LOCALadk Magazine

When I read through these and subsequent Town Board meeting minutes, it's a humbling reminder of not just how far Wheelerville Trails has come since those early days of Town Board meetings, but how many times it was probably so close to never happen- ing. At the time, a logging project was being consid- ered for the property. While I had been thinking about trying to build some trails in Caroga, until that time I had no idea where we could actually even do so. The project wasn't initially conceived by a like-mind- ed and well-organized trail group (though there was already a small group of riders in Caroga who real- ly wanted some new trails). Instead, it was mostly dragged forward through circuitous discussions at Town Board meetings, coming up in the "Old Business" section of the meeting for about four years before we got around to doing any actual building. Votes at these meetings were rarely unanimous and there was much concern over funding, liability, noise, and public benfit. For me, it became a personal experiment in community development. For many of these meetings, the project took a backseat to more urgent Town busi- ness like cell tower leases, street lighting, ongoing le- gal issues, combatting aquatic invasive species, and a favorite topic of upstate New York small towns: blight. I'm pretty sure most Town residents were getting tired of hearing about a bike trail after a while. "A member of the public encouraged the Board to get on with the agenda already," one meeting entry reads. The Town of Caroga boasts an 18-hole golf course, ski area, rodeo, several lakes, a prominent music fes- tival, and popular hiking and snowmobiling trails, but its opportunities for mountain biking were far behind what was happening in other outdoor-minded towns in the Adirondacks and New England. Any mountain biking in Caroga was usually done on old DEC hiking trails which, due to years of overuse and a lack of maintenance, have the character of a dry stream bed. I traveled regularly to well-developed trail systems in Saratoga and Vermont, and knew just how far moun- tain bikers would travel to ride good trails. Given Caro- ga's close proximity to Utica, Albany and Syracuse, the fellow Board members began to see the potential for regional recreational tourism. ...now therefore be it RESOLVED, that the Town Board of the Town of Caroga, after due consider- ation, has determined that it is desirable and in the public interest to undertake the necessary activities for the submittal of an application under the 2016 Adirondack Smart Growth Implementation Grant for the creation of a conceptual design and trail design standards for a recreational trail system on town- owned lands located between State Highway 10/29A and Irving Pond, and be it further RESOLVED, that this project shall be titled "Wheelerville Trails"... -Wednesday March 8, 2017 In 2017, a DEC-funded feasibility study was com- pleted by Wilderness Property Management (who constructed trails at North Creek Ski Bowl and Gur- ney Lanes). And after much public deliberation, and a partnership with the Adirondack Foothills Trails Alliance (AFTA), the Town ultimately decided to take the steps to develop a comprehensive trail system. In 2019 we applied for and were awarded a DEC Smart Growth Implementation Grant to fund the initial phase of construction. Although the project had gained momentum, it was initially unclear who would actually do the work. I was introduced to Justin Vesp and Eli Glesmann at the 2018 Adirondack Mountain Bike Festival in Old Forge. After riding the freshly built flow trails, Toga Party and Food Fight, knew that we had found our ideal builders. We all walked the property and quickly con- cluded that since the Town property was basically just a steeply sloped mountain, with minimal moderate terrain, and embracing the terrain and focusing on a downhill-themed bike park that people would want to ride over and over again would be our greatest chance at getting the most out of a relatively small piece of property.

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