LOCALadk Magazine

LOCALadk 58 Then, just two months later, I lost re-election. At this point, I thought the trail system would never happen. The incoming Town Supervisor, however, turned out to be a strong supporter of the trails and kept the project on course. Through his support, Fulton County would ultimately begin supporting the trail system, and his own vision for events held at the trails led us to founding the annual Wheelerville Trails Mountain Bike Festival as well as inaugural Wheelerville Enduro Race. It is well known that building mountain bike trails in the Adirondack Park has its limitations, but the Town— having purchased three large parcels in 1961 for the express purpose of expanding recreation— had a unique opportunity to create modern, ma- chine-built trail system on town land that it already owned. So after the Town received the 2019 Smart Growth grant, I have to admit that I started running all around the mountain, covering just about every beech sapling with a different colored ribbon of survey tape with at least three or four variations of each trail. I had no idea what I was doing and this was quickly confirmed when Eli and Justin arrived, quickly pulled them all out, and started over. Eli's artistry and Justin's wild-west attitude formed much of the theme for trail names and also our ap- proach to trail building. It became clear early on that if we were going to create anything unique, we had to give the builders as much freedom to design trails that they wanted to ride. According to Eli, "Wheelerville means, to me, dynam- ic Adirondack gravity-fed terrain that promotes skill building and fun. The terrain offers the quintessen- tial experience what Adirondack terrain has to offer. Dense beech forests with hidden rock features serves my trail building creativity to dream exciting trails and features." Justin recalls, "I remember when Jeremy first told me he was setting up a trail builder crew and he had this whole mountain to build on. He knew I had built trails before and that I'd want in. I was so excited, I didn't even wait to walk it with him. I went up myself in the winter and snowshoed all over that mountain. See- ing all the terrain and potential that mountain had— I couldn't wait for spring to come fast enough. Here was this blank canvas that had unreal potential with all the rock formations, different plant and tree growth ar- eas, and soil types. I knew then we were going to build something that was going to be way different then anything else in Central NY, or the Adirondack Park for that matter." Since the Town of Caroga has began the Wheel- erville Trails project, we have seen a considerable number of residents of the rural Caroga community

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