A new multiday mountain bike trail opened this summer in central Vermont — the culmination of almost a decade of work by myriad organizations and volunteers.
The ‘Heart of the Greens’ loop runs up to Chittenden Brook Hut in the Green Mountain National Forest as well as through downtown Rochester and Pittsfield. The adaptive trail comes in at just under 39 miles total with around 6,000 feet of vertical gain and loss — if you decide to ride (or hike) it in full.
But the new multiuse trail is just the first piece of the Velomont: a long-distance mountain bike trail that is expected to run 485 miles from Massachusetts to the Canadian border, crisscrossing Vermont and linking together existing mountain bike networks.
The trail will also boast more than 30 new associated backcountry huts and downtown hostels, built and managed by the Vermont Huts Association. When complete, the Velomont is slated to be the longest hut-supported trail in the United States.
Angus McCusker has been involved with the project since its start in 2016 and serves as the executive director of the Velomont Trail Collective. The first completed section of the Velomont also happens to cross his family’s property in Rochester.
“It’s been phenomenal,” McCusker said of the response to the new trail. Users include everyone from the local youth cycling team to the town postmaster — who heads to the trail after work — to adaptive mountain bike riders getting out into the backcountry. Rochester’s bike shop, bookstore and cafe are all getting more business as a result, he said, and a new hostel downtown fits in perfectly.
The project had much more humble aspirations at the start. It began when members of the Rochester community met to discuss creating a few local trails that would fit their landscape — literally and figuratively.
“The general sense was that we want to ride lots, but we don’t want to be the next Kingdom Trails,” McCusker said. Those at the meeting wanted to ensure the trails “would embrace the community’s needs and wants first: providing trails for locals, for afterschool programs, bike camps and getting the community engaged.”
So instead of building their own mountain biking network featuring a bunch of different loops, as is prevalent in many areas, the Rochester trail community had the idea to try and connect to their neighboring trail networks.
“We all benefit from that because you can ride over there, ride a trail, ride back and make loops, big loops,” McCusker said.
The stewards of neighboring networks loved the idea, and an original group of six — from Killington to Stowe — came together to create the original route for the Velomont.
But then the group began hearing from other interested mountain biking networks, and after meeting with the public land managers from the state who were interested in broadening the project, the route “just sort of snowballed,” McCusker said.
Holly Knox, public services staff officer for the Green Mountain National Forest, was at the meeting with Velomont organizers and the nascent Vermont Huts Association when the full concept for the long-distance trail emerged.
“From identifying a conceptual route maximizing public lands that day to witnessing the amount of progress two relatively young organizations have made in less than a decade has been astonishing,” she said in an email.
Not only will the Velomont provide non-motorized recreation opportunities of all types — it will be open to hikers, skiers and birders, among others — but McCusker and Knox also pointed to the conservation value of the trail. According to the Velomont Trail Collective, the project has the potential to conserve up to 214,000 acres of unprotected land along its intended corridor.
“Demand for outdoor recreation has led to funding initiatives that conserve public lands,” Knox said. “The Velomont has provided that opportunity for new land conservation protected for the benefit of the public.”
The Velomont Trail Collective is at work with the Green Mountain National Forest, the national nonprofit Trust for Public Land, the state Department of Forest, Parks and Recreation, and a number of other organizations and municipalities on projects that would preserve land for wildlife while also providing a piece of the trail’s long-distance route.
While some trails can fragment wildlife habitat, McCusker said, long-distance trails are actually used by wildlife.
The Velomont is utilizing existing trails wherever possible and, in some places, helping to improve those trails. It is also, in some cases, motivating private landowners to protect their land. McCusker said that three people who own property along the Heart of the Greens trail have already donated trail easements.
Working in tandem with the Velomont Trail Collective, the Vermont Huts Association is developing a pipeline of ADA-accessible backcountry hut and downtown hostel projects to go along the route.
Over the next few years, the association aims to break ground on huts in Waterbury, Moretown and Chittenden as well as hostels in downtown Randolph and Hardwick. Both organizations have attracted millions of dollars in congressionally directed spending for their projects, though they’re still in need of additional funding, according to RJ Thompson, executive director of the association.
The Vermont Huts Association also partners with other nonprofits, schools and communities to bring underserved youth and other historically marginalized communities out to their huts with free trips that include transportation, gear, food and an outdoor educator. The group has already hosted trips along the new section of the Velomont with “extremely positive feedback,” Thompson said.
Next up for the trail itself is a section from Pittsfield down to Mendon that would go through the still-in-progress Telephone Gap Integrated Resource Project. Also in the works is a section of the Velomont that would run through the Green Mountains from Dorset all the way down to Wilmington.
All in all, McCusker believes that the majority of the southern portion of the Velomont should be complete in the next 10 years. The project is moving slowly and intentionally by design, to make sure it fits in well with the communities and habitats it passes through, he said.
While such a large project requires a ton of coordination and communication, McCusker said that the partnerships and community it fosters keep him going. The Velomont project attracts a lot of interest as it “checks so many boxes” — outdoor recreation access, health, conservation, community and economic development and more.
In Rochester, McCusker said, high school basketball used to be a big community event. But the town closed its high school as part of school district consolidation, creating a void. While he said that void will never fully be filled, the Velomont creates another opportunity to bring the local community.
A few weeks ago, he tagged along with the local youth cycling team’s first trip up to Chittenden Brook Hut on the Velomont.
“It was just such a heartwarming experience,” McCusker said, describing kids ages 9 to 16 (including his own) supporting each other on the trail and playing card games by candlelight. “It’s not just a trail.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Plans for long-distance mountain bike route in Vermont take step forward with 1st piece of ‘Velomont’ trail.