Photo: Alex Stewart As with all things in life, mountain bike trail building trends ebb and flow over time. In the trail building era of the mid-2020s, interconnected trail systems with tightly wound trails are en vogue. Trail systems are generally built on fairly small pockets of land with many interconnecting trails — often, one or two climbing trails leading to a plethora of downhill options.
One group of mountain bike advocates threw that modern formula out the window and went in the complete opposite direction by building a long-distance, 45-mile singletrack loop circumnavigating a lake in Michigan.
The last segment of the Dragon was just finished in 2024 near the town of Newaygo, Michigan, about 45 minutes north of Grand Rapids. This ambitious bike-optimized singletrack trail circumnavigates Hardy Dam Pond, which is operated by Consumers Energy Electric. Photos: Alex Stewart Photos: Alex Stewart Not a “humdrum” cross-country trail.
While the Dragon might form one continuous loop, it’s far from a boring, flat XC trail of yore. Instead, the West Michigan Mountain Bike Alliance (WMMBA) hired professional builders to design and construct the trail. Jeremy Whimpy of Applied Trails Research did the design and layout, while Alex Stewart of Spectrum Trail Design did the construction. Stewart has built many famous trails across the Midwest, including Brown County State Park and some of the first mountain bike trails built in a national park.
“We’re talking purpose-built, feature-rich, natural surface… like berms, turns, rock features, everything. So when you ride it, it is, to […]
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