Luke Weir , Roanoke Times
With a leaf blower strapped to his back, Ian Bongard walks through the woods of Explore Park, blasting aside fallen leaves blanketing the forest floor.
It’s a Saturday morning trail work day for volunteers of the Blue Ridge Off-Road Cyclists, the new name for the group formerly known as the Roanoke chapter of the International Mountain Bicycling Association.
“We can build basically anything we can dream up,” said Bongard, BROC trails coordinator. “We’ve got the knowledge to be able to figure out how to build any trail.”
Following Bongard along his leaf-blown trail through the wet winter woods, four fellow volunteers push a pair of wheelbarrows packed with shovels and other digging tools, fire rakes and buckets.
“We’re coming out here and doing a job someone would be paid to do for free,” Bongard said. “We do it because we love it.”
The volunteers stop their wheelbarrows, wield hand-tools and start digging away at a notch in the hillside, where previous trail work stopped. Bongard marches onward, blowing leaves over the hill, buzzing away into the distance.
BROC President Stuart Lamanna swings a hoe, etching a narrow mountain bike trail out of the cold ground.
“BROC is a group of mountain bike activists and advocates that want to support and enhance mountain biking,” Lamanna said. “We’re here to build trails, and support mountain biking.”
The nonprofit is volunteering its expertise to construct new mountain bike trails for Roanoke County, part of early first phase construction on a bike skills park expansion at Explore Park.
“We have an abundance of shared-use backcountry natural trails, which I personally love to death,” Lamanna said. “But we don’t have many trails that are specifically designed for mountain biking.”
BROC is filling the need for bike-specific trails at the 1,100-acre county park, planning routes with boulders, corners, bumps and jumps where intermediate and advanced riders can put to use techniques picked up at the future bike skills park.
“Mountain biking specific trails are not cheap,” Lamanna said. “They are expensive, but volunteers can do a lot to mitigate that cost.”
County plans call for a biking skills park in the Explore Park woodland beyond Brugh Tavern, south of Journey’s End Campground. Two interlocking circuits of track at the skills park will take riders over berms, rocks, logs and other features essential to the sport of mountain biking, helping hone cyclists’ skills before they encounter such elements on-trail.
County staff said construction of the skills park and an attached parking lot off Rutrough Road will be contracted using a $382,000 grant from the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation. In the meantime, BROC’s work on new trails surrounding the skills park will supplement the project, relying on labor volunteered by the group of mountain bikers.
“On Dec. 5, we had 15 people show up,” Lamanna said of a recent Explore Park work day. “That’s not typical, but that was a pretty good day. We got a lot of trail built.”
BROC has volunteered for trail work or provided financial support to trails on public land across the region, from Waid Park in Franklin County to Carvins Cove Natural Reserve in Roanoke and Botetourt counties, as well as at parks in Blacksburg, Clifton Forge, Bedford and elsewhere.
“We’ve been doing trail construction on an almost weekly basis now for maybe half a year,” Lamanna said. “We build exclusively on public lands, saving municipalities tens of thousands of dollars on construction costs.”
Lamanna said it will take between 500 and 1,000 volunteer hours to finish a mile-long stretch of bike trail now under construction at Explore Park, whereas contractors charge from $5 to $10 per linear foot of trail, depending on terrain and trail features.
“On a typical weekend, we might volunteer 50 hours on average,” Lamanna said. “That’s just on our recent trail workdays.”
Lamanna said money is hard to come by for BROC, especially during a year when the nonprofit did not receive any proceeds from the annual Roanoke GO Fest, which typically provides a bulk of BROC’s yearly funding.
“This year we don’t have that funding, so right now it comes primarily from our membership,” Lamanna said. “It’s made it much more difficult.”
Visibility during trail work days has driven a membership spike in 2020, with the group’s active numbers increasing by about 50%, now at 170 Blue Ridge Off-Road Cyclists. Even still, recent repairs on BROC’s specialized backwoods excavator cost the nonprofit more than its annual member dues.
“Our expenses are exceeding our membership income, without a doubt,” Lamanna said. “We are hurting for funds, but we’re pushing forward with a lot more volunteer activity.”
For the trail builders of BROC, it is reward enough to expand riding options in the region, said trails coordinator Bongard.
“We get cool trails to ride, that’s all we want,” Bongard said. “We want cool stuff to be challenged by, and to have a good time on. Nobody would mountain bike if it wasn’t for the people you mountain bike with.”
Mountain bikers are a mobile bunch, said Bongard, who has traveled across the country to ride. Roanoke has potential to attract bikers from afar, but only once more challenging trails are established to pique their interest.
“Around here we really need to be able to cater to the advanced riders,” Bongard said. “We’ve got to build the trails that people drive a couple hours for.”
Perhaps those road-trip worthy trails are mere months of volunteering away, beginning with Bongard blasting a path through dead leaves piled in the wintry backwoods of Explore Park.
“We’ve got some good opportunities right here,” Bongard said. “We have lots of opportunities elsewhere in the county as well.”