By Katy Savage
Graham Farrington first started building trails at 13 years old. He was a student in Woodstock with a bike and a shovel and he found joy in shaping the land behind his house into something rideable. It wasn’t just about mountain biking. It was about being outside, touching the earth, and working with it.
“I really like moving dirt,” he said. “When you’re in high school, it’s jumps, berms, and rollers—very feature-heavy. The trail behind my house had no dead space. There was always a turn or a drop or a jump. It was very, not boring.”
Now 20, Farrington lives in Barnard and still spends his days outside. He’s a part-time trail builder for the Woodstock Area Mountain Biking Association (WAMBA), helping maintain and shape the network of public trails that crisscross the region. He also works full-time doing high-end landscape construction, and picks up independent dirt-shaping jobs on Saturdays. Wherever he is, he’s usually outdoors, working with soil.
“I kind of figured out that the dirt work—anywhere—and technical dirt work is my favorite,” he said. “I do it for fun. I work on public trails, which are free to use, and tons of people ride them. The positive feedback means a lot. But also, just shaping dirt—getting it right, thinking about drainage, making sure it holds up—that’s really satisfying.”
Farrington doesn’t design entire trails, but he’s had his hands in many. On the Pepper Jack Trail—constructed with help of a grant from Cabot Cheese—he helped select features and elements that shaped its character.
“My favorite is when there’s a transition from a high-speed, like from a flow section to a looser section,” he said. “It’s that shift from machine-built surface to rake-and-ride.”
Farrington has a certificate in sustainable trail building from Vermont State University, which gave him a more formal understanding of the practices he was already doing by feel.
“I learned a lot of technical terms and exactly why we do everything,” he said. “I had a lot of the practices down, but didn’t really know the ‘why’ behind it.”
What really drives him isn’t just technique—it’s the landscape. He lights up talking about natural features, like mounds left by fallen trees, and how to turn “dead space” into something interesting with a clever turn or a well-placed rock.
His path to trail building started with a decision to walk away from football in school. It was hard on his body, and mountain biking gave him something gentler but just as intense. He was part of the former highly competitive Woodstock Union High School mountain biking club. (Mountain biking has since become a varsity sport at the school.)
“That was the best decision I ever made,” Farrington said. “All the jobs I have today, all the people, all the best friends I have, all came from that. Just because the mountain biking community is so strong.”
Download the 2025 GRIP magazine.
