The Environmental Journal of Southern Appalachia

Displaying items by tag: appalachian mountain bike club knoxville

 DSC3094The Whip Contest, set for 3 p.m. Saturday at Drop Inn, is a perennial crowd favorite at the annual Appalachian Mountain Bike Club Fall Festival. Courtesy AMBC

With food trucks, demos and contests, this year’s family-friendly bike festival is ready to roll. And they haven’t forgotten about the Vols.

KNOXVILLE — There’s a different kind of homecoming set for this weekend. It doesn’t feature football, but it still involves wheel routes. It’s a celebration of the city’s unique outdoor recreational offerings in an urban center.

The Appalachian Mountain Bike Club, a 650-member posse devoted to the acquisition, maintenance and marketing of regional mountain bike trails for multiple uses, hosts its 13th FREE annual fall festival Nov. 4-6, centered around Baker Creek Preserve and the rest of the Urban Wilderness.

Published in News

253657178 10109994526680305 2799060015716456914 n

Project would burnish Knoxville’s outdoor credentials

A group of local outdoor enthusiasts intend to establish a “bike-in bike-out” campground and construct an amenity-filled clubhouse and nature exhibits on 16 acres adjacent to Knoxville’s Urban Wilderness

Carter Miller, a South Knoxville native, is the project’s general manager, partnering with locals Eva Millwood and Bryan Foster to craft the space on Sevierville Pike. 

They gently dropped their “Drop Inn” concept Saturday at the Appalachian Mountain Bike Club fall festival in South Knoxville. 

“We’re stepping out today with our new project that’s been in the works this year... it’s gaining momentum, and we are really, *really* stoked about it!” Millwood said on social media. 

“So it’s The Drop Inn, Knoxville’s first on-trail bike-in, bike-out campground in the urban wilderness. A total of 16 acres adjacent to Marie Myers and William Hastie parks, with trail connectors along the Year Round Get Down.

“We’ll have tent, van/truck/car, and yurt camping, a central clubhouse with showers and an outdoor kitchen and pavilion, a marsh boardwalk, and all the makings of a Really Good Time™.
 
“Stay tuned here, Instagram, or at thedropinnknox.com, and watch the magic unfold!”

Millwood said a formal media announcement is planned soon.

This article has been edited for clarity.

Published in News
Compass: Urban Wilderness could expand with city/bike club deal

UPDATE: This resolution was passed March 9 by City Council.

Our friends at Compass report that Knoxville City Council will consider a memorandum of understanding tonight with the Appalachian Mountain Bike Club to expand the William Hastie Natural Area by 28 acres. 

The club and city would split the purchase price of the property off Margaret Road, and the club would maintain planned bike trails, according to Compass.

Compass is a subscription-only news site, but you should subscribe anyway, so check it out.

Here’s the agenda item:
 

A Resolution authorizing the Mayor to enter into a Memorandum of Understanding with the Appalachian Mountain Bike Club providing that the City pay an amount not to exceed $100,000.00 toward the purchase of 28 acres of property to expand the William Hastie Natural Area in the Urban Wilderness, and expressing appreciation for the donation of property to the City. (Requested by Administration).

Hellbender Press will let you know how the vote went.

Published in Feedbag

frsunflowersNot all of the Knoxville Urban Wilderness is true wilderness, of course. This monoculture field of sunflowers planted at the Forks of the River Wildlife Management Area does, however, attract lots of wildlife.  Courtesy Visit Knoxville

Spring study to quantify visitation, economic impact

Physically, the Urban Wilderness is 1,000 acres of natural and recreational land in South Knoxville. Visitors can enjoy hiking across Civil War battlefields, running on naturally surfaced trails, swimming in old quarries, and mountain biking on expertly designed tracks. But the Urban Wilderness is much more than a place. 

“It’s something special for Knoxville and defines us as a recreational community,” said city Deputy Chief of Economic and Community Development Rebekah Jane Justice. She was named the city’s first Urban Wilderness Coordinator in July 2017, and is still the city’s go-to expert on this ambitious, ongoing land-preservation and recreational project. “It’s about so many things, including building our local economy in a unique way.” 

The Urban Wilderness is, many will say, a boon to Knoxville’s economy, both in increasing tourism and for the businesses around it, including coffee shops, breweries, and restaurants. But hard numbers about its impact are still being developed. In 2015, University of Tennessee economics professor Charles Sims wrote a white paper projecting that if the Urban Wilderness grew to a national destination, it could have an economic impact of more than $29 million annually. 

Now that the Urban Wilderness is more established, actual numbers about usage are more easily captured than when Sims authored his paper. Matthew Kellogg of the Appalachian Mountain Bike Club said that his club received an equipment grant from the International Mountain Bicycling Association for trail-counter devices to quantify how many people use the trails — and where and when. Currently Kellogg’s group is calibrating 11 newly placed trail counters in the Urban Wilderness. By spring, the group hopes to be collecting reliable data. 

Among the things this data will be used for is a multi-year study by University of Tennessee kinesiology and recreation professor Eugene Fitzhugh, a frequent lecturer about urban trails their impact on a community’s physical activity.   

Published in News