It has been an incredible year for mountain biking in North Conway! We want to thank all of you, including our members, volunteers, board members and local partners and landowners for making it a successful season.
We want to thank our members for joining Ride NoCo and believing in what we want to achieve across the entire network of trails. We feel the longstanding goal of the mountain bike community has been to preserve and maintain our current trails, and create new riding opportunities. Ride NoCo has worked tirelessly this summer to fulfill these goals and we can't wait to continue in 2021!
2020 Trail Building and Expansion Highlights
We added amazing new terrain to our network this year including a renovation of Charlie Don't Surf with the help of Tulip Trails, our NoCo Trail Crew and volunteers.
The White Mountain Trail Collective helped us achieve key infrastructural projects including a new Black Cap to Cranmore connector trail, which will serve as the preferred descending route and top flank of the Hurricane Zone, a project built by IdeRide Trail Builders during the month of August. The trail helps alleviate descending pressure on the original Cranmore Connector. It can be accessed from a spur off of the Hurricane Trail with several crossings to access Red Tail, Kettle Ridge, Kandagnar and eventually leading to Charlie Don't Surf.
Additionally, the White Mountain Trail Collective helped with a beginner friendly, two-way trail, linking the base of Cranmore with lower Kettle Ridge. This new trail will be acting as a lower flank to the Hurricane Zone, providing an easy avenue from the water tower at the base of Hurricane Mountain Road to the main parking area at Cranmore. With this project, we are helping alleviate parking congestion and directing the traffic flow to a parking lot that can sustain a higher rider capacity. These trails are being built by local trail builders Tyrol Trails and Tulip Trails.
Elsewhere around the network, additional attention was given to a reroute on High School Loop in the West Side Zone, during our annual Summer Trail Work Day in July. In Marshall, the new Holy Cow trail was reconstructed and completed by volunteers led by Rob Adair and Lucille's Loop was completed thanks to the Town of Conway. On the East Side, drainage improvements were made with efforts from our trail crew and volunteers on Old Sidehill and Cheater.
Dozens of volunteers helped out in the early part of the season clearing trails of winter debris and getting the trails ready for the summer riding season. Special shout outs to Tim Simoneau and Daren Morneau, logging 85 hours of trail work in the early season.
Learning and Moving Forward
The White Mountain Bike Coalition is officially a 501 (c) 3 and here to serve the Mount Washington Valley bike community. With our unpredictable summer and official formation of WMBC, we have learned that to best serve our riding community, a transparent and open communication line is needed to be successful for the future. Our volunteer board has recently added two new members to address public relations and municipal relations. You may ask, who are the board members anyway? Well, the new public relations member is working on getting profiles on all the board members together and will add them to the RideNoCo.org site for folks to see who is behind the scenes! In the meantime, the board would like to thank you all for a great season.
Chris McKay - President
Leaf Peeper Bash
We want to close out this incredible season with a bang! Please join us for our annual Leaf Peeper Bash on Saturday, October 10. Join us for informal rides starting at 9 a.m. at the base of Cranmore. Keep your eyes peeled on our Facebook page and Instagram for complete details next week.