Mountain bike trail meeting this evening

Mountain biking enthusiasts and any interested members of the community are invited to a meeting tonight (Thursday) to hear an update on plans to develop a mountain bike trail system at the foot of the Big Horn Mountains east of Lovell.

Entitled Mountain Biking – The Path Forward, the meeting will be held Thursday, April 17, at 6 p.m. at the Lovell Community Center.

“The Town of Lovell will be hosting an open discussion about the progress of the Cottonwood Canyon Trails Plan and our next steps,” Town of Lovell administrator Jed Nebel said in an email to interested parties. “Please feel free to bring your friends and family as we will discuss some exciting developments and showcase the trail plan that was designed by Pointe Strategies. We will have light refreshments and welcome all input.”

Nebel said the project was born out of a series of local meetings held to gauge interest in a trail system, and the trails plan was completed last fall by Pointe Strategies of Lakewood, Colorado, funded by the Town of Lovell and Big Horn County. An initial meeting was held in March of 2024 concerning recreation in general, and the idea to promote and develop mountain biking was born of that meeting.

Nebel said the town has obtained a $10,000 micro grant from the Wyoming Business Council to help with the construction documents.

Interested parties looked at a variety of sites for a bike path system and settled on Cottonwood Canyon at the foot of the Big Horns east of Lovell in part because the area has already been designated a recreation area by the Bureau of Land Management and the presence of shovel-ready “rake to ride” soil that is perfect for a bike trail system, Nebel said.

The trail system will include more than 26 miles of trails coming out of Cottonwood Canyon and branching out in multiple directions from there, he said.

Leading the meeting will be Annie McFarland of Pointe Strategies, the town’s consultant, and Mike Kusiek, Executive Director of Wyoming Pathways, an advocacy organization working to “improve active transportation and people-powered recreation opportunities in Wyoming, including biking of all forms, walking, hiking and cross-country skiing,” according to the group’s mission statement.

The meeting will be informational in nature with the goal of “keeping interested parties in the loop, explain next steps and present the design of the trail system,” Nebel said. 

The design includes 28.6 miles of trails – a total of 10 -- graded from beginner to intermediate to advanced and ranging in length from 0.2 miles to 4.1 miles.

Nebel noted that, at the initial meeting more than a year ago Troy Rarick of Over the Edge Sports of Fruita, Colorado, a mountain biking hot spot, spoke with great enthusiasm about the location of the trail system east of Lovell, agreeing that Cottonwood Canyon is the best area for the system out of those examined.

“We’ll showcase the trail system and explain next steps and how the environmental study will be conducted,” Nebel said.