Trails are more than just a connection between one area and another. Trails connect a community. They provide countless hours of enjoyment from a wide variety of human powered activities, and they connect trail users with a local economy. Ride NoCo (White Mountain Bike Coalition) and The White Mountain Trail Collective know this to be true, and with that knowledge have come up with a historic infrastructure trails project for the Hurricane Zone in North Conway, NH.
Touring the "B Roll" team on one of my favorite rides up and down Whitehorse Ledge
It's safe to say no one anticipated the massive boom that 2020 would bring to the MTB industry. But the leadership of Ride NoCo round tabled in early 2019 about where mountain biking would be in the valley 5 years down the road. They knew they would need infrastructure not only for future expansion to become the premiere gravity oriented trail system in the region, but also for needs of landowners and the town to be met due to the influx and popularity of gravity riding in the valley and the surrounding region even prior to 2020.
| Along the way we've kinda found new zones and coordinated with new land managers, and now we have this kind of energy going where we have a younger crew moving in to take some leadership and put some effort forth into staying current with mountain biking and building progressive trails that people love to ride and really realizing like we have a really unique area here in the Mount Washington Valley. |  |
With those goals in mind Ride NoCo realized they needed a strategic partner to pull together a project of this magnitude. They reached out to The White Mountain Trail Collective who became responsible for gathering the massive funding needed, coordinating the project, and hiring some of the best trail builders here in the northeast: IdeRide Builders, Tyrol trails, and Tulip Trails. The project will allow for better use of the area by routing people away from private property, addressing overcrowded parking concerns with the town, and removing user conflict that could arise along certain routes between hikers and bikers.
As someone from outside who has explored the valley and beyond pretty extensively through my "Bike The Whites" series I, like many others, see the massive potential in the valley and the surrounding areas. They might possibly even become, if they aren't already, The Squamish of The East.
 | We're on track to become sort of the premier location for gravity riding in the northeast. |
https://www.trailforks.com/region/conway-6095/
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