PHOTOS AND STORY BY RADONNA FIORINI
Mountain bikes in the Midwest While there is nothing resembling a mountain in Tippecanoe County, there is a growing group of local mountain bike enthusiasts who are creating and maintaining trails and opportunities to participate in the sport they love. The sport of riding bicycles off-road, on trails and rough terrain, has gained in popularity during the last 30 years and is something people of all ages can enjoy, says Jason Pruitt, president of the Tippecanoe Mountain Bike Association. Pruitt has enjoyed biking for decades, starting out with road bikes and riding competitively in endurance races. But when he began mountain biking, things changed. “Once I got out in the woods, I thought, ‘This is so much better, just being in the woods and in nature. I love riding with friends, but sometimes just riding alone in nature is great.’” After he and a group of mountain biking enthusiasts found each other more than a decade ago, they began working together to help maintain the mixed-use trails they all used, and help educate people about protecting nature while enjoying the sport they love, he says. Out of that effort, the TMBA was formed, and members have enjoyed biking and working together to create and maintain a robust series of area bike-accessible trails. There are now 26 miles of trails in Tippecanoe County that feature a variety of difficulty levels and are on public and private land accessible to the public. The first bike trail the group focused on is at the Tippecanoe County Amphitheater. The trail system there was created for the Harrison High School cross-country team, but many other hikers and bikers have enjoyed those trails for years, says Tippecanoe County Parks Superintendent Randy Lower. “At first we wanted the mountain bike trails to parallel the running trails and not connect, because we didn’t want collisions between bikers and runners,” Lower says. “But that hasn’t been a problem and the biking trails now utilize and crisscross the cross-country trails. We haven’t heard about much interaction between bikers, hikers and runners.”
68 GREATER LAFAYETTE MAGAZINE
