Kingdom Trails
Bringing Vitality to Rural Vermont
Editor’s Note: Having spent much of my life as a regular visitor to the southern reaches of Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom—that quiet, beautiful corner of the state comprising Caledonia, Essex, and Orleans Counties—I have followed with amazement as the NEK, as it is branded in ads, articles, and daily parlance, has grown in fame as a center for mountain biking and winter trail sports. This delightful article by writer and ecologist Allaire Diamond explores the beauty of the region and the history, allure, and social and economic impact of these popular recreational activities. Together with the article in this issue by Nancy Zimny, this article can help us appreciate the power and the concern generated by this new and very intense love for our most rural landscapes. – David Foster
Like the spine of some giant creature slowly unfurling its vertebrae as it emerges from the depths of an ancient sea, Darling Ridge arches steadily between the East and West Branches of the Passumpsic River in Lyndon and Burke, Vermont. At its 1,250’ apex, the ridge, traced by the windswept and gorgeous Darling Hill Road, rises 500 feet above the rocky, winding rivers, which merge at its southern terminus. Its flanks, formed of a gritty, calcium-rich bedrock beneath glacier-deposited sand, extend to the rivers’ floodplains via a series of terraces, swales, hushed slopes of rich hardwood forest, and sandy-bottomed ravines. Groundwater emerges in quiet seeps, gentle hollows hold shady forested wetlands, and old river meanders lie carved in subtle sweeps across the Passumpsic valley bottoms. An esker—a long, narrow glacial feature that is essentially the mold of a subglacial river, formed of sand and gravel deposits—winds its way along the lower slopes. Meadows, pastures, farm tracks, driveways, lawns, and homes also quilt the ridge.
“The diversity and resilience of the landscape, and the flexibility and willingness of the communities to evolve, helps this unique ridge, borne of a glacier, continue to support meaningful and completely fun ways of connecting with the land.”
This ecological richness fills the ridge with natural diversity and life, but on a summer weekend afternoon, Darling Ridge also comes alive with the whooshes and whoops of bikers, runners, and adaptive users of all ages zooming around the extensive network of Kingdom Trails. These trails, most of them stitched across Darling Ridge’s skin of well-drained, sand-rich soils, span over 100 miles and beckon an estimated 120,000 users each year. In winter, many trails are groomed for Nordic skiing and snowshoeing. Kingdom Trails is now known nationally and internationally as a premier mountain biking destination, both to visit and to live (Bike Magazine ranked the area #8 in the United States in 2024). In the early 1990s, local riders found that old logging roads on Darling Ridge were a lot of fun to ride. Unlike many places in Vermont, the rock-free soil doesn’t dissolve into mud and can hold up to the impact of nubby tires, and these early riders saw the potential of the ridge to host a plethora of world-class trails. Yet many other factors also have to line up to make the place tick. What is Kingdom Trails’ special sauce?
Kingdom Trails and surrounding lands. Map by Brian Hall, courtesy of Wildlands, Woodlands Farmlands & Communities
Over the past three decades, Kingdom Trails’ core communities (East Burke, West Burke, Lyndon, East Haven, and Kirby) have stretched, organized, and evolved to support their adventurous visitors and new residents. On busy weekends, bike-rack-spiked cars with a rainbow of license plates fill trailhead parking lots; vans shuttle riders from the villages; campgrounds fill; and local businesses move lattes, pizzas, burgers, and microbrews at astonishing rates. Bike racks sit outside nearly every business, clear and colorful trail signs and maps direct bikers through the network, and rental and repair shops supply and fix the gear. Visitors spend an average of $120 per day in the local communities and bring approximately $10 million annually to the area. Dozens of businesses have emerged.
Intense trail riding is at the heart of the experience at Kingdom Trails. Photo courtesy of Kingdom Trail Association
Much of this evolution is thanks to Kingdom Trail Association (KTA), a nonprofit formed in 1994 by some of those early advocates with a combined mission of recreation, education, environmental stewardship, and economic development. KTA has successfully established, maintained, and grown the network across mostly privately owned parcels, navigating complex relationships with over 100 landowners. Abby Long, president of KTA since 2017, knows the importance of relationships in continuing trail access: “This is not your right. This is a privilege. This is a gift.” A negative encounter between a landowner and a visiting biker can, and has, cut off access to trails. KTA works to avoid these regrettable situations and maintain positive relationships by educating visitors, keeping communication open, keeping trails in good shape, and hosting events like landowner appreciation dinners. Two parcels with some of the area’s key trails are permanently conserved with trail access guaranteed.
“Over the past three decades, Kingdom Trails’ core communities (East Burke, West Burke, Lyndon, East Haven, and Kirby) have stretched, organized, and evolved to support their adventurous visitors and new residents.”
Beyond individual landowners, KTA helps the broader community through supporting and connecting businesses, including traditional land-based businesses. KTA recently collaborated with a private landowner, their forester and logger who were harvesting timber, which resulted in a new trail through the harvested area. Long explains: “They planned the harvest in a way that new trails would appear after, and [create] awesome riding experiences… Kingdom Trails is able to be this awesome case study of how outdoor recreation and the forest products industry can complement each other. The traditional industry in the Northeast Kingdom is the forest industry, and in other communities in Vermont there may be tension between the two groups, but not here. Our foresters are trail users, and they’re helping us.” In another harvest on one of the KTA-owned parcels, hemlock lumber was milled and used right there, to build trail bridges.
Trail building is a community effort that seeks to open the landscape to a wide array of users and experiences. Photo courtesy of Kingdom Trail Association
Part of KTA’s origin story involved the recognition that the local ski mountain, Burke Mountain, was being impacted by the shifting winters wrought by climate change. Increased flood frequency and intensity is part of the reality of today’s Passumpsic River valley and KTA’s environmental stewardship. Recent floods have forced KTA to relocate or close trails running too close to the river. Mountain bike and other recreational trails can fragment forests and impact wildlife and sensitive natural areas, so thoughtful trail design and maintenance are important to minimize these impacts. Kingdom Trails has a geologic foundation that can withstand heavy trail development, and it follows several mountain bike trail design standards and best management practices developed by the U.S. Forest Service, the International Mountain Bicycling Association, and the Vermont Trails and Greenways Council. Features like stepping stones, bog bridges, boardwalks, water bars, wetland buffers, and appropriate site-specific drainage structures help minimize erosion, keep water off trails, and keep riders on trails instead of skirting around wet areas and degrading surrounding areas. While a dense trail network may not offer interior forest habitat, the highly developed nature of many of Kingdom Trails’ hotspots keeps that intense human presence concentrated.
With Burke Mountain as a backdrop, the setting for recreation is spectacular and the landscape is diverse. Photo courtesy of Kingdom Trail Association
A dedicated trail user herself, Abby Long extols the magic of the trails in offering something for everyone and allowing for growth in riding: “Our trail network lends itself to being this incredible progressive experience. My 4-year-old can be on little tot tracks, and then later my husband and I are doing triple black diamonds and everything in between, and you can learn and progress and continue to ride on our trails, honestly forever, because there’s so many miles and always new things popping up.” The diversity and resilience of the landscape, and the flexibility and willingness of the communities to evolve, helps this unique ridge, borne of a glacier, continue to support meaningful and completely fun ways of connecting with the land.
Allaire Diamond is an ecologist, writer, artist, and mother living in Underhill, Vermont. She is the Ecology & Restoration Program Director at the Vermont Land Trust, where she leads wetland and stream restoration projects statewide; conducts ecological assessments; and collaborates with landowners and partners to improve water quality, climate resilience, and biodiversity on conserved lands. Her writing has appeared in Northern Woodlands Magazine, Pangyrus, and other publications, and is collected here. She grew up in Springfield, Vermont, and loves hiking, reading, exploring, and going to Costco with her two children and their dog, Pepper.