Brice Shirbach
Underexposed
Blacksburg, VA
The Commonwealth of Virginia stretches east to west from the Atlantic seaboard to the eastern continental divide of deep Appalachia. The Blue Ridge mountains are a sub-range of the Appalachian mountains, with the namesake blueish hue coming from a chemical called isoprene which is released into the atmosphere by way of the dense forests that line the ridgelines throughout the region. The Blue Ridge mountains are home to 2 national parks and 8 different national forests, including George Washington and Jefferson national forests, which combine for 1.8 million acres, making it one of the largest areas of public land in the eastern United States. The national forest is home to a slew of outdoor recreational pursuits, with rivers and streams carving their way through the ancient ridges and deep valleys of southwestern Virginia and making for all manner of adventure opportunities from hiking, to paddling, to fishing, to climbing, and perhaps most of all mountain biking.
The town of Blacksburg is located in the heart of the Blueridge Mountains in a region called the New River Valley. Blacksburg is home to roughly 44,000 people, though that number effectively doubles during the school year due to Virginia Tech University calling this community home. The division 1 school is particularly relevant to mountain bikers, as the home to the Helmet Lab, which is the world’s most robust helmet safety testing and data acquisition facility. Blacksburg is also a part of the area serviced by the New River Land Trust, a non-profit dedicated to the conservation of open spaces, farmland, forests, and historic spaces throughout the New River Valley of Southwestern Virginia. The New River Land Trust is directly responsible for the acquisition of three private parcels along Brush Mountain Park in Blacksburg. Brush Mountain park borders the National Forest and contains over 60 miles of trail in total. Alongside the local trail organization, the Poverty Creek Trails Coalition, as well as the City of Blacksburg itself,. the Land Trust has helped Blacksburg develop into one of the state’s preeminent destinations for mountain bikers.
While the New River Land Trust is behind so much of the proliferation of purpose built trails throughout the region, there is also a highly motivated and dedicated volunteer organization called the Poverty Creek Trails Coalition. The non-profit works with the Land Trust as well as the Forest Service to fill in the trail construction gaps, and is the primary source of upkeep and maintenance on all of the trails in and around the Brush Mountain and Pandapas Pond trail networks. Much of the pre-existing trails here are of the old school, handbuilt variety with a high barrier of entry and not allowing much in the way for new riders. The New River Land Trust sought to change that by hiring professional trail builders such as Eastern Trail Company, run by Mich Carnrike, with a goal to bring a greater variety of trails to the region, which has in turn allowed for more and more locals to find a new appreciation for the outdoor recreational opportunities in and around town.
There’s a really amazing thing happening in real time here in Blacksburg. This confluence of positive forces between the New River Land Trust, the volunteers at the Poverty Creek Trails Coalition, and the powers that be within the town itself, all coming together to bring a vision of a community connected figuratively and literally by trail. Each group is completely bought in, and because of that are able to bring something unique to the table in order to make this vision a reality. It offers up something of a striking juxtaposition: new energy brought on by new trails in some of the oldest mountains on the planet. It’s truly beautiful, a beauty matched only by the surrounding landscape of the Blue Ridge Mountains themselves.
