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Mountain biking arrives in Dayton
Challenging MetroParks trails to open on Sept. 15, offering thrills and spills to area riders
Friday, September 07, 2007
It starts out easy. You're rolling through a grassy field away from the parking lot, just a few bumps to worry about.
A couple minutes later, though, you're in the woods winding through trees, around rocks, over roots and logs, and your adrenaline is starting to flow. You shoot down a bank and try to blast through a creek crossing.
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Don't slow down too much for the creek, though, because you need some speed to make it up the bank, around the hairpin turn and onto the first of six brand-spanking-new trails at Huffman MetroPark.
Get up the bank and you're whizzing through the dappled sunlight of a gorgeous little woods, navigating the many obstacles the trail throws at you, pumping your legs, breathing hard and feeling that peculiar exhilaration of biking on prime singletrack.
Hard to believe. Mountain biking has come to Dayton.
What began 18 months ago as little more than a gleam in Five Rivers MetroParks Outdoor Recreation Manager Greg Brumitt's eye is now, incredibly, a completed mountain bike facility with 8.3 miles of trails of varying difficulty on 111 acres just north of Huffman Lake.
The grand opening is set for next Saturday, Sept. 15 (it's not open until then) at 10:30 a.m. For details, visit www.metroparks.org.
With the help of more than 60 volunteers who put in close to 3,000 hours working in the woods just off Union Schoolhouse Road, Brumitt's dream — the MetroParks Mountain Biking Area, or MoMBA — has become a reality.
Many of the most dedicated volunteers are members of the Miami Valley Mountain Bike Association (mtbohio.org/mvmba), the club that built 8.5 miles of trail in John Bryan State Park. And to say they're delighted with MoMBA is an understatement. "What Greg had done here is amazing," said member Karen Hamilton after a preview ride in the park this week. "He did in one year what it took us five years to do in John Bryan."
Karen's husband, Doug, said the facility is a great addition to the park system because it gives people "a different way to get connected to nature."
The trails are marked, like ski slopes, with round, square and diamond markers to denote the easiest, intermediate and advanced trails.
Even the easiest trails gave this rusty off-road biker a challenge. They wind back and forth through sometimes narrow passages up and down the valley above the Mad River. And though the trails involve just 70 vertical feet, you climb and descend it so many times it feels like a lot more.
The intermediate trails offer more challenges: steeper climbs, more rocks and roots, tighter turns and narrower bridges. And then there's the advanced section.
The nice thing about mountain biking: If a section looks too hard, you can always get off and walk. I did a couple of times on the black diamond trail called Hawk's Lair.
Brumitt said the trails are designed to be challenging, but not too hard. "This is all about creating mountain bikers," he said, "getting people out into the outdoors, connecting them to nature and creating a healthy lifestyle."
It worked for me. I'd forgotten how much fun you can have on a bike in the woods.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2393 or kmccall@DaytonDailyNews.com.
| Photos for this article | |
 | MoMBA, the MetroParks Mountain Bike Area, was created on 111 acres at Huffman Dam MetroPark. |
