underground trail comes to light

8/9/2019 Underground Trail Comes to Light

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DISCOVERY BY DEVELOPER MAY NOT MEAN THE END

TRAIL SYSTEMCOMES TO LIGHT

By Justin Schmid

Morgan Ly

Riders at Fantasy Island North have a steep and loose climbahead of them to make their underground trail system official.



Island North Singletrack systemreally isn’t supposed to exist. Every ride on its 12 miles of groomed singletrack near Phoenix, Ariz., is technically trespass-ing since it was built on a developer’s land without permission.The trail flew under the radar of Newland Communities fornearly three years before it was discovered this summer.

But that discovery gives the trails a shot at going from rene-gade to recognized. The trail’s builders are now opening talks

with Newland to explore how the trails could be folded into themaster plan for Estrella Mountain Ranch, a 20,000-acre develop-ment in the town of Goodyear.

Jenn Allen, a Newland marketing director, said the FINStrails came to the company’s attention when a surveying crewnoticed a group of mountain bikers and backtracked their route.There, they found a marked trail network that wasn’t part of thedevelopment’s master plan. A Newland employee rode the trailsystem to evaluate it. Allen was not able to provide more detailssince that employee no longer works for Newland.

Allen admits that FINS is a legal liability for Newland andthat using the trail is technically trespassing. Though the devel-oper isn’t throwing the welcome mat out for riders, it also has

not blocked access.“I think, in defense of the residents, they thought it was onstate land,” Allen said, adding that company officials will wel-come input from the Estrella Trails Club, a recently formedorganization whose members participated in designing andbuilding the trails.

Portions of the trail are on land plotted to become a gatedcommunity. The company has made no decisions but wants toexplore making it part of the community’s plan. It’s still too earlyin the process for Newland to predict the outcome. Allen saidthe company believes in outdoor lifestyles, so the trail haspotential benefits as an amenity to the community, which nowincludes 3,500 homes. When it’s built out, Estrella is expected

to have 50,000 homes.“The trail system needs to coexist nicely within the master

plan,” Allen said.Kim Doud and Murel Stephens laid out much of FINS

before the master plan had taken shape starting in the summerof 2005. Both are veteran riders, having explored every localtrail in the ubiquitous Fat Tire Tales & Trails book that is a bibleto many Arizona riders. Doud, an Estrella resident, and

Stephens aimed for a trail that would require skills but still beaccessible to a wide variety of skill levels.“We made it to swoop,” said Stephens, who lives in the

nearby town of Buckeye.Stephens said other local trails aren’t known for fast, flowing

riding. The Estrella Mountain Regional Park, five miles fromFINS, features the Pedersen Trail and a competitive track thathosts Mountain Bike Association of Arizona races. Neither trail,however, gets much love from local riders. About 25 miles away,the White Tanks also has a competitive track that gets mixedreviews. So Stephens and Doud decided to create a trail systemthat fit their own vision of what mountain biking should be.They named FINS after Fantasy Island, a rolling, winding collec-

tion of singletrack trails more than 100 miles away in Tucson.They labeled each section with hand-painted signs telling ridersthe trail name and level of difficulty.

They also made it to blend into the desert. FINS is difficultto see without being right on a trail, a lesson Doud borrowedfrom architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

In laying out the trails, Stephens, Doud and nearly 30 vol-unteers would stand on opposite hills, scanning the topographyfor routes that would allow a flowing trail with turnsand switchbacks. Some days, they could create 600 feetof new trail. Other times, they could only advance about50 back-breaking feet.

But the challenge of working into the community’s master

Temporarily avoiding some prickly access issues, a cyclist enjoys the narrow, flowing singletrack at Fantasy Island North.

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Morgan Lynch



plan could prove slower than carving a trail into a hillside. Tosmooth it along, Doud formed the Estrella Trails Club. The clubis offering to work with Estella Mountain Ranch officials not

only on FINS, but any future trail systems for any user. Clubmembers have also attended International Mountain BicyclingAssociation (IMBA) trail-building classes. Doud said Estrellaalready has a few trails, but they’re not suited for serious trailusers.

The Estrella Trails Club announced its existence in the sum-mer of 2008 at a homeowners association meeting; one of theassociation’s board members is a Newland vice president,according to Doud.

“Newland has a history of being favorable to mountain bik-ers,” Doud said. The developer worked with riders in SouthCarolina to cut a trail in a development there, Doud explained.The developer even footed a $25,000 bill for constructionequipment. “I think Newland is being very supportive. Theyhave to be careful and do things the right way.”

According to Sonia Overholser, the Arizona IMBA represen-tative, the trails are skillfully designed and built; in many sec-tions, they conform to the IMBA trail design philosophies. Thetrails follow the land’s contours and loop back to a central point,allowing riders to ride as much or as little as they want. Theoverall impression is fast, flowing and exciting, she said.

Overholser is unfamiliar with Doud and his volunteers butthinks FINS could be a great amenity for Estrella MountainRanch.

“The value of trails has proven itself over and over and overagain,” she said. “It depends, ultimately, on the land owner ormanager. Ultimately, it’s their asset.”

Despite a proposed 50,000 new homes in the area near Phoenix, devel-

opers and mountain bikers are now working together to help keep trailslike this one open for all to enjoy.

UNDERGROUND

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Morgan Lynch

underground trail comes to light

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