Mountain biking has become a staple of outdoor recreation in northeast Minnesota and Thunder Bay. The whole region has seen a boom in MTB trail development in the last 15 years, thanks to local mountain bike advocacy organizations. Groups such as Cyclists of Gitchee Gumee Shores (COGGS) in Duluth, Superior Cycling Association in Grand Marais, and Blacksheep Mountain Bike Club in Thunder Bay have served as catalysts for trail growth. These organizations may have a paid director, but their main muscle comes from their volunteer spirit. As trail systems expand, more maintenance arises. Who’s taking care of them? Volunteers—the bikers themselves.
The MTB movement is thriving thanks to bikers’ willingness to volunteer to maintain the trails they love. Bikers around the region are giving back by weed-whipping, clearing trail corridors, building new features, holding bike races, and more. Local riders put their heart and soul into the trails, and their volunteerism makes for exceptional trail experiences for everyone else. Let’s take a look at what volunteers can do with teamwork, leadership, and a Superior-sized dose of altruism.
Low-Cost, Greater Ownership
The obvious advantage of volunteer bike advocacy groups that is that they provide a low-cost way to maintain extensive trail networks. When everyone volunteers their time, trail maintenance gets done practically for free. But volunteering means so much more than just saving money.
For COGGS Executive Director Ansel Schimpff, another important part of the volunteer movement is that the biking community builds a strong sense of trail ownership. “There have been hundreds of people who have put in thousands of hours just to get the trails on the ground, doing everything from the advocacy work to physically building lots of the trail here,” explains Schimpff about Duluth’s volunteer-driven MTB options. “Some other communities may have had a big influx of cash thrown into their bike trails, but if that money goes away for whatever reason, they have a really difficult time keeping their trails maintained. The people that live in those places just don’t have that same sense of ownership over their trails,” Schimpff adds. Duluth riders are different. They’ve put the muscle in to sculpt trails they want to ride and share with other like-minded altruists.
The trail folk in Tofte, Lutsen, and Grand Marais do the volunteer work it takes to maintain top-notch trails too. Members of the Superior Cycling Association (SCA) have donated incredible amounts of their free time to write grants for new trail building, resulting in the opening of the top-class Jackpot and High Climber trails that connect Tofte with Lutsen—through the backcountry.
Tim Kennedy spent 12 years as chair of SCA’s board before stepping down last January. Today, both SCA and COGGS have paid executive director roles “to manage the day-to-day duties and responsibilities, and keep all the pieces connected,” says Kennedy. “The board quickly realized that the only sustainable model was to hire someone, because nobody was going to fill the shoes that I left.”
Kennedy says the SCA has a nucleus of 20 members who put their time in to make trails work. “Trail maintenance is hard work. Everybody works incredibly hard for these trails,” says Kennedy.
Kennedy still volunteers his time to SCA today and notes that volunteerism is often project-based: “There might be a trail maintenance project down on the west end trails (west Cook County), and a separate project at Pincushion Trails (in Grand Marais), and they have completely different people turn up to volunteer on them. That’s where an executive director can connect the dots.”
Trail Stewards
Every COGGS trail in Duluth has its own “stewards.” There are two to five stewards per trail. These stewards organize and manage all of COGGS’ volunteer trail work nights on their “home” trails. “The stewards keep tabs on drainage issues, mud holes, and any other areas that need improvement,” explains Schimpff.
This “neighborhood” volunteer system means the trail stewards are the ones on the ground every day, making sure the trails are being cared for. COGGS’ trail stewards host one evening per week for volunteer work at Lester, Hartley, Keene Bike Park, Mission Creek, and Piedmont trails, all season long.
This year-to-date, COGGS has had 2,564 hours of volunteer time documented by its volunteers in their online tracking system. The real total is likely much higher. More than 150 people have volunteered their time with COGGS, which also has a volunteer board with 12 seats. The board members organize COGGS events and make organizational decisions. One of the board seats is a volunteer coordinator. COGGS advertises each week’s volunteer opportunities through their social media and newsletter.
Big Capacity
Volunteer capacity comes and goes depending on life schedules, but COGGS has ways of making volunteering fun. “We’ve done a competition in the past between the different trail centers to see who can log the most volunteer hours,” says Schimpff. “The Hartley Park volunteers are often the ones to beat. They’re an extremely well-organized group of individuals over there,” Schimpff laughs.
The Hartley stewards have a planning meeting each spring before the biking season starts where they roughly plan out every Tuesday night volunteer project for the whole upcoming season, and figure out which materials they’ll need.
Not to be outdone, Duluth’s Piedmont Trails have a “cult following” among riders and volunteers, according to Schimpff. “Piedmont, with how rocky it is and how steep a lot of the terrain is, really lends itself to more aggressive, technical trail riding. The folks over there are some of our most passionate riders, and most passionate trail builders as well,” Schimpff says.
Some volunteers even operate heavy machinery. COGGS still owns a mini excavator, even though it now contracts out most new trail building to larger companies for better efficiency. Rudy O’Brien, a COGGS volunteer and retired engineer, spends hours a day building and refreshing trails in Piedmont. “He just enjoys building trails,” says Schimpff.
Up in Grand Marais, Kennedy says a key component of SCA’s volunteerism is working with the U.S. Forest Service since almost all of SCA’s trails are on Forest Service land. “Keeping good relations with the Forest Service is critical to our board’s work. The Forest Service actually asks us to make a document every year documenting our volunteer hours. It comes to about 2,000 hours each year,” says Kennedy.
Big Biking Parties, Summer and Winter
Mountain bikers like a good party. On bikes. With lots of friends. So who’s going to organize all the races put on by COGGS, SCA, and Blacksheep? That’s right—volunteers. Event planning is a huge volunteer effort.
In Duluth, the “Race Across Duluth” covers 45 miles of singletrack from Lester Park in east Duluth to Chambers Grove in far west Duluth on the first Saturday in September. This year’s race raised $24,949 for COGGS and Duluth trails. Volunteers fulfill duties such as race registration, water stations, finish area activities, course officiating and timing, set-up and tear-down, and a whole lot more.
SCA has the Norpine Fat Bike Classic race coming up January 9-11, 2026, in Lutsen. Volunteer positions yet to be filled include swag bag stuffing, number pick-up/registration, dark sky tour leader, start/finish set-up at Cascade Lodge, trail sweeper, award ceremony assistant, and photographer. As of the print date of this issue, all volunteer positions still have openings. The volunteer sign-up sheet is available online: superiorcycling.org.
Blacksheep Mountain Bike Club, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, conducts its own series of eight Wednesday night mountain bike races that take place around the Thunder Bay area. To volunteer at Blacksheep events, reach out to: [email protected].
Deep Roots
Mountain biking is still a relatively new sport in the Northern Wilds. Up until 10-15 years ago, if you wanted a place to ride a mountain bike, you had to build the trail yourself. This culture lives on today. “As a user group, we’re really used to having to build something before we can enjoy our activity,” notes Schimpff. “We’ve had to work for every inch of trail that we have. You don’t really see that with, say, golf.”
Bikers’ “hands-in-the-dirt” DIY culture is going strong today thanks to the volunteer trail maintenance community stretching from Duluth to Thunder Bay.
