I am affectionately (I hope!) known on TBD as the Cruise Director. Perhaps I am just bossy but I love planning fun trips, and ensuring that my teammates develop sufficient FOMO to join them. I was super excited to head back to Kingdom Trails this year since I hadn’t gone for ages, since I was a truly awful mountain biker, and cried multiple times. I’ve worked really hard on my skills and I’ve also mentally turned things around so now I love mountain biking! Rod and I weren’t sure if Kingdom Trails would still be incredible to us, after riding so many great trails in Colorado, but we were eager to find out. We convinced several friends to join us and made plans for July 4th Weekend in Vermont.

We had loose plans to check out different corners of the trail system each day, with a review of our favorite area on the last day. Unfortunately COVID came for me and I missed the last day of riding, but because of this most excellent system, I got to try out all the different trails, just not the last retread day.

I think if you’re planning a Kingdom Trails trip, this is a great plan. I also recommend anointing one or two Route Gurus (I was not one, as much as I do love to boss people around), to guide the riding. With too many opinions there can be too much standing around making decisions, but someone needs to have a rough idea of where to go.

Our favorite area ended up being the far Northeast corner which includes Black Bear and Stormin’ Norman. It has longer climbs, which means longer descents (YES). It’s also quite a bit less crowded than the traditionally most popular areas like the far Southwest (Sidewinder territory). It’s easy to spend a day on the trails around Black Bear, and sessioning the top part of Black Bear is probably the best bang for your buck climbing / fun descent wise. It was also fun switching off leaders, given that our group had roughly equivalent abilities.

We also had two absolutely fantastic dogs with us - our longtime TBD Mascot, Winnie the Bulldog, and the newer, slightly more idiotic and energetic mascot, Sophie the Golden. While they are both way more into people (and snacks) than each other and we’ve not yet come home to see them cuddling, adding dogs to any trip makes it better.

I really can’t think of anything I’d change about our trip to the Northeast Kingdom, outside of having to do a last minute attendee switcheroo due to a COVID situation. It’s such a special place - while it doesn’t have the dramatic valleys of Colorado, the trail design is insanely good, it’s much less crowded than Colorado in the summer, and I love the lush forests. I also love this team that keeps saying yes to all my ideas. More pictures below… and hit us up in the comments if you’re planning a trip to KT and want some insights.