Old Forge’s new passion
Those of us who are of a certain age and rural upbringing are no strangers to mountain biking. Except we didn’t call it mountain biking. We called it, if we called it anything, ripping down a forested hillside at truly stupid speeds, hopping logs, dodging white oaks and leaping off duff embankments after innocently telling our moms that we were “going for a bike ride” as she nodded her somber approval.
Nearly a half-century later, trail builder Eli Glesmann of Rock Solid Trail Contracting is arranging similar (although far more sophisticated and artistic) obstacles on the slopes of McCauley Mountain in Old Forge for the Adirondack Foothills Trails Association, a nascent organization whose accomplishments belie the fact that it’s only been in existence for about a year. In the time it takes most institutions to draw up their bylaws, AFTS has built miles of trails, and is planning many more, that have already started to put Old Forge on the map as a mountain biking destination.
Mountain biking as it’s currently understood began in the American West in the 1970s, as
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