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As the temperature approached 50 degrees Monday afternoon, snow finally began melting off Far North Bicentennial Park, bringing closer the day when nearly eight miles of new single-track mountain bike trail will be available to riders.
Late last fall, mountain bikers got a taste of what's to come when a one-mile section in the southeast portion of the 4,000-acre park opened. The rest, however, was closed to give freshly disturbed ground time to firm up over winter. Janice Tower, for one, can barely wait to ride the whole thing. "I'm anxious, but there are so many wonderful projects going on statewide," said Tower of SingleTrack Advocates, the Anchorage group working to preserve, build and maintain natural trails. "We're just getting off the ground with the technical knowledge to build environmentally responsible trail systems. "Trail building use to be real ad hoc. People just going out and making their own trails, and a lot of those trails are environmentally damaging. We need to do better." As the 2009 Statewide Trails Conference opens Wednesday at the Anchorage Hilton Hotel, organizers, planners, recreation specialists -- as well plain old walkers, runners and riders -- may have more to celebrate than they've had in a while. And not just in Bicentennial Park. Over the last few years, trails have sprouted across Alaska -- from the Compeau Motorized Trail at the Chena State Recreation Area, to an ATV Subsistence Trail in Hooper Bay, to the gorgeous Trail of Blue Ice in Portage Valley, to the Susitna Valley Winter Trail that runs from Big Lake to the south boundary of Denali State Park . "There's a real renaissance going on for sustainable trails," said Jillian Morrissey, executive director of Alaska Trails. "More and more Alaskans are getting out on trails. We love the fact that we can have civilization in our front yard and wildness in our backyard. Trails are just an easy way to access what makes the state so amazing." Although the Bicentennial Park single track -- like other unpaved Anchorage bike trails -- won't open to riders until June 1 in order to give the ground time to dry out, Tower said the route saw significant winter use, which surprised her. "People have been using them -- skiers, snowshoers, hikers, anybody. We're getting rave reviews," said Tower, who was honored with a National Parks Service Volunteer-in-Parks Award two months ago for her 532 hours of volunteer time on the project. The new trail is accessible from the Gasline Trail out of the Prospect Heights trail head in Chugach State Park, or from Hilltop Ski Area, about two-tenths of a mile off the intersection of the Upper Gasline and Spencer Loop trails. But not yet. "Right now, there's still snow on trails," Tower said. "They're pretty soft and punchy, and people need to stay off" to protect the trail surface. She noted the care with which the trails were built using the sweat of a fair amount of volunteer labor. Only 20 trees were removed during the whole project, she said, and construction expenditures amounted to $170,000 -- about 25 percent less than originally estimated. "We came in way under budget," Tower said. "And we were able to raise a nice nest egg for future trail development." She said a Sweco trail dozer used to put in the trail helped keep down both costs and environmental impact. The mini-dozer is four feet wide and able to "thread the needle" between trees. Farther north, another beautiful single-track trail luring mountain bikers is the 1.5-mile-long Mooseberry Mesa Trail in the Susitna Valley. "It's a real fun trail," said Pat Owens of Sutton, a board member with the association. "It's narrow. It winds through the trees. It's a swooping trail, fun to ride. Anybody can do it." This year, Owens said, the association's top priority is making progress on getting some 2,000 miles of Mat-Su trails legally documented by the borough. The association also aims to put a new 2.5-mile trail up Lazy Mountain from the trail head to the summit this summer. "We'll probably fix up the exiting trail, too,'' she said. "It's steep and erodes badly." The challenging trail is one favored by diehard mountain runners. "But a lot of people can't hike it," Owens said. "We're hoping for something the average person can experience."