mtb-project

Contest ended. Congrats to Winner: Lou Stanley of Vancouver WA We’re sorry The promotion you are trying to access has ended. Pearl Izumi has partnered with us to give one winner a pair of X-Project ELITE shoes. Enter to win below.   Riding your mountain bike occasionally involves something none of us love talking about: walking your mountain bike. Which is ...

The famed, 35.5-mile Womble sits just west of historic Hot Springs, Arkansas. This IMBA Epic ride gains just a touch over 4,000 feet of elevation across its 95-percent singletrack route. If you’d like to ride the entire length of the Womble, or even a shorter point-to-point section, you’ll need to self-shuttle as no commercial options ...

Hawaii is a bucket-list destination for travelers, but how is the riding? The 16-mile Skyline downhill run, beginning at 9,900 feet atop a dormant volcano, is the highlight of the Poli Poli Springs ride area on Maui. Our web editor described this ride in Issue #177 after enjoying it, herself:  On a good day, you can ...

For this week’s Featured Ride, we’re taking you to Peru in the southern hemisphere. Though this might seem like a great winter destination, this ride is actually available during the local winter season, May to November. This 33-mile shuttle ride descends from an elevation of 11,191 feet all the way down to the Pacific Ocean, gaining just ...

This mountain-bike-specific trail system in the Paradise Ridge area of the King Range National Conservation Area is the result of a partnership between the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the International Mountain Bike Association (IMBA), along with the Redwood Coast Mountain Bike Association. The 11.6-mile Paradise Royale Loop is a great introduction to the ...

Ringing in the New Year in Las Vegas? If so, you might want to bring or rent a bike to ride off your hangover on New Year’s day. Believe it or not, the Las Vegas region offers a lot of great riding, from the Boulder Canyon trails to the Cowboy Trails just south of Red ...

The Black Canyon Trail (BCT) is truly epic, stretching from Highway 69 south to the Carefree Highway, just north of Phoenix. This MTB Project ride lists total mileage at 67.5 miles of 100% singletrack, but I’ve also read reports of 78 miles of total rideable trail. Either way, you’ll want to break this ride into ...

Not all great rides have to be epic death marches. Fort Clinch State Park, just north of Jacksonville, Florida, offers a fun and flowing loop that offers a mere 80 feet of elevation gain in 5.4 miles. Take a look at the elevation chart and you’ll see a low elevation of just three feet above sea level, ...

As we discovered during our spring break trip to Mulberry Gap just outside of Ellijay, Georgia, the mountains of Northern Georgia are an underappreciated hot bed of incredible mountain biking. This region’s combination of significant tracts of public land in the Chattahoochee National Forest, ample elevation change, old logging infrastructure, CCC-era legacy trails and a thriving mountain bike culture ...

Alabama might not be the first state to come to mind as a mountain bike destination, but Coldwater Mountain near Anniston, Alabama, is positioned to change that notion. Coldwater Mountain has earned Bronze-level status as an IMBA Ride Center with 25 miles of newly constructed trails already on the ground. Plans are in place to increase ...

Just an hour and a half drive northeast of San Diego you’ll find the gold rush town of Julian, and just a few miles south of that former boom town, you’ll find the trailhead for the Cuyamaca to Noble Canyon IMBA Epic. This 29-mile ride descends and ascends 3,800 feet of elevation as it traverses as ...

As fall and winter continue to march south, so too will our featured rides. This week we’re highlighting Big Bend Ranch State Park, which sits just north and west of Big Bend National Park in the southwest corner of Texas. It’s extremely remote, extremely beautiful and highly likely to provide you with a big does of ...

Gooseberry Mesa, located in Utah’s southwest corner, is simply one of the most magical places I’ve camped and ridden in the American west. Granted, there’s a lot of territory I haven’t visited, but there’s no denying the worthiness of this destination. Having been constructed over 20 years ago by the Harris brothers, the Gooseberry Mesa ...

The massive 125,000-acre Big South Fork (BSF) National River and Recreation Area, which sits roughly 80 miles northwest of Knoxville, Tennessee, was one of the first National Park Service units to embrace mountain biking back in the early 1990s. Though just one trail was initially open to mountain biking, additional trails have steadily been opened to ...

Douthat State Park sits in the Appalachian Mountains just a little over an hour’s drive north of Roanoke, Virginia. This 4,500 acre park provides a mix of newly-constructed trails as well as many miles of Civilian Conservation Corps legacy trails. This 18-mile IMBA Epic loop is the highlight reel of the 40+ miles of trails ...

The Phil’s World trail system, near Cortez, Colorado, is a worthy destination for a multitude of reasons. First, the riding is absolutely amazing. Second, this riding area illustrates what can be achieved when local advocacy groups are able to form strong partnerships with land managers like the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Phil’s World exists on BLM ...

Ohio might not be the first state that jumps to your mind when you’re looking for a mountain bike destination. But, the 22.2-mile loop around Mohican State Park is well worth the trip. I’ve only ridden the approximately 8-mile short loop and have been itching to get back for the long loop ever since. Still ...

Kingdom Trails is one of the premier mountain bike destinations on the east coast, if not the entire United States. Sure, it doesn’t have the epic scenery of Sedona or Moab, but the riding is world class and the quaint little town of Burke, Vermont is very welcoming to cyclists. Much of the area’s economic growth ...

As summer begins to show the first signs of the approaching fall, we’ll continue to feature some high-country rides while they remain accessible. This week’s Featured Ride loops up into the mountains between Aspen and Snowmass, offering breathtaking views of 14,000-foot peaks in the neighboring Elk Mountain range. This 18.3-mile route features 2,175 feet of climbing ...

This 69.5-mile trail segment certainly lives up to it’s status as an IMBA Epic. Don’t let that mileage turn you off though, as the North Umpqua Trail (NUT) can be ridden in segments or in its entirety as supported adventure. Ridden west to east the NUT climbs along the North Umpqua River, gaining 9,000 feet ...

MTB Project encourages users to rank rides and trails in order to help other riders prioritize ride options when exploring new trails. Rider’s who have been lucky enough to ride this high-country route have rated it favorably enough to capture the number one rating in the region surrounding Grand Teton National Park and number two in the entire state ...

This week’s Featured Ride takes us way up north to Alaska, near the town of Seward on the southeastern side of the Kenai Peninsula. Seward is roughly a two hour and thirty minute drive south from Anchorage. In the current issue of Dirt Rag, #186, we featured a story about riding in Alaska. Here’s an except ...

This week’s Featured Ride continues our high-country theme as we roll into the heart of summer. Tahoe’s iconic Rim trail sits at maximum elevation of nearly 9,000 feet, so now is the time to ride! First, a couple of things you need to know. Only a portion of the 168-mile Tahoe Rim Trail (TRT) is open to bikes. ...

Whistler Bike Park’s Top of the World trail is a bucket-list experience for any gravity-loving mountain biker. This week’s featured ride adds some epic backcountry riding to the legendary Top of the World alpine experience. This high-altitude experience is open from July through late September. You’ll need to procure both a Whistler Bike Park pass and a ...

This post marks the beginning of a partnership between us here at Dirt Rag and MTB Project, the nation’s leading digital trail database. Each week we’ll be featuring one MTB Project’s best rides when it’s most seasonally relevant. Of course, we’d love to hear your suggestions, email your favorites to [email protected] or comment below. Since we’re rolling ...

Courtesy of the International Mountain Bicycling Association: The MTB Project website and mobile apps have been updated and improved with new functionality. The apps are available in both Android and iOS versions, and are completely free. MTB Project continues to grow in popularity, with a catalog of user-generated content that now exceeds 34,000 miles of trail. ...

We’ve spent many an hour around Dirt Rag headquarters talking about how valuable an online trail database would be to the mountain bike community. Throughout the years there’s been a multitude of attempts, but few of those efforts gained lasting traction. That is, until now. In May of this year, MTB Project celebrated its first ...

By Eric J. Wallace West Virginia Governor Jim Justice signed a groundbreaking new mountain biking bill into law earlier this year. Known as SB 317, the legislation effectively extends ski resort-style liability protections to private landowners — so long as they join a group like the Mountaineer Trail Network Recreation Authority. Comprised of public organizations, ...

In Montana, mountain bike advocates seek continued access to the Lionhead by David Tucker Halfway up the final climb to Targhee Pass, our progress grinds to a halt. From the high side of the trail, a ball of earth the size of a VW bus hovers suspended in midair, propped up by six 50-foot beams ...

Editor’s note: Our latest print issue of Dirt Rag Magazine, The Road Trip Issue, just dropped in the mailboxes for subscribers and newsstands. Here’s an awesome write-up of mountain biking in Denmark to accompany the print issue. Interested in subscribing? Click here! By Shawna Kenney pamphlet translated by Shawna Kenney with help from Anja Klemp ...

For perhaps the first time in modern history, government officials beyond the highest-ranking are household names in the United States. People who are not very involved in politics and invested in policy-making likely had no idea who was Administrator or Acting Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) prior to the recently-resigned Scott Pruitt. And ...

Words and Photos by Andrea Wilson I hail originally from the hot, flat realm of Memphis, Tennessee. I moved to the Colorado Front Range almost three years ago, and I’ve been obsessed with finding all of the nooks and crannies of the mountains ever since. When I realized that the population density of the Denver ...