PERRYSVILLE — His words were short and to the point Friday.
“Let’s ride.”
John Mumaw, a longtime member of the Mohican-Malabar Bike Club, stood with three others behind a red Ohio Department of Natural Resources ribbon that was meant to be cut in June.
Instead, the ribbon cutting ceremony took place on a crisp, sunny Friday afternoon at the Mohican Lodge and Conference Center. It was unlike any other. This one drew men and women donned in lycra and helmets — ready to ride newly built mountain bike trails.
The nearly eight miles of trails, including a downhill “skills park” just off the lodge’s southeast parking lot, were finished in June and officials scheduled a ribbon cutting ceremony for June 17.
High winds and a tornado trampled on that parade, leaving mayhem on the trails and land throughout Mohican State Park and Mohican-Memorial State Forest.
The trails, named after birds of prey, end at County Road 3006, just before the Pleasant Hill Dam. A 1.5-mile trail named 30-06 (pronounced “thirty ought six”) picks up again off County Road 3006 to the right and connects to the original 24.5-mile mountain bike trail.
The new trails bring the total mountain bike trail mileage at Mohican to around 30 miles.
Cleaning up the trail after the six-mile-long tornado ripped through the area took time, three months to be exact. But finishing the trail system took longer.
“I mean, it’s been a glint in many eyes for years,” said Mary Mertz, ODNR’s executive director.
Planning for the trail system began late 2020. Engineering is part of the process, she said. And that takes time.
But it’s worth the wait, she said.
“I know people love it — I know they’re excited about it,” she said of mountain biking.
The sport has grown in popularity like a weed over the last decade, thanks to improved bicycle technology, growing trails infrastructure and more interest as a high-school sport, the New York Times reported in May 2021.
The sport’s growth is forecasted to keep swelling. The market research company NPD Group showed sales of front-suspension mountain bikes were up 150% in spring of 2020. In June of the same year, more expensive full-suspension mountain bikes soared by 92%.
Mark Allen, ODNR’s statewide trails administrator, said Mohican State Park is home to Ohio’s only “Epic” trails, rated by the International Mountain Biking Association.
“That’s why Mohican gets a lot of visitation and why it’s become a destination,” he said.
The $150,000 addition of beginner-friendly trails to expert level singletrack is part of ODNR’s “The Ohio Trails Vision.”
Published in 2019, the Ohio Trails Vision serves as the state’s framework to manage and promote its trails. For mountain biking, it set a goal of providing “at least four destination quality trails that qualify for the IMBA EPIC Designation and two communities that are designated as IMBA Ride Centers.”
“Let’s ride” weren’t the only words Mumaw uttered — he emphasized the club’s appreciation of ODNR, forestry and Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District for the agencies’ willingness to work together in this long-awaited project.
But the two words were a foreshadowing of what happened next: a group of people rode the trails together, first starting at the skills park at the Mohican Lodge and snaking their way to Pleasant Hill Dam, up the 30-06 trail to the existing mountain bike loop. Then they pedaled all the way back, a nearly 16-mile round trip.
Connecting the loop and the lodge
The additional mountain bike trails are the first new trails since MMBC set to work on the 24.5-mile loop in 2004, said MMBC President Mike Jarosick.
“It’s the first time ODNR spent money building mountain biking trails,” Jarosick said. “That’s a very significant element.”
He and a small core group of mountain bikers have maintained the trails since the early 2000s, he said.
“There’s about 10 guys from the club — they’ve been consistent workers for 16 years.”
For about 10 years now, the club has wanted to connect the original loop to the lodge. It was just never the right time.
“If you look at the topography and the maps out there, there are few choices for how to get from the existing mountain bike trail to the lodge,” Jarosick said.
But one of the land owners happened to be Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District, which he knew through a connection has a philosophy bend toward recreation.
“So it was pretty easy to say, ‘let’s put it here.’ And so I contacted them,” he said.
That was after ODNR had signaled it, too, was interested in connecting the lodge to existing mountain bike trails — but before the state agency had a plan to fund it.
With agreement to build the trail on MWCD’s property, the project moved along.
MMBC has always maintained a relationship with ODNR, but this project solidified it, Jarosick said.
“This took it to new levels, because we were all in cooperation to get this done,” he said. “And then the cooperation we saw when the storm happened — we saw how we could all work together.”
