In just two months, new trails on Mill Mountain will be open to the public, including downhill trails with features for bikers.
The five new trails, totaling about 4 miles, will add about 30% to the total mileage on the mountain, said Andy Gill, president of the Roanoke Parks Foundation.
“It’s going to increase connectivity between existing trails, provide more route options for users, decrease user conflict and two-way traffic,” Gill said. The trails are set to open, all at the same time, in early July.
The Roanoke Parks Foundation, which has a memorandum of understanding with the city to manage the project and complete the trails, has raised $345,784 so far, according to its website. The group’s goal is $375,000.
The foundation was created in 2022 as a way for public-private partnerships to further the goal of the parks department and the region, said Frank Maguire, former coordinator of the Roanoke Valley Greenway Commission. Maguire resigned from his position in January and now works as a trail development consultant.
He said the new trails project is a “shining example of what’s possible” with these kinds of partnerships.
The new trails range from beginner to advanced. Some will be multiuse, but three will be downhill only, optimized for bikers, the first trails specifically for bikers on Mill Mountain.
The bike trails will include berms, rollers and wooden features such as drops, Gill said, as well as technical rock sections.
Currently, crews are working on two multiuse trails simultaneously. Next, they’ll work on the downhill bike trails in the Hartsook Hill area.
Turning to machinery to win the trail ‘arms race’
In January 2024, the foundation commissioned C2 Recreation out of North Carolina to develop routing within planned corridors and to plan the construction documents, according to the foundation’s website.
Trail corridors are wide swaths of land that are deemed suitable locations for trails.
Historically, volunteer-based crews have built the trails on Mill Mountain. One such group is the MidWeek Crew from Pathfinders for Greenways. This group of retirees can build about 200 feet of trail in one day, said Maguire, and currently works to maintain the trails.
But this time, the foundation partnered with Black Diamond Designs, a North Carolina landscaping and trail-designing company, to build the trails with machines. Gill said using machinery speeds up the process significantly by making it possible to move large rocks and trees.
Maguire said it’s now standard practice to hire professional trail contractors to complete these kinds of projects.
Trail maintenance will remain in the hands of city staff and volunteers, similar to how other trails and parks in the city are maintained.
Using machines to build these kinds of trails, Gill said, is an “important economic driver” for Roanoke.
“A lot of the cities that we compete with for talent recruitment and for business development have used these trail building techniques and are rapidly increasing the trails that they can offer to their residents,” Gill said. “To build trails only with volunteers means we lose our position in that arms race, so to speak.”
An international honor and a 2021 plan to deliver on new trails
In 2018, Roanoke received a Silver designation as an International Mountain Biking Association Ride Center. It’s the only East Coast city to receive the designation, with the next closest being Snowshoe, West Virginia.
According to the IMBA website, the designated ride centers feature “extensive trail networks, masterfully designed for mountain bikers of every skill level and built by professional trailbuilders and local volunteers.”
When Roanoke received this designation, Maguire said, “It was a bit of a stretch.”
“The designation was based upon promises to expand the trail network, and really not much of that has happened since that time,” he said. “So this is really the first big attempt to implement the trails, because the mileage expansion, plus creating those bike optimized features, were one of the things that were called out in that report.” He said the need for more beginner trails was also recommended by IMBA.
The plans for these trail corridors were ironed out in a 2021 addition to the Mill Mountain Trails Plan, which was written by representatives of recreation-based organizations in the city.
Shabnam Gideon, who serves on the Blue Ridge Off-Road Cyclists board and the Roanoke Outside Advisory Council, was a part of that task force. She said the 2021 amendment reprioritized next steps for the mountain based on increased usage and required maintenance.
During the writing of this amendment, Gideon said members of the task force walked the entirety of Mill Mountain’s trails to see how the trails were being used and what was damaged.
The 2018 ride center designation “opened people’s eyes” to the trail system in Roanoke, Gideon said.
“The amendment was really important to make sure our existing plans for that land were prepared to handle that.” She said improving connectivity with neighborhoods and accessibility of the trails were also priorities listed in the amendment.
Maguire said trail-based recreation grew significantly during the pandemic, and has only fallen slightly since then. He said trail activities are popular among “the type of talent that Roanoke is trying to attract.”
Maguire said the trail corridors in the plan did not have funding earmarked to plan and build them. That’s when the Roanoke Parks Foundation took over and began fundraising.
“That’s a really common thing across the country, and something Roanoke should be celebrating and furthering to achieve other projects,” Maguire said of the public-private partnership.
Fundraising for the project began two years ago, Gill said, and any additional money that comes in after the goal is hit will be “icing on the cake,” used for additional features for this project or future work.
Maguire said after the completion of these five trails, the mountain will be near its capacity for trails. He said any next projects will likely involve rehabilitation and rerouting of existing trail corridors.
He added that some of the older roadbeds, currently trails used recreationally, weren’t built for tourism. Some of the trails on Mill Mountain were originally haul roads, designed for moving materials and machinery.
“Now that Mill Mountain is a recreation destination, the alignments are not sustainable,” Maguire said. “The trails are not holding up to the amount of use they’re getting, so reroutes and reconstruction is just fairly typical for natural surface trails.”
