Volunteers Bring Forgotten Claremore Mountain Bike Trail Back To Life

A newly improved bike and walking trail is getting rave reviews in Claremore. It's all thanks to a group of volunteers who saw the value in the city's slice of nature.

The City of Claremore opened the mountain bike trail in 2009, but because of budget cuts, couldn't maintain it.

The trail became unusable, even dangerous. People forgot the trail was there.

Josh Froman and his friends decided to bring it back to life.

"It had kind of fallen into disrepair over several years," Froman explained, "so a buddy of mine and I banded together in 2014 to put it back together and kind of revamp the trail."

Froman and his group got the three-mile trail back to its former glory. Then, more volunteers started showing up, wanting to take the trail to the next level.
People like Rory Peterson.

"I got excited at that point, and said, 'Hey, can we - this is nice, but it's only three miles,'" Peterson explained. "As mountain bikers, we want more mileage. I said, 'Can we do stuff out here, can we build trails?'"

They did.

Volunteers met every few weeks to build trails, often by hand.

Today, the trail is about seven miles along, with a brand-new section on the other side of Claremore Lake. It sees more visitors than ever.

When it's finished in the fall, the Claremore Mountain Bike Trail will be more than ten miles long — expertly paved and clearly marked.

Volunteers will connect the section across the lake to the existing paths, linking it to the city park nearby. They're working with the Oklahoma Earth Bike Fellowship, a group that provides guidelines for sustainable trail-building techniques. That means the trails should last a long time, with little maintenance required.

Froman, who owns Adventure Signs, worked with the city to install bold, easy-to-read trail markers.

"Often times it takes the people that are most passionate about an asset like this to really get behind it and make it what it can be," Froman said.

The City of Claremore provides the materials, and volunteers, of course, provide free labor.

And the community gets a state-of-the-art trail on which they can exercise, bike, hike, and get lost in nature.

"When you got 17 guys with picks and shovels, building their own playground, they're all laughing and smiling and no one's on their cell phone," Peterson said.

The group meets for volunteer events about once every other month. If you'd like to get involved, you can find more information here.