As trails soften from packed snow to puddles and we can’t be on our favorite mountain bike trails, we are here to offer an alternative to your mud season blues: gravel riding. We asked our friend Finn to share a bit about how we can all stay on our bikes through the shoulder seasons. Finn Maguire is an avid cyclist who serves as a board member of both Vermont Youth Cycling as well as the Caledonia Trail Collaborative and volunteers as a youth mountain bike coach with Northeast Kingdom-based Hilltopper MTB.
Upon learning that our realtor (Libby Ratico) was also a cyclist, I asked her for a gravel road loop that started and finished in St. Johnsbury. She sent me up into North Danville on a paved road, and then up increasingly steeper gravel roads, and then up nearly-impassable class IV roads.
When I exhaustedly reached the summit near Cole’s Pond, I jokingly texted my wife: “I think our realtor is trying to kill me.” Being a Mass Flatlander for most of my life had NOT prepared me for Libby’s Loop, nor for Vermont gravel in general.
That was the summer of 2020, when my job went remote and our family of four decided to give Vermont a try. We settled on St. Johnsbury so our kids could attend St. Johnsbury Academy and where we all had close proximity to Kingdom Trails and Burke Mountain to better address our mountain biking and snowboarding obsessions.
And in that first gravel ride I had learned what Libby already knew: that gravel riding is an incredibly challenging and fun sport, and that we happened to land in the heart of the Northern Forest and one of gravel riding’s absolute prime locations.
The Best of Both Disciplines
Prior to that fateful Libby’s Loop, my exposure to the fairly new discipline of “gravel riding” was on Southeastern Massachusetts power line roads and forest doubletrack. After all, that area of Massachusetts is virtually all paved-road country, while roughly 65% of Caledonia County’s roads are gravel, with some towns boasting zero paved roads.
I had a dedicated gravel bike — basically a cyclocross bike (or road bike with wider, knobby tires), but I didn’t really understand the true allure of gravel riding until then.
So what exactly is its allure? Well for me, it blends the best of road and mountain biking. A rider can travel distances at a good clip, like road cycling … and then ride in a more rugged and natural arena, like mountain biking. As with both disciplines, group rides are the most fun part. But the capability of gravel bikes means that you can often add in a heaping helping of adventure that would be too gritty for a road bike.
“That’s a terrible idea. Count me in!”
The nascent group NEK Gravel is one local organization that stokes the flames of Northeast Kingdom gravel riding. It’s a growing resource for pre-planned loops, for discussing any particular issues with gravel roads and riding, and it’s the place where bad ideas are born and nurtured to their full potential.
Two of the ringmasters of the NEK gravel circus are Kirby residents Mike and Cathy Rowell, both stalwarts in New England’s mountain biking and cyclocross race scenes. Besides having what is an incredibly long streak of consecutive riding days (over 12 years and counting), Mike also boasts the NEK’s unofficial record for most bad-idea rides:
- See a forest road on a century-old logging map? Let’s ride over and see if it’s still there!
- Read a story about a natural spring that was cursed when settlers drove off the native inhabitants? Let’s see if we can find it!
- A hunter sighted Bigfoot near Kingdom Trails? 1000% chance we are riding over to explore that ASAP.
And every NEK gravel rider is all-in for the adventures. The soundtrack of many NEK gravel rides is excited chatter about the most rural, scenic, and/or challenging roads in the area … and plans for when to ride them.
A camaraderie of suffering, and creemees
If road cyclists have coffee rides, and mountain bikers have post-ride brewskis, then gravel’s calorie-earning social reward is often the creemee.
And the NEK even has a semi-famous version of that during the warmer months: The Tuesday Night Creemee Ride.
Started by gravel icon Ian Boswell and now led by NEK Gravel President, Fritz Fay (Land Animal Adventures), the Creemee Ride starts at 5:30pm on Tuesday nights at the Bay Street bike pavilion in St J:
- While the route occasionally varies, it usually goes out and up and down and around Waterford and then back to St J.
- It generally will split into two groups, the full loop group does approximately 28 miles with some “town line sprints” thrown in, and a second group that shortens the route to about 21 miles.
- Both rides have challenging climbs, wide and friendly roads, and a few magnificent views thrown in.
Riders usually meet back at Bay Street at about 7:15PM, and then have the option to take the short spin over to the Milkhouse ice cream shop for the flavor of their choice (maple creemee for me, please!) and to connect for some post-ride banter. The ride also occasionally coincides with Discover St. Johnsbury’s incredibly popular “Food Truck Tuesdays.”
Connecting Communities and Seasons Via Gravel Roads
Just as Bike Borderlands is the key initiative that Northern Forest Center uses to connect mountain bike areas in the region, gravel roads are the physical links that connect towns to towns, and villages to villages. And those connecting roads are often blessed with incredibly picturesque scenes through forests and farmlands.
And while gravel riding is a fantastic discipline on its own merit, mountain bikers also use gravel rides to prep for the mountain bike season. Even through the winter, “fatgravel” rides (fat biking on gravel roads) are many a mountain bikers’ preferred method of making sure their fitness is ready when the ropes come down on mountain bike season.
If you’d like more information on gravel riding in the area, be sure to visit NEK Gravel.
Thanks for reading, and hope to see you out on the roads!
Finn Maguire
NEK Gravel has bike routes to fit every rider cataloged on their website. Check out different ways to explore the Northeast Kingdom while we wait for our mountain bike trails to dry out!
