By Polly Mikula
Over the past few years, the surge in mountain biking has grown to the point that it’s fundamentally changed the experience of summer in Vermont. There is a vitality in regions with trail systems that simply wasn’t there a decade ago.
The influx of riders has spurred the growth of lodging, restaurants, bike shops, and events, creating jobs and revitalizing communities.
The growth began about 25 years ago. Slowly at first, gaining strong momentum about 10 years ago and since then has been exponential.
Trail networks have expanded rapidly across the state. The growth was fueled in part by passionate local advocates and organizations like the Vermont Mountain Bike Association (VMBA), which has led efforts to develop high-quality, sustainable trails accessible to riders of all skill levels. Vermont now boasts 2,520 bike trails—the highest per capita in the U.S.—and is widely recognized as a top state for mountain biking.
The growth of the sport has also opened up new opportunities for outdoor adventure, making Vermont summers more dynamic and active. More trails are now accessible for more skill levels at both paid lift-serve downhill areas and on the free crosscountry community trails that have sprouted up in pockets all over the state. Overall, the sport has boosted tourism, strengthened communities, and enriched the region’s outdoor recreation offerings.
MTB then and now
Mountain biking as a sport was very different when it first began than it is today. Early mountain bikes were only slightly different than their road counterparts in that they had slightly wider tires and more tread. They still had small wheels, narrow bars, center-pull brakes and fixed seatposts. Mountain bike “trails” were often just Class 4 roads, logging and farm roads, cross-country ski trails and lower angle hiking trails.
The modern era of mountain biking is said to have begun in the 1980s, but real changes to the sport didn’t occur until the ‘90s, according to most historians of the sport. Specific mountain bike trails began to be built in earnest in the early 1990s, mostly in recreation-friendly areas like the ski towns of Killington, Ascutney, the Mad River Valley and Stowe. But since they were built on ski slopes, they were almost all extreme routes — only the experts could ride them.
Killington was among the earliest adopters. It began lift-serve mountain biking in 1991 with trails straight off Killington Peak — descending 1,700 feet from the top of K-1 to the base.
“Typically bike parks at ski areas didn’t offer the right product, there is just too much vertical,”explained said Dave Kelly, co-founder of Gravity Logic, the consulting company Killington hired to design and build a 5-year plan to improve its mountain bike trail systems beginning in 2015.
“Most of what they had was comparable to a ski mountain that offers only double black diamonds with no grooming… it only caters to a very small percentage of riders,” Kelly explained.
Staggering growth
In the fall of 2014, Gravity Logic projected that Killington could see 50,000 bikers annually, if its master plan was followed to completion — up from about 2,000 riders per year prior to Gravity Logic’s engagement.
“There is nowhere in the East that has the potential that Killington has,” said Kelly in 2014.
The resort hit that target in 2021, one year after the five-year build-out was complete. Growth has continued since, albeit not quite as exponentially with ridership leveling off in the 50,000-55,000 range over the past few years (partly due to the pandemic and then wet weather/flooding events).
While biking at Killington may never be quite as popular as skiing (to be fair, the summer season is much shorter with many more options that disperse riders) its growth has brought 10s of thousands of new people to the state to enjoy the sport and its events.
Riders have been calling Vermont the “Moab of the East” since the ‘90s, but today it may actually have grown into that Mecca. Here in central Vermont, with 35 lift-serve trails at Killington Resort, plus over 250 cross-country trails within a half hour’s drive, it’s truly become a summer destination that’s simply hard to beat.
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