Photo Credit: © Can Stock Photo Inc. / alekseyrezin
Roanoke, Va., is the Mountain Biking Capital of the East, and rightfully so. The city has over 60 miles of natural-surface trails in five parks, and that doesn’t include the mileage in nearby county parks, state parks, or national forests. However, this has not always been the case. Decades of planning and crafting an outdoor community have gone into making Roanoke a trail town. Here is how the city manages its volunteers, designs trails, and in turn attracts active citizens to the region.
Step 1: Have a vision and develop a plan. Whether this is a master plan for parks that will allow trails to be connected to schools, downtown areas, or existing greenways, or just a trail system for a park with a lot of forested and unused space, the assessment of existing resources is the key. Make sure to include agencies or individuals that may be able to provide volunteers, such as local “friends of” groups, and do an environmental assessment to protect resources, such as endangered species, banks of waterways and lakes, and important wildlife habitat. Identify individuals who are trail users but may travel elsewhere, and include them in the planning as well. These individuals have seen the good and bad of other trail systems and may help you design the “dream” of a trail system.
While there is no “perfect” trail system, there are definitely types of systems that work well in some places and not in others. For example, if the park land has only a few hundred acres, it is important to maximize mileage in the smaller space. The trail-system design should be for stacked loops that are tight and use the land to increase in difficulty, while focusing on increased mileage. If the park land is vast, such as a few thousand acres, destination-style trails are best. Hikers and mountain bikers can be taken to the overlook and back another route. Crossing the same area three times would be frustrating for trail users with all of the land available for construction, and may result in their shortcutting the trail when they can see another section of it. Create large stacked loops so a one-hour, two-hour, three-hour, or longer adventure can be planned. If the department hires someone for a trails position, this person should be able to lay out and design trails. If not, there are several options for hiring trail-design professionals that can assess the land and design a system that will work best for the topography and land available.