We’re hiking it nearly every day now, getting a feel for the land, exploring its nooks. It’s 550 acres big and it’s mostly hillside. There are a few logging roads from the Ash removal efforts, but they’re deep and muddy. We’re mapping the hard one, the main adaptive trail to the top, full of switchbacks. The weather is still cool and we’ve gotten some clear weather lately after all that rain.

It was late summer, into fall almost.

We sat and talked about the vision of putting a mountain biking destination in the heart of the Berkshires and what that would mean. We talked about inspiration from those that had come before us, blazing the regulatory and public relations trails that had lifted mountain biking from being a fringe pariah to something to celebrate. And the advantages that we now enjoy from the patient efforts that preceded us.