Taking its name from the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, the Kingdom Trail Association has been providing mountain bikers with the opportunity to explore some of the country's most beautiful and iconic landscapes for over 25 years. Founded in 1994, the KTA was built to help manage relationships among the private landowners that make up the overwhelming majority of land the trail network has been built upon, and provide cyclists from around the world with a world-class experience in the Northeastern United States while showcasing the area's natural beauty and stimulating the local economy. Decades later, it's clear that those original visionaries were on to something.
Numerous studies have been conducted over the years that indeed show the profound economic impact these trails have had on the town of East Burke, VT in the heart of the Kingdom Trails. In 2016, a statewide study conducted by Camoin Associates, an agency specializing economic and fiscal impact analyses, was paid for by the Vermont Trails and Greenways Council. The Kingdom Trail Association was one of four trail networks to participate in the study, and among the results it was determined that the Kingdom Trails hosted approximately 94,000 trail user in 2015, primarily from Spring through Autumn, and peaking during the summer months.
As recently as 2019, the Kingdom Trail Association published a community report, highlighting their 25 years of existence, and showing just how powerful an economic asset the trails have proven to be in that time, with estimated impact upwards of $10 million in 2018 alone. The region played host to nearly 140,000 visits that year, with 84% coming from out of state. The ever increasing surge in popularity of the trails was profound and categorically unmitigated.
On November 21st of 2019, three landowners informed the Kingdom Trail Association that they would no longer allow for cyclists to access the trails located within their respective property boundary lines. A 4th landowner, whose property ran adjacent to the aforementioned collective, joined their ranks a few weeks later on December 16th. The letters did not include any specific reasons for the restricted access. On January 17th it was announced that the enormously popular NEMBA Fest, an annual celebration and fundraiser for both the Kingdom Trail Association and New England Mountain Bike Association with upwards of 4,000 participants based out of Darling Hill, would be cancelled for 2020. On January 23rd, the KTA finally issued an
open letter to the community taking complete responsibility for having "been slow to respond to issues and concerns and we acknowledge our lack of voice and leadership", and promising "to be more responsive and transparent as we roll out plans and address challenges."
Speculation has run rampant in the time since this information became public knowledge, and while the Kingdom Trail Association has yet to update their trail map, it is clear that mountains bikers have indeed lost access to several classic trails and routes on Darling Hill, including the
Troll Stroll, Tody's Tour, and
Tap n Die, with the connectivity between the Darling Hill ridge line and the town itself now severed. In total, approximately 13 miles of trail have been lost to mountain bikes.
Abigail Long came on board as executive director for the Kingdom Trail Association in February of 2018, having previously held the same title at the Leadville Trail 100 Legacy Foundation, the nonprofit arm of the Leadville Race series. She and her husband came to East Burke from Colorado, where she has acclimated to life in the Northeast Kingdom rather quickly. In September of 2019, the Burke Area Chamber of Commerce presented Abby with the "Citizen of the Year" award during the Fall Festival, recognizing her as an "exuberant and thoughtful advocate for the community." Abby and the rest of the Kingdom Trail Association now face what is regarded by many as perhaps the most pressing crisis in all 26 years of the KTA's existence, and have been hard at work developing a plan moving forward for both the Kingdom Trails as well as the community, making a concerted effort to emphasize their dedication to the landowners who make the enormously popular network of trails possible in the first place. Abby was gracious enough to take some time to address many of the concerns that have been expressed by cyclists around the world, and offer as much clarification on the matter as she could.
John Worth and Jim O'Reilly are among the original visionaries behind the Kingdom Trails, and are both business owners who rely heavily on the success of this trail network.
What has happened as far as communication between the Kingdom Trail Association and the four landowners who have pulled bikes off of their trails?
Abby Long: I have of course reached out many times, and at this time they're asking for some space and I want to be respectful of that, but we have not been able to sit down with them. There have been some folks in the community that are close to the landowners who are also advocates of Kingdom Trails, and have been able to sit down and learn a bit. We've been able to get a sense of the landowners' concerns from those conversations, which we are grateful for.
My goal right now is to let them be, and I want to show them and the entire community - and the rest of our landowners - that we're listening and we're taking action. I want to prove that we're striving to make amends and these drastic changes, these improvements that are much needed, quite frankly, and I agree with them. When I arrived at Kingdom Trails, things were coming to a head, and I believe these landowners' decisions didn't happen overnight for them either. This has been brewing for years.
You guys wrote an open letter to the community, and in it you acknowledge having been slow to respond to issues and concerns, as well as a lack of voice and leadership on behalf of the Kingdom Trail Association. Are you able to elaborate on that?
Abby: Absolutely. We have experienced, in terms of our visitor rates, exceptional growth over the years. That is really exciting as far as economic opportunities go, but it was ultimately unsustainable growth.
Businesses were thriving as was the Kingdom Trail Association, but with that comes some challenges. For example, Kingdom Trails doesn't own a single parking lot or even own a parking space. We don't own any of our facility buildings, and to me, that's not sustainable. I want to show the community that we're here, that we're making a commitment to them, and so I really think we need to almost pump the brakes, and take a good hard look at ourselves and really make some investments in the community in order to fix this.
We had over 100 miles of trails, and we still have over 80 miles of trails now. And once you're out on the trails, riding or running or hiking, I think you do have a sense that the numbers are dispersed, so our trails may be able to manage the capacity, but the town cannot, and that's where we need to focus our attention: the trail amenities. You know, we're world leaders in trail building and maintaining, but it has to coincide with proper infrastructure, and I think that's where we're going to be putting a lot of our efforts.
Mountain bikers recently lost access to approximately 13 miles of trail along Darling Hill, which include many of the area's most popular trails including "Tap N Die" and "Troll Stroll".
Am I right in my understanding that it's hard for you guys to incentivize private landowner involvement? There are no major financial incentives, correct?
Abby: You hit it on the head. This is something I struggle with a lot. Our landowners are all in a non-binding agreement with us, which I think is actually really special and helps makes Kingdom Trails and our community unique. Yes, we thank them publicly and we throw them an annual celebration to honor them, but the state of Vermont does not allow for compensation.
A reason why all trails in the state of Vermont are able to exist is through the Vermont statute for landowner liability protection, and I think this stems from traditional sports like hunting, but recreational trails also fall under this protection, so landowners are not liable for injuries that might occur on their property as a result of recreation. That is especially helpful for the Kingdom Trails.
We do have additional insurance that we cover our landowners with, but the state statute is really why trails are allowed to be on private property, but what would jeopardize this policy is that landowners are not allowed to receive compensation for the recreation or else they lose this protection. This is something that a lot of trail groups in the state, Kingdom Trails, VMBA chapters, Green Mountain Clubs, and VAST have to work around. Between us all are thousands of private landowners.
The landowners are obviously aware of the lack of any financial incentives when they agree to any private land easements, correct?
Abby: They are, but I definitely hear rumblings. I know it’s something that frustrates them. We have been around for over 25 years, and there are many landowners that have businesses around the area that benefit through the number of folks that visit. There are also landowners who don't own businesses and aren't benefiting in any way financially, but they are seeing pressure and stress being placed on their properties from recreational use.
What kind of feedback have you guys received from other landowners, aside from the four who have removed mountain biking from their trails? I'm sure there are plenty of other opinions from other landowners on this, and I'm sure you've heard some of that as well as the local businesses.
Abby: You know, we've definitely upped our communication with our landowners because of this issue. I'm trying to stay positive, and I say to myself, "This is a blessing in disguise," even though it doesn't feel like one right now, but I am trying to stay calm and tell myself, "This is our chance and we need to seize it," and show folks like I said earlier, that we're trying to make those improvements by communicating with our landowners more, listening to their concerns, and being able to address them much more quickly. But yes, the landowners that restricted access are not alone in their opinions. There are other landowners who definitely have concerns as well.
We had a study done in 2016 that shows we had an over $10 million direct economic impact. That wasn't the Kingdom Trail Association getting that money, it was the area making money on gas, and lodging, and food, and maple syrup. I think there's some concern in the air among businesses, and especially lodging with NEMBA Fest being canceled, and that concerns us as well. That's why we're still, as we make these changes, wanting to let people know that we're alive and well, and we still have those 80 plus miles of trails, which is more miles of trails than many other networks in the area. This doesn't include Burke Mountain, which is a whole other experience. We’re just reassuring folks that we're not going anywhere and that we're only going to get better.
What kinds of lessons have you guys learned from this experience, particularly in terms of unchecked growth, and how does that impact efforts to educate mountain bikers moving forward?
Abby: I think we've learned a lot of lessons. The first is the importance of two-way communication between our landowners and our community. We really need to listen. We need to take our direction from them, and engage them more. We wrote about creating a landowner committee and having consistent communication through public forums, the first of which is coming up on February 11th.
We can't just go full steam ahead on our own. We need to take all thoughts and considerations into account, and make sure we're progressing responsibly, and that's through collaboration and communication.
How do you guys take what you've learned and share that messaging with the scores of people coming here from out of town?
Abby: That's something that Kingdom Trails takes full responsibility for. While that open letter was beautiful and really well received, we should have come out with it three weeks prior. There was a lot of finger pointing going on in the time between the news breaking and our open letter, and that’s on us.
Another reason we need to pump the brakes and audit ourselves is so that we can more effectively convey that riding these trails is not a right, but instead a privilege, and it’s because of our private landowners. Riders are guests who are invited to experience our beautiful landscape and community, so we need to put that in front of the trail users' face immediately and that's through education efforts. We can also tell that story through social media and our website. We are developing a code of conduct that we hope trail users will initial and sign so there are some expectations and bullet points to hold them accountable.
Then there's our
Trail Ambassador Program. We've had about a dozen ambassadors working weekends and Monday holidays in previous years. We've always had that program, but their efforts lately have shifted to parking cars because that was a desperate priority lately. But we need to have not only that management in town, but also more of a presence out on the trails, at trailheads greeting people, educating them, letting them know where they can and cannot go, educating them on why they should be purchasing a membership to support trail maintenance and trail management, and just information in general. We are hoping to expand that program and make it more of a stewardship program, and get people out there advocating for and taking care of the trails, taking care of the people, and above all else, taking care of our landowners.
Are you aware of any other places that lean so heavily on private land? Does that kind of put the Kingdom Trail Association in uncharted territory in your estimation?
Abby: I think that much of New England is pretty similar. There's a lot of private land in this part of the country, and Kingdom Trails isn't alone. I listed all those other Vermont trail groups with whom we have joined forces in our efforts to advocate for private landowner protection. There's also something we joined called the Borderlands, which is a pretty new effort, and it's all of these mountain bike networks from northern Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, actually even southern Quebec working to advocate for folks to come to the “Northern Borders” region because it is an extremely rural area and faces persistent economic and social challenges. I believe the majority of those networks are all due to the generosity of private land.
This is a very different dynamic for me having come from Colorado where I could leave my driveway and be on public land that was the size of Vermont. I have been looking at Washington State recently, because going back to that private landowner compensation that we can't quite navigate around yet, they have something called “current use”, which Vermont does too, encouraging tax breaks for agriculture and forestry on private land, yet Washington State includes recreation. It's a great example to look towards that maybe one day Vermont could aim for.
Can you describe the landowner committee and really some of the specifics in terms of how it's going to operate and how it will function?
Abby: That's something we're grappling with, and that's why we're looking to a public forum to actually get advice from the landowners on how they'd like it to look like. But it's definitely going to be an advisory committee that our board and our staff can look to for guidance. We're also going to have to balance it. We have landowners that have hundreds and hundreds of acres with miles and miles of trails, and we have landowners with two acres and an eighth of a mile, but that eighth of a mile may be crucial for a connection. So we have to be able to balance all those different types of voices. That's something we're hopeful to form with the aid of the landowners.
One of the things that comes up pretty frequently is the impact of something like a NEMBA Fest and other events can have on East Burke. You guys also host Winterbike annually.
Abby: Oh yeah, thank you. We are still super excited for Winterbike. We didn't cancel and we're so happy about that. We have relocated though. We'll be hosting in downtown East Burke on Mike's Tiki Bar property, which is a great location this year because in lieu of having restricted access to fat biking up on Darling Hill, we actually looked to our landowners in our White School section of our trail network, and they were thrilled and welcomed grooming on their property. So we're actually able to offer just as many miles as we have in years’ past of groomed fat bike trails. I'm super spoiled because the trails are right out of my backyard. They're new and it's exciting.
Our trail manager was nervous because it was new terrain and he hadn't explored that yet, and snow grooming is a much different beast compared to working on trails in the summer. He's just over the moon about how successful these new trails that we're able to offer are, and landowners are too, and I think the businesses have been grateful that there's some winter traffic in town. It's always good to shake things up so things don't get stale, and we're so grateful to Mike at the Tiki Bar for being willing to help. He's excited too. We host that event with MTBVT, and I think again, we're all pretty excited for the change.
As far as NEMBA Fest goes though, can you talk about some of what went into the decision to cancel? I've heard you talk about the strain that it not only puts on Darling Hill those properties, but it also must put a strain on the day to day lives of the people who call this place home.
Abby: Canceling that weekend was definitely a decision that came out after we learned about the restricted access. There were some advocates in town who were able to learn some of the concerns from the landowners, and NEMBA Fest was definitely detrimental to their everyday life, so that became a concern that we needed to address. Also knowing where we could host a festival that was flanked with restricted access to mountain biking, because if you're unable to have trails around the entire event, we'd be forcing bike traffic onto the road and that's something we've been looking to mitigate for the past couple years.
We did look at other locations. Burke Mountain is welcome to the idea of hosting it in the future. They're hosting the Enduro World Series this August, which is so exciting for them and for the community. They just were unsure of how the land would take to a festival in June. It might be too wet or just not prepared in time to host that many folks, so they really want to explore that for themselves this year. We'll look into that next year with them.
The pressure and the stress that NEMBA Fest puts on not just the private properties but the rural infrastructure of the Vermont village that we live in is immense, so there were a lot of things we had to take into consideration. It was a hard decision, but I believed it was the right one, especially considering the long-term sustainability of our trail network.
How were those conversations with the New England Mountain Bike Association? Would you say that NEMBA was pretty understanding?
Abby: They were extremely understanding and helpful too in this situation. This wasn't a decision that we just came to immediately. There were many conversations. Like I said we looked at many other options and considerations, and also with our other partner, the Wildflower Inn, who was the landowner that allowed us to host on the property. I think everyone understands that we did not want to risk or jeopardize the rest of the trail network or the future of the trail network for one weekend.
It was such a hard decision too because this is a main fundraiser of Kingdom Trails for the entire year that helps us maintain and build more trails, so a lot of thought went into this. We engaged our community and other landowners too. We asked for opinions. We started doing what we said we're going to do. We're going to take our lead from them, and that was the feedback that we received.
I get the sense that you guys were a bit handcuffed to NEMBA Fest and you weren't able to be as productive with developing and building new trails and things of that nature because of the spent time building up to this big weekend every year. I can only imagine what the cleanup efforts were like and how exhausted you guys must have been afterwards. Without NEMBA Fest what do you expect to see productivity-wise from the Kingdom Trails Association and the trail crew?
Abby: We have a staff in the summer months that grows to 30 people, and that includes trail crew welcome center staff, ambassadors, along with our regular full-time folks, all of whom devote all of their time a solid two weeks leading up to the event, and this doesn't even count Lilias, our marketing and events manager organizing and planning this for literally an entire year. She gets to work on the next NEMBA Fest as soon as it’s over.
We are very excited to be able to gain that time back, and put it towards some new efforts because since we are trying to refocus and bring our attention back to our community. We brought back annual volunteer days every summer, but we will look to engage our community more and have folks join us for monthly or weekly volunteer days. We hope it will give the community a new sense of ownership of the trails as they're a part of building or cleaning or maintaining the trails.
We also have an AmeriCorps youth education outreach coordinator who's been in the schools every day, and she gets kiddos out on the trails every single day. She's able to teach some environmental experiential education while out there, and so we will be putting some energy towards more of that, and hopefully allowing for it to go beyond youths,. Adding some adult programming would be healthy as well.
It's that blessing in disguise even though it doesn't always feel like it. It's kind of re-energizing to think of new initiatives we can bring to the forefront again.
Do you think that being in a close-knit community like East Burke actually helps with getting through something like this?
Abby: I think so. I think that the tight-knit, smaller community has been helpful in immediately addressing some of the concerns of the community and the landowners. That’s not to discount what we're hearing online, because we are actually reading and learning from the comments on social media.
Our trail users are extremely valuable as well. Without people coming and joining us and experiencing our trails, the region wouldn't be thriving. I think one of the first things to address that is through the open letters that we've been publishing, not just to our local community, but to trail users elsewhere as well. We have the public forum coming next week, and for folks who can't attend, they are still able to submit feedback through a website we made that's dedicated to that feasibility and capacity study, so we do hope to gain a lot of thoughts, suggestions, and opinions from that population as well.
What do you want people to know about how you guys are moving forward?
Abby: You know, I think by no means will it be easy to navigate this. It is a challenge and it is stressful because we know we must do right by the community, and there are a lot of folks in the region that depend upon the economic value that we bring. So we’re really trying to manage this situation with grace and civility.
We also need to remember to listen. This is an opportunity we need to seize. This is our chance to reset by not losing sight of why we exist and who we exist for. Our purpose is to uplift the community, and therefore we need to listen to them, engage with them, and take direction from them.
All the while we need to make sure that folks around the world know that we're still alive and well, and that we still welcome everybody to come enjoy our incredible terrain and beautiful landscape and amazing, unique Northeast Kingdom region of Vermont.
It's not like there's not room for additional growth and additional trails to come in.
Abby: No, definitely not. I mean, we have some things on the docket this summer, particularly some collaborative efforts we're doing with the neighboring towns and with other landowners that are really exciting.
I would think that while you have to acknowledge the challenging time currently, there's no reason to lose hope that you're not going to come out of this stronger.
Abby: Darling Hill is stunning. It is absolutely stunning and it is home to some of the
original trails, some really fun trails, and this restricted access is difficult to swallow for a lot of people. Folks are upset because they may have lost some of their favorite routes. I'm a creature of habit too, and I do the same loop oftentimes after work, and that route has now been disrupted. However, we're going to show people that we still offer an amazing experience for all levels. We're going to work hard over the next couple months before the summer season opens to create and show off some of these new routes and get everyone excited so that they still come up and support our amazing region.
For membership, landowner, and event information, please visit the Kingdom Trail Association website.
Follow the KTA on Facebook for further updates on this matter as well as daily trail condition reports.
On Tuesday, February 11 the Kingdom Trail Association will be hosting a public workshop to collect input on the community’s vision for the future of the trail system. The event will be held at the Burke Town School Gym between 5:00-7:30 pm and is open to the public. For more information on the Network Capacity Study, as well as public input opportunities, check out the project website.
I am from the area and it was totally clear to me.
Too many people who have ZERO respect for the landowners and townspeople. ZERO!
Multiple times I have tome to a road crossing (state highway/ 50MPH zone) where there is a group of 10-15 people standing in the road blocking traffic; a car comes and has to stop for the group. They move to let the car through and then right back in the road blocking traffic again.....
I watched a guy come out of the trail directly into traffic in front of a state trooper; then he cuts off the same trooper so he could cross the road. Trooper jumped out of his car and started screaming at the guy.....
Groups of 13-15 riding uphill on the down hill only trails; who feel like you are the a*shole for not allowing them to proceed uphill.....
Trail closures for a wedding on one of the properties..... lets just ride around the rope and closed sign, tell the guy who reminds us that is closed to "f*ck off we'll ride where we want."
Have a powerbar and throw the wrapper on the ground......
ZERO RESPECT!
...
Groups of 13-15 riding uphill on the down hill only trails...”
Not sure what’s the connection?
He says that people going uphill swear at people going downhill. that’s ZERO respect for people going downhill.
Has NOTHING to do though w respect for landowners & townspeople.
Please note in sentence 4:
"Long said she did not feel comfortable sharing letters from the landowners in question about why they recently chose to withdraw their properties from KTA"
www.caledonianrecord.com/news/trio-of-darling-hill-landowners-won-t-allow-kta-mountain/article_6b71e093-e862-5fe1-b197-629d2ef6f918.html
Again, given what the economic parameters are in conjunction with a pretty small community, it seems A Long's answers are obtuse. She may not have been able to sit down with the landowners, but I suspect there are specific issues at hand that she and KTA are well aware of. KTA is doing themselves a great deal of harm, by not making these issues public.
It would seem sensible to alert the bike riding public that "Some of our landowners are equestrians and WILL be riding on their land"
A sad situation, leading to even more speculation and accusations in all the directions.
Seriously though, its all rumors at this point and I've heard a lot. Who knows what's true and what isn't but I wouldn't be surprised if disrespectful users were part of the problem.
As far as trails out west vs. equestrians, its an apples to oranges discussion compared to what happened in VT. The equestrians in question allowed trails to be built ON THEIR LAND out of generosity. Any argument against them ends right there, period.
This is on all of us to try to encourage good behavior among riders. There will always be a few asshats in any group (fewer among MTB'ers than most sports, I think) but probably most of the jerks don't even realize that they are causing problems for everyone. Crystal clear signage at trail entry points helps with this
www.northstarmonthly.com/features/kingdom-trails-targeted-in-act-request/article_ef5be052-5338-11ea-be77-fb882729878c.html
The fact that the sport is growing is great, especially in this area of the country, but maybe not when it comes to riding on private land.
I do understand why the riders would be pretty disappointed though. Do what us dirt jumpers have been doing for the last 20 years when our trails get dozed: Be bummed out for awhile and then find a new spot.
If the situation was caused by riders, then why hasn't KTA come out and said so? What would be the point in letting the rumor mill continue? Issue a statement saying that poor rider behavior is directly affecting a precious resource. Cleary state repercussions for this type of behavior going forward.
To the best of my knowledge, KTA has done nothing like this.
Not identifying a singular issue allows the conversation to focus on the many problems (in-town overcrowding/parking, inconsiderate behavior, landowner inconvenience for no benefit, potentially dubious financial reporting, lack of community involvement by KTA, even the reported conflict over fat bike grooming, which may or may not be the real final straw). In the end all of these, and likely more, need to be addressed and improved. Being vague at this time and accepting input via forums where everyone’s concerns can be heard might be the most productive way forward. It would certainly be tragic to focus on one issue to the extent that it pissed off other landowners who then also pulled out feeling their concerns weren’t being heard.
The best thing they can do now is listen to public input and start making actionable plans to address the issues. It won’t be easy to resolve all the problems, but at least they are listening and it seems like they will try.
Sounds like there were a few reasons that lead up to their decision to pullout.
One reason was the push on KT’s part to have all events up on Darling Hill, it just got too much for the residents. Then last year, KT hosted a bonfire during Winter Bike which upset one of the landowners because it was hosted on their property without KT first asking permission. All the traffics, noise and people were starting to overwhelm residents on Darling Hill. This past Fall a bike rider slapped a horse on the rear causing the horse to buck off a young girl, and then KT for whatever reason no longer maintained adequate horse trails causing the equestrians to have to ride in the fields on their own property, one of the landowners is a passionate equestrian.
The landowners put KT on notice there were issues but KT didn’t do anything about it, so the landowners felt that their only option was to pull the plug on the mountain bikers.
The fourth landowner discontinued their property for KT riders because their property is being listed on the real estate market and they felt that having all the mountain bikers ride through their property could hurt their chances of selling.
According to my sources many Darling Hill residents support KT and understand the good it does for the local economy but feel that there is no balance. Darling Hill residents want KT to start creating good trails in other parts of the Burke Area so the Ridge isn’t so crowded in the summer.
I imagine some of what was going on with the landowners is that they see KT’s 990s, see their $1,400,000+ in their bank account and then asks themselves why are we barring all the burden by having tons of random people in our back yard every weekend, the community isn’t getting anything in return, our taxes are high with no fiscal help plus dealing with the noise and inconvenience of events hosted next door. The landowners probably got feed up with it all, wanted KT to be less Darling Hill focused or at least give back.
If I were a member of the community who spent decades supporting KT with it not being reciprocal especially when seeing tons of money in their bank account and knowing they were a 501c3 setup for Charitable Givings, I probably would get feed up too or at the very least be asking the tough questions. After all, what has KT done within the past 10+ years for Charitable Givings?
Another question is why on their 990’s are they saying that the bulk of their income comes from educational services about trees, birds and butterflies, what’s up with that? I have never known anyone to visit KT for butterflies.
I would be curious to know how much biking ticket sales, KT swag and the advertising they charge is reported as unrelated business income as opposed to being thrown into the education services on their tax return.. what are the educational services?
For a 501c3 they could be doing a better job on being transparent.
I'm sure they are all thrilled with the millions of $ people have spent to be educated on "Butterflies, Birds, Trees and Summer Landscapes".......
While we cannot hold Abby accountable for the mess she inherited, she certainly owns a piece of what the org has done, or more to the point not done, since she took over the reigns. As I stated elsewhere, the people that lead us into this state of affairs over the past 5-15 years, cannot and should not be the people that lead us out. On principle alone they should not be allowed to "steward" this charitable organization.
I do think Abby is trying to take this organization in a more forward thinking, less grassroots direction, and Kudos for her for doing this.. However, as she mentioned these problems have been brewing for years, so maybe in order to truly move forward the Board of Directors needs to right and address KT’s past wrongs and hold people accountable, even if that means going public with some not so pleasant truths, get the skeleton’s out of the closet sort of mind set. After all, Board of Directors Fiduciary Duties are a real thing for Nonprofits and shouldn’t be ignored.
The reality is KT is a great organization but it has played fast and lose for sometime now. In their 25+ year existence, it’s only been under Abby’s leadership where have they started to change such as the Ameircorp Program. Yet, with the loss of these parcels of lands, KT is now under the magnifying glass like it’s never been before. If the organization has had any past indiscretions and chose to bury its head in the sand in hopes that people don’t figure it out, the Powers at Being are taking a huge risk, as if any past indiscretions do exist, they will come out, they always come out..
But, if KT were the ones to put it all out there, control the messaging and self report, as opposed to a journalist or an investigation launched, they would be a lot more respected in the eyes of all the communities who have continuously support them. Once everything is out there, the organization then could start over, rebuild with a fresh slate, practice better transparency, ethics and thus eliminating all further speculations and conjectures.
My concerns for KT’s future have validity. Short of KT drafting a lot of Non-Disclosure Agreements, I fear that 2020 will mark a turning point for KT as well as for the many innocent and good folks that trusted KT and it’s Board of Directors to do right. However, it’s up to them as to how they want to play this, my only hope is that they know what they are doing and understand the inevitable ramifications of not playing by the rules and not dealing head-on with the bad even if there are any unpleasant truths.
It is my understanding that the underlying purpose for KT is not just creating phenomenon trails but instead creating phenomenal trails which are the catalyst for infusing money into the local economy.
It would be nice to see a dichotomy of a people sitting on the board including business owners. Admittedly, some board members have businesses that benefit from KT such as nightly rental properties but it appears their is no consistent representation of the East Burke business community. Also, since KT holds itself out as being a multi-use trail system, other types of stakeholders should have equal representation.
Over the years, some of my local friends have shared their frustrations that various members of KT’s Board of Directors appear to be self-serving for example pushing for a new trail to come in that would significantly benefit their property, a family member or friend’s property due to the increased revenue that the trail would bring in from the bikers. If that is in fact true or even if there is glimmer of truth to this, then KT needs some pretty solid Conflict of Interest Policies and Board Member disclosures during the vetting process of selecting new Board Members.
It’s not uncommon for Nonprofits to have hard times finding people willing to sit on a Board but in KT’s situation, they don’t appear to lack people willing to be a Board Member, yet most locals have no idea how Board Members are selected, what KT’s Conflict of Interest Policies are and what KT’s Self-Dealing Policies/ Disclosure Policies are, which brings me back to my original statement that Kingdom Trail’s needs more transparency, as it would be nice for all the stakeholders to understand the process.
One of my local friends told me that KT’s former Executive Director was in control of many other local Burke Area Nonprofits. He made decisions for the business community, and some in the business community weren’t too keen on his unilateral decisions because there wasn’t equal opportunities for the local businesses with only a select few getting things like marketing exposure and the perks that come along with hosting KT events, I got the impression that things were far from utilitarian.
My hunch is that Kingdom Trails recognizes this but short of creating a diverse Board who knows what the future will bring. If I were them, I would even go as far as creating a panel of Non-Locals, people that might not live in the Kingdom but certainly come up and ride the trails, as the mountain biking community in Southern New England would look at things through different lenses, as having a variety of perspectives is never a bad thing.
Boyne runs Sugarloaf year round already - more money for them from MTBers going to their properties. Carrabassett Valley/Kingfield get more economic activity during the other 3 seasons which I’m sure they’d like, plus they’re already set up to handle tons of tourists during the winter so the infrastructure is in place. Highland can make a killing providing their downhill park building services and they’re doing a test run of that at Loon right now. Carrabassett Valley NEMBA gets huge exposure and can build the trail network and XC races to be a destination and now NEMBAfest has a new home.
Wins all around except for KTA.
Not saying that sugarloaf sucks. I’m saying that sugarloaf is another 2-3 hour drive for a lot of people on top of an already 2-3 hour drive to KT.
"A reason why all trails in the state of Vermont are able to exist is through the Vermont statute for landowner liability protection, and I think this stems from traditional sports like hunting, but recreational trails also fall under this protection, so landowners are not liable for injuries that might occur on their property as a result of recreation. That is especially helpful for the Kingdom Trails.
We do have additional insurance that we cover our landowners with, but the state statute is really why trails are allowed to be on private property, but what would jeopardize this policy is that landowners are not allowed to receive compensation for the recreation or else they lose this protection. This is something that a lot of trail groups in the state, Kingdom Trails, VMBA chapters, Green Mountain Clubs, and VAST have to work around. Between us all are thousands of private landowners."
Until that gets fixed, the rest is B.S.!
What you need unfortunately is lobbyists to move the needle legally speaking. As soon as landowners benefit financially, they'll be in like Flynn.
Kingdom Trails was specifically and purposefully built on private land (because that was the only way to do it there) to boost the economy of an existing town that's been on the decline for decades. And it worked! Except that due to VT laws, the private land owners cannot directly benefit financially from the boom without losing legal protection from liability. So MY POINT is they should change the law.
What is your point? Repossess private land for the public use, so they can have MTB trails? That's a non-solution, and won't fly even in the land of Bernie Sanders.
I have been told that part of the landowner’s frustrations come from them barring the cost, not just the cost of high taxes, etc., but also the cost of their peace and quiet of the rural country setting being overwhelmed in the summer with bikers, many want KT to find a balance which after 25+ years they haven’t found just yet.
It is my understanding that some landowners would like some sort of compensation even if that is a help towards their real estate taxes but when approached, in the past, KT has sighted the Vermont Statute Annotated - which protects the landowners from liability - as the reason why there can be no compensation to the landowners.
However, it’s also my understanding that this Statute has never been tested so it is unknown if it would pass the legal scrutiny test and be upheld in court if litigated. Perhaps a clever lawyer who is also a wordsmith could figure out away to keep the Statute but also figure out away to compensate the landowners by not calling it a “fee”?
I have no doubt that if there is a will, there is a way. Sounds like now is the time where KT needs to be creative and think outside the Box.
www.caledonianrecord.com/news/kingdom-trails-announces-new-executive-director/article_7e35964f-e98b-5c9d-996b-016cf0879790.html
I’m pretty sure that despite the tough talk on the Internet, the majority of the weekend warrior types are still going to go to KT this summer. They will complain at the Tiki Bar that the best trails are gone, but they will go. That said, this is only the beginning and it will not be the last spot to get blown up in VT.
Vermont is a great place from February to March and July to September. The rest of the time, grey, rain, and more grey. Plenty of other north country riding destinations in the Adirondacks, New Hampshire or Maine would love a quarter of the attention KT has seen over the past 10 years. Mountain bike paradise in the north east is not lost, it is waiting to be discovered elsewhere.
I think you're right about the KTA though. I doubt this will reduce traffic much.
Anyhow, a complex situation for sure that can hopefully be remedied, or perhaps this will drop the level of visitors back to a more easily sustainable level. Time and efforts will tell!
In 2018 the Water District started to upgrade their system, so it could accept more folks online, but as I understand it, they ran into a lot of costly overruns and the project came to a hard stop going into the winter of 2018/2019. I think they might have gotten the funding to finish the project which for their sake I hope will be finished this coming Summer.
I agree this is a complex situation, but either way, it is time for the powers at being to figure out the infrastructure side of things: public parking, public bathrooms, water, road safety, more sidewalks & cross walks, rubbish receptors for the tourists, and so forth.
There is open lands up Route 114 heading up to East Haven/Island Pond which might be worth exploring, also right up the street in East Burke Village, over the bridge, past the Belden Hill area headed towards Burke Mountain Access Road might offer some other options too. KT owns property in back of the Church, although it’s probably too close to the river to build anything on, it might be a good spot for KT parking?
There are options... the only question is will these options be explored.
Various things trigger Act 250: number of subdivisions, elevation height, proximity to bodies of what, development in wetlands, etc.
People try their best to stay away from Act 250 because once their property/ a project is found to be governed by Act 250, then that property moving forward with whatever future expansions/development is subject to Act 250 approval, also Act 250 is known to place restrictions on properties. The permitting fees for Act 250 can be costly too. I want to say it’s something like $1000 dollar fee for every $100,000 spent in construction/development.
The process of Act 250 can also take along time, as it is not like a local zoning board application process where you draft your application, pay your fee and a zoning administrator comes out for a sight visit. Act 250 on the other hand requires environmental impact studies and other things depending on what the end goal of a project is.
It is my understanding in Victory Hill’s case they were shut down because they should have sought an Act 250 permit before they began.
The triggers for a trail network and Act 250 are:
Construction of improvements for commercial purposes, if it occurs on a tract(s) of land owners/ controlled by a person involving more than 10 acres of land within a radius of 5 miles in a town with zoning regulations or on more than 1 acre of land in a town without zoning regulations. The key is whether there is 10 or more acres of land that would be physically disturbed and the commercial purposes..
In the case of Victory Hill (and one could argue with Kingdom Trails too), them being a nonprofit is irrelevant. It was the fact that they charge a fee (commercial purposes) for use of the mountain biking trails, and the trails extended beyond 10 acres.
The State wants to make sure that the environment impact has been taken into account and things like erosion are minimal and so forth.
I’m also interested in the view on building trails in state-owned Victory State Forest. It is a massive area and very conducive terrain for great trails. Seems like a decent way to get out of folks’ hair a bit. Put a satellite parking area over on Victory Road south of Flower Brook. There is a bunch of land for sale there and a bunch that’s owned by timber companies. And it’s right on the edge of the state forest. Can easily connect with the Moose Haven stuff and the mountain if you connect over from Pinkham Rd. And then of course over to Victory Hill...
But some of the article rings a familiar bell. Entitled d..kwads ruining the fun for all.
On my "home trails" at Frognerseteren in Oslo we faced a similar situation. But that specific area is public land.
But the locals made a fuzz because some of us DH riders were aholes. This escelated to the point where I caught one of the senior citizens putting up steel wire in throat height.
I threatened to call the cops on him of he didn't show me all the spots where he boobytrapped the trails. I followed him and watched as he removed them all.
And I cautioned him that next time it might be someone else catching him. And not all of my riding buddies were "nice guys" like me.
We still see the occasional sabotage attempts but they ate few and far between now.
But we did one thing.
We talked amongst ourselves and started to enforce some strict rules unofficially.
Jackholes were left to ride solo for one.
Then the XC ski worlds happened and they tore down a lot of our trails and stunts.
1. More dispersed parking areas: there are currently only 2 in the main network that get filled super fast. (The east haven parking area is a ticking timebomb as well, given the high demand, the limited space, and the adorable parking-lot cat that I really hope doesn't get run over.)
2. Raise the price of admission.
3. Limit the number of tickets sold daily (on top of season passes).
4. Volunteer days focused on helping landowners with "trailwork" on their land. (yard-work or other labor projects).
Raising the price of admission won't help anything. There's more than enough money for trail maintenance and overhead already coming in
Limit the number of tickets? How do you propose they enforce that when there's access to nearly every trail on the network spread over 11+ square miles of land? I seriously doubt that riders arriving for a planned day would respectfully turn around just because tickets are sold out for the day. That's just creating a larger problem.
Volunteer days sound great on the internet, but again, I doubt the majority of riders would chip in for 90+ potential projects that would cut in to their riding time
I consider the Burke parking a separate area. Sure you can park there for KTA, but as you noted, not many folks do. Smaller lots spread out throughout the network could be more effective at spreading the load (though I do realize that presents some challenge for pass-purchasing).
Raising the price will (most likely) discourage attendance somewhat, but keep revenue the same. Further, any additional revenue raised can be put towards more trail stewards, traffic safety, signage, and other necessities to address landowner concerns.
Limiting the number of tickets is difficult, but doable. If trail stewards actually enforced the need to have a pass, it could be done (ski resorts do it, though I get that they have specific areas that people are funneled towards). Even if they just did it for certain weekends/holidays, it could help. Folks could check online for availability before coming.
If there is one thing that Mountain bikers are good at (at least in Vermont) it is showing up to volunteer days. Many of the networks near me often have too many volunteers to effectively put them to work. I'm sure helping landowners out a few days a year is feasible, given the massive number of folks that use the trails.
Relying on the goodwill of landowners for the "privilege" of enjoying the outdoors makes me sick just thinking about it. Parts of the east coast seem straight up dystopian.
It sounds more like hey this state does X, maybe one day our state will as well.
I know I'm an outsider, but that lobbing would be high on my list. Its a way to show the landowners, we're working to get you something for your generality.
Landowners can already become a part of current use if they have a forest management plan and/or use their land for agriculture. Part of that plan can include recreation already. Amending current use really wouldn't benefit the landowners who already have trails on their land, because 90% of them (with 25 acres or over) are already enrolled.
dor.wa.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/Docs/Pubs/Prop_Tax/CurrentUseDesignatedForestlandManual.pdf
I'll have to say that these kinds of tax incentives are not the principal driver of the massive expansion in legit building here in WA. The vast majority of trails are on public lands, whether that's state DNR, county, city or USFS. And most of the trails on private lands are on timber holdings, which already qualify for incentives under the Open Space act.
The "secret sauce" here is the decades of relationship-building that groups like EMBA and WMBC have been engaged in with landowners, whether that's DNR or private timber companies.
There definitely is money going to lobbying on this issue via VMBA. Since VMBA and all of the MTB chapters (including KT) are 501c3, they are limited in how much they can spend on actual lobbying.
It's a paid for system, and as a paying customer we should be able to have some expectations... I pay for trail passes on a ski hill and as a customer I have expectations that come with that. Like parking and washrooms. KTA is doing some good introspection here and have realized that they need to invest in infrastructure if they want to maintain what they have, never mind grow.