be called a woods bike or
an off-road bike,” Borland said. “You don’t need
a mountain to mountain bike.”
Although the term mountain bike is most likely here to stay, the
difficulty of finding places to ride in the Adirondacks may soon
be a thing of the past. The Adirondack Park Mountain Biking Initiative,
started by the Borlands, is calling for a guidebook that lists all
the mountain bike trails in every town in the Adirondack Park and
assigns each a difficulty rating. The Borlands also would like to
see signs at the entrances identifying each trail as a bike route
(picture a small plastic square with a bicycle) as well as signs
along the routes.
It’s a big task, but Lee Borland is no stranger to challenges.
A former New York Telephone manager and owner of a company that
makes trailer lights, Borland served on the Olympic Organizing Committee
and is a ski instructor. His wife is a former nurse and office manager.
They have a house in Lake Placid and another in Speculator. Lee
and Judi, both in their 60s, consider themselves retired. They may
have given up their full-time jobs, but they’ve hardly slowed
down.
The initiative’s first meeting took place in December 2000.
Thirty-one people attended, including representatives from the state
Department of Environmental Conservation, Adirondack Park Agency
and several environmental groups. “The whole meeting was excellent,”
Borland recalled “We went right around the room, and there
wasn’t hardly a negative word.”
THERE'S A LOT OUT THERE
Afterward, Borland mailed surveys to every town in the Park asking
for a list of all trails, dirt roads or other routes that might
be appropriate for mountain biking. About 20 responded, some more
enthusiastically than others. Croghan, on the Park’s western
edge, came up with just two routes, and Long Lake’s list stuck
mostly to paved roads. But Colton, in the northern Adirondacks,
came up with 22 miles of trails, and Lake Pleasant proposed 15 miles’
worth. In addition, the alpine trails at the Whiteface and Gore
ski centers and cross-country trails at Mount Van Hoevenberg were
already open to mountain biking. Clearly, there was a lot out there.
Last year, the International Mountain Biking Association sent a
trail crew to the Adirondacks to hold a weeklong seminar attended
by more than 50 people. The Borlands talked about building trails
that wouldn’t erode and that were environmentally responsible.
Still, some have concerns about what an increase in mountain biking
could mean to the tens of thousands of hikers who come to the Adirondacks
every year. “The devil is in the details,” remarked
Neil Woodworth, lawyer for the Adirondack Mountain Club. “We
are participating warily. We want to be careful, particularly as
to those people who are seeking a high-speed downhill experience.”
Mountain bikes would be fine at ski centers or on old logging roads,
he said. But he would not want to see them on narrow hiking paths,
which could be damaged by churning wheels. He is especially concerned
about the use of bikes on steep routes such as trails to fire-tower
peaks.
And then there’s the issue of user conflicts. A few years
ago, Woodworth recalled, he was descending a ridge in Colorado with
his wife and two young children when a group of bikers came barreling
down the trail behind them. “We literally had to grab the
kids and jump off the trail,” Woodworth said. “They
didn’t make any pretense to stop. I’m convinced that
if we hadn’t grabbed the kids one of them would have been
hit.”
Under existing rules, mountain bikes are prohibited in Wilderness
Areas in the Park. Unless otherwise posted, trails and dirt roads
in Wild Forest Areas are open to bikers. Eventually, Woodworth would
like to see the Wild Forest policy changed so bikes would be allowed
only on designated routes. “Having mountain bikers and hikers
on the same trails with steep grades and curves probably is not
a good thing,” he said.
Already some regions of the Adirondacks have gained a reputation
for hard-core mountain biking. One Web page, for instance, extols
the virtues of riding the Tongue Mountain ridge—although the
author makes it clear that the trail is extremely steep and that
riders should be on the lookout for hikers.
Borland said that’s not the type of mountain biking he’s
looking for. His initiative is aimed at people interested in less-extreme
riding. Nor does he want to anger environmentalists. “We want
to build bridges, not tear them down,” he said.
John Sheehan, spokesman for the Adirondack Council, spoke favorably
of the initiative, although he is concerned about trail erosion.
“We have this huge area available to a non-polluting recreating
public,” he said. “It’s one of the underutilized
recreational opportunities of the Park.”
A GROWING MARKET
Tourist officials also like the idea of attracting more mountain
bikers to the Park. By some estimates, a well-off couple visiting
the region could spend $400 a day at hotels, restaurants and other
places. “Whether they’re on bicycles or paddleboats
or whatever, the economic impact is significant,” said James
McKenna, president of the Essex County Visitors Bureau. “It’s
a growing market.”
Even without the Borlands’ help, mountain biking is becoming
ever-more popular in the Adirondacks. Both Gore and Whiteface offer
downhill riding on their alpine ski trails. And a 24-hour mountain-bike
race held at Mount Van Hoevenberg’s cross-country ski trails
attracts more than 50 teams of bikers each September, some from
as far away as Toronto.
Borland would like to see six to eight mountain-bike “centers”
open in the next few years. That is, places where a carload of bikers
can pull up to a parking lot and find a large standing map with
a trail guide and instructions on how to get to the riding. Centers
already exist at some ski areas—including Gore, Whiteface,
Oak Mountain, Van Hoevenberg—but Borland said he’d also
like to see centers established in Inlet and Long Lake and on the
Champion lands preserved by the state in a 1998 land deal.
The Web page bikeadirondacks.com
offers a list of bike stores in or near the Adirondacks and suggestions
for rides. The trails include Bloomingdale Bog, an easy, eight-mile
route along an old railroad bed outside Saranac Lake, and the road
to Great Camp Santanoni in Newcomb. But the Web site also serves
to illustrate Borland’s complaint: Each trail requires a different
map, obtained by contacting a different address. There’s no
one place to call or write to get that information.
Scotia resident Gary Thomann, who recently published the book Mountain
Biking in the Adirondacks, said he’s looking
forward to see what happens next. “Everybody around the rest
of the country thinks there’s no mountain biking in New York,”
he said. “You kinda gotta like mud and wet stuff like that,
but there’s incredible mountain biking in this region.”
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