A Trail Floating Through the Woods

Cyclists applaud the new fat bike trail at Leelanau State Park in Northport. One former park ranger isn’t happy.

By Patrick Sullivan | Dec. 30, 2017

Leelanau State Park’s new fat-bike trail is not a typical trail. It’s called a floating trail, because it only exists on top of the snow. And though cross-country skiers, hikers, and snowshoers are welcome on the trail, it’s really meant for fat biking.

That means it’s only supposed to be open to bikes if there’s six inches of snow on the ground, if the temperature is below 30 degrees, and if the date falls between Dec. 1 and April 1. The bikes also must have fat tires.

Nick Weirzba, owner of Suttons Bay Bikes and one of the people who worked with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and the Northern Michigan Mountain Bike Association to make the trail a reality, is almost at a loss for words when asked to describe the ephemeral trail, which winds through rolling, thick decades-old forest.

“The woods in there are magical,” he said. “It’s hard to describe. It’s older woods that are just really cool, and the trail winds through it all.” 

“WHEN THE SNOW’S GONE, WE’RE GONE”
The appearance of another fat-bike trail in northern Michigan has once again stirred up some controversy, however. This time, objections came not from cross-country skiers concerned about adverse effects to their trails but from a retired park ranger who said there should have been a public comment process before the trail was approved.

Allen Ammons, former ranger, said he believes fat bikes pose a threat to the environment and could destroy the serenity of the pristine woods.

“Bicycles have never been allowed in that park because of the steepness of the slopes and the soil structure,” he said. “It’s very fragile.”

Chad Jordan, VASA singletrack director for NMMBA Bikes, disagrees. He said fat bikes shouldn’t have any impact on the environment because they will only be allowed while there is snow on the ground, said.

“It’s a seasonal floating trail. We’re not riding on the dirt, so when the snow’s gone, we’re gone,” Jordan said. “I think it will have a positive effect because it will allow more recreation, more human-powered, silent sports recreation.”

NMMBA would like one day to explore the construction of a year-round mountain bike trail at the park, but whether the land would even be suitable for a permanent trail would have to be studied, Jordan said. The topography of the park and the beauty of the woods makes for an incredible place to ride.

“The terrain is unbelievable — it’s beautiful and roll-y,” Jordan said.

A good fat-bike trail doesn’t necessarily make a good mountain bike trail and vice versa, however, he said. Fat-bike trails need to have smaller grades and they are meant to be ridden at slower speeds.

The DNR asked the NMMBA to maintain the trail at Leelanau State Park because the nonprofit already maintains winter trails at the VASA Singletrack, in Traverse City; the Cadillac Pathway, in Cadillac; and Glacial Hills, in Bellaire.

There shouldn’t be conflict at Leelanau between fat bikes and skiers because they only share a short segment of trail before they go their separate ways on wider loops.

Jordan said that because the trail uses a snowmobile trail that was abandoned in the 1970s, all it took to prepare the trail for the snow was clearing some deadfall. He sees the trail as a good way to get people into the woods who otherwise wouldn’t be there.

“That’s kind of the ultimate goal, is to get people using the public lands,” Jordan said.

“BIKING ALL OVER THE DAMN PLACE”
Ammons doesn’t see fat biking as a harmless way to get people into the woods.

He holds the woods sacred and doesn’t like to see anything disruptive or noisy happening there.

He worries that a wintertime bike trail will lead to year-round mountain bikes.

Ammons began working at the park as a summer employee in 1976 and spent 30 years as park ranger before retiring in 2015.

He said he isn’t against cycling; he simply doesn’t believe the activity belongs in the park.

There should have been a public notice about the trail, a meeting, and a chance for residents to weigh in about whether they wanted it or not, he said.

“The state has a very defined procedure for creating trails, and there is supposed to be a public input process,” Ammons said. “I’m not anti-bike, you know. I’ve got four bicycles in my garage right now.”

Ammons said The Nature Conservancy, in evaluating the natural features of Michigan’s 100+ parks, ranked Leelanau State Park eighth. It cited the park’s place as a home to “high-value protected species” like the piping plover, Pitcher’s thistle, migratory songbirds, and wildflowers.

Trail proponents note that the trail does not travel through endangered bird habitat and that negative environmental impacts will be buffered by a bed of snow.

Ammons said he believes that once bikes are allowed, they will come year-round — whether the trail is marked for them or not.

“I was out there before we had snow, and there were people out there biking all over the damn place,” he said.

Ammons also said he believe the genesis of the trail came from a small special interest — the fat bike community — at the expense of the wider public. He noted that two of the proponents of the trail own bike shops.

It might not be only bike shops that stand to gain from a bike trail, however.

An economic impact study commissioned by the Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy found that the financial impact to Bellaire from the Glacial Hills mountain bike trail system is $1.45 million annually, and could be worth $25.4 million over the next decade. A bike trail at the Leelanau State Park could bring more visitors and dollars to Northport.

Ammons said the park already bolsters Northport’s economy, and he questions the Glacial Hills study.

“I’m not going to say that that’s a bad study, but I question it,” Ammons said.

DIFFERENT PROCESS FOR A DIFFERENT TRAIL
Since the fat bike trail is considered a floating trail, the requirements for its creation were far less rigorous than what would have been involved for the development of a year-round trail, said Kasey Mahony, Leelanau State Park supervisor.

Mahony said the bike trail was modeled after one developed at the Cadillac Pathway, where state park officials attempted to accommodate fat bikes in a park that was already extremely popular with cross-country skiers. They created a separate, dedicated fat bike trail there, and it’s been a success that’s kept both groups happy, Mahony said.

Mahony said she knows that there are mountain bikers on the trail at times when they are not supposed to be there, but she said that’s going to happen whether a fat bike trail is there or not. The Leelanau State Park woods, she said, are not heavily used by visitors, they aren’t excessively patrolled, and they’ve proven irresistible to mountain bikers even before fat bikes came on the scene.

“Every single year there have been mountain bikes on those trails, whether we post it or not,” she said. “I don’t think that allowing winter biking is going to have an effect. I don’t see that exploding.”

Mahony doesn’t know whether a permanent mountain bike trail would be right for the Leelanau park.

“I support recreation where it’s appropriate, and for the time of year that is appropriate, and to be totally honest, it just hasn’t been explored,” she said. “We’d really have to go through a much more formal process. There’s a trail creation process which is very, very involved.”

She said although she and Ammons appear at odds about the fat bike trail, their wishes for the park come from the same place — a respect and love for nature.

“Al’s concerns are certainly everything that we were concerned about,” Mahony said. “We don’t want to damage the resources. We definitely went through a very thorough process.”

RECLAIMED TRAIL IN RENWED FOREST
Ammons said the section of the park where the trail runs is a place he’s watched nature reclaim over decades, and he believes it should remain in its pristine condition. Years ago, there used to be a groomed cross-country ski trail through the park, but even that activity was abandoned in the name of a hands-off approach to the land.

“When I first started working there, we moved a whole lot of fences and cabins and shacks and debris piles,” he said.

Over time, that section of park was left to nature, and even the cross-country ski trails weren’t groomed, he said.

“It really came down to, would you rather have the parking lot plowed or would you prefer to have a groomed trail?” he said. “We discontinued grooming a long time ago because it just didn’t work.”

As for bikes, Ammons said there are other places in the area people can ride fat bikes or mountain bikes.

“We don’t need that. We have the Heritage Trail at the Sleeping Bear Dunes [National Lakeshore], Palmer Woods [Forest Reserve],” he said. “There’s no end of places for people to do their thing. Why don’t we leave a couple of these places alone?”

The Heritage Trail isn’t a mountain bike trail, and there isn’t currently a mountain bike trail at Palmer Woods, though the Leelanau Conservancy plans to begin construction of a 5.5-mile trail there in 2018.

Will Harper, the volunteer trail groomer for the Leelanau State Park fat bike trail and owner of Northshore Outfitters in Northport, said the fat bike project has improved the park for all users.

“We opened up a ton of new/old trails that had not been maintained in decades,” he said. “We roughly doubled the amount of trails now usable to skiers, hikers, hunters, and snowshoers, and only about half of it is open to bikes. It’s a win-win for everyone if you look at it with an open mind.”

DREAM OF A YEAR-ROUND TRAIL
Weirzba said Leelanau State Park would make a great setting for a year-round trail.

“That’s the hope — the DNR has a process for us to go through to make sure we don’t go on any protected dune areas,” he said. “Unfortunately, it involves Lansing, and we have to go through some bureaucracy to get that improved.”

Until the Palmer Woods trail is constructed, mountain bikers in Leelanau County currently have to drive considerable distances to find maintained mountain bike trails — to the Arcadia Dunes Mountain Bike Trail in southern Benzie County, to the VASA trail in Grand Traverse County, or to Glacial Hills in Antrim County.

“Leelanau County’s got real great road riding, but no mountain bike spots out here,” Weirzba said.