How Mountain Biking Could Help Grow Tourism In New Brunswick
WATERFORD – For two days this week, mountain bikers are riding at Poley Mountain’s new trails, which allows the ski resort to extend its season.
The two-day Ladies’ Bike Camp and Festival Rendezvous at Poley Mountain, which runs Wednesday to Friday, is hosted by Saint John-based Be Rad Adventures. Be Rad doesn’t exclusively offer programming for women but does so from time to time.
The festival includes live music, skills clinics, bike mechanic workshops, food, downhill mountain biking and other activities.
The trails at Poley are newly developed with the help of Mountain Bike Atlantic, an ACOA-funded non-profit project overseen by the charity Friends of Fundy that was launched to promote the region as a mountain biking destination.
“We decided that we would try to support that initiative for them, being a new bike park, and have a festival there so we could gather the growing community of lady shredders or mountain biking women,” said Sam Bosence, owner of Be Rad and project manager with Mountain Bike Atlantic.
“Poley Mountain’s season is usually three months a year. Now they can extend that by four or five months, which is huge,” she said. “Of course there are costs associated with that with new staff, but hey, now that’s an economic benefit to the region because now they have new jobs.”
Adding mountain biking trails to already established parks or resorts is “relatively straightforward,” Bosence said.
“You need dedicated trail managers,” she said. “They’re sustainably built trails that we look for and also making sure they’re in a sanctioned area. We look for land access agreements with local municipalities or land managers.”
Mountain Biking Atlantic takes a more grassroots approach to marketing the region as a tourism destination, working with local clubs, trail managers and communities, and focusing on travelers within Atlantic Canada. That’s worked great during the pandemic, especially at a time when there’s more push towards outdoor recreation, Bosence said.
“We’re looking at the local communities and getting people to look three hours down the road before we all travel to Vermont. I haven’t discovered my own backyard, so maybe I should go to Newfoundland before I fly out to the Rockies,” she said. “That’s no shade at any of those established places, but it’s just, let’s look at what we have here.”
Bosence said the fact that there are trails for all levels of mountain bikers in Atlantic Canada can be a great attraction for all seasons. In the summer, the beaches and coastal views are a pull, too.
“The established marketing that’s already been done for the east coast of lobster rolls and lighthouses are a bonus, but the local food and drinks scene is growing. And we know that mountain bikers look for the cool coffee spots, breweries, and cool food places, and you can go for a swim after in a river or the [Fundy] bay,” she said.
She says rural towns like Minto has seen opportunities with the amount of mountain bikers coming into the area.
The Minto Opportunity
Minto is now a popular mountain biking area for all levels, thanks to the initiative of Dr. Sean Morrissy, an avid mountain biker and physician in the village who started building a trail there in 2012. It’s been featured in National Geographic and Canadian Cycling Magazine, among others.
Cars usually pack trailheads on weekends in May through July. As of the second week of June this year, there were more riders on Minto’s trails than the entire season last year, according to data uploaded by bikers on Strava, said Travis Quigley, a board member with Mountain Bike Minto.
“In June, you can see 30 to 50 cars come into Minto and leave Minto in the run of the day,” he said.
Once a vibrant coal mining community, Minto was hit by changes in the industry. In recent years, it’s become more of a retirement community.
But former mining towns like Downieville, Calif., and Cumberland, B.C., have been revitalized by the influx of mountain bikers. Quigley hopes the same can happen for his hometown. And the village has recognized the value of people coming in.
While Quigley believes the opportunity is there, currently, aside from a campground partnered with Mountain Bike Minto, the larger business community are not yet seeing the benefits.
Quigley, Morrissy and others are working to change that by building a strategic plan that can help generate economic growth and put Minto on the map not just for mountain biking, but also other activities. They hope to see cyclists rent airbnbs or stay at campgrounds, eat and drink at local establishments, and paddleboard or kayak at Grand Lake.
He also plans to approach ATV and snowmobile clubs to attract their members, so that there’s enough “critical mass” to encourage investments in retail and restaurant businesses.
“It’s really nice that the community recognizes the importance of having people come in. But what we need is the community to not only realize there’s something here but get behind it and make it something more, which I think is really important for the village council to understand and business leaders in the community to say, how do we make this a place to come and stay for a few days,” Quigley said.
Part of the strategy is to build a focused marketing plan. Covid-19 is driving people outside and many are taking up cycling, according to a Recreation NB survey from June. At the same time, their travel is limited within the Atlantic bubble.
Bosence said Mountain Bike Atlantic encourages packaging trail experiences with suggestions for breweries, hotels that allows bikes indoors, restaurants, and a bike shop.
“They sustain each other, so it’s not just a silo…if you’re going to open a brewery, you need to pay attention to what the non-profit cycling clubs are doing, the events they’re putting on and then work with the hotel together to have the economic spin off that would be sustainable,” she said.
This is the first in a two-part series. In part one, we looked at a partnership between a brewery and a mountain biking club.
PART I: Bikes And Beer: Women’s Mountain Biking Club Teams Up With Holy Whale Brewery