Sports

New singletrack bike trails come to Midtown Anchorage

The latest additions to Anchorage’s singletrack bike trails are being built with beginners and users of public transportation in mind.

They come with a potential added benefit: Safer trails in an area known for homeless camps.

About 2 miles of singletrack trails are being built in the Chester Creek greenbelt corridor in Midtown. The unconnected segments will range from Valley of the Moon Park to Goose Lake, said project manager Maeve Nevins-Lavtar of the city’s Parks and Recreation Department.

The segment at Valley of the Moon Park is nearly finished and a segment around Mulcahy Stadium is currently being built, said trailbuilder Jon Underwood of Happy Trails, Inc., a trail building and design company in Fairbanks. He said everything should be done by mid-August.

A bond approved by voters in 2018 is paying for the project. Kids from the Youth Employment in Parks project are doing much of the labor, which includes hauling in gravel for use as infill in swampy areas, Underwood said.

Some of the trails “go smack through some pretty popular (homeless) campsites,” Underwood said. He said he didn’t feel safe in the area when he began talking to the city about the project several months ago. But he does now.

“When I first went in there, oh my god, there were tents everywhere,” he said. “I didn’t feel safe then, but there’s been so many camps moved out. The section straight south of Mulcahy didn’t have a single camp in there. So yeah, I’d feel safe today.”

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Nevins-Lavtar said debris left by campers is being cleaned up and vegetation is being thinned as part of the project. The result should make the area safer, she said.

“At first when I looked at the project I thought, ‘This is going to be scary,’ " she said Thursday afternoon in a phone interview. “I just literally walked through the whole corridor by myself and wasn’t scared at all, and there wasn’t anything there at all.

“It’s wonderful. I’m beyond surprised at the outcome.”

Beth Bragg

Beth Bragg wrote about sports and other topics for the ADN for more than 35 years, much of it as sports editor. She retired in October 2021. She's contributing coverage of Alaskans involved in the 2022 Winter Olympics.

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