In the past I’ve mentioned the Ontario Trail Network Initiative. This is intended to be a comprehensive geographic database of all trail data in Ontario. Not just the trail heads, but also the trails themselves. I’m not going to go into more detail here, if you want to learn more visit my previous post on the topic.

There is a somewhat related effort that has been underway now for some time. It is the “Find a Trail” database on The Ontario Trails Council’s (OTC) website. The OTC redesigned their website last year and added this functionality as part of that design. You can search for trails by a number of criteria from anywhere on the OTC site. You can search for a trail by Region, City, activity, trail name. While “mountain biking” is not a legitimate activity, “cycling - off-road” is.

While you might know where all the cycling trails are in your area, you probably don’t know where they are if you get too far away from your neck of the woods. Personally I know most of the good riding spots in the GTA, but what about Sudbury? Not so much. With a quick search I find that there are 10 “off-road” cycling trails in the Sudbury area. Some are quite short and no doubt some are not really mountain biking experiences, just a dirt path. But at least I have something to start with.

We should include all of our mountain biking spots in this database. Why? The OTC has been using the site statistics when making presentations as of late. And why shouldn’t they, those statistics show a fairly good picture of what people are looking for in trails. From location, to activity, to distance… A few examples:

• The USA makes up 60% of the traffic with Canada taking 35% and the rest of the world filling out the remaining visits;
• There are visitors to the site from France, Romania, Germany, Korea, Australia, all looking for trails to visit when they travel to Ontario;
• Off-road Cycling has consistently been one of the most popular activities along with road cycling and motorcycling;
• Ganaraska Forest has been the most popular single trail more than a few times.

These are all excellent bits of information that can be used by those who set policy and allocate dollars. Mountain biking is the top activity without even trying to promote it in Ontario! There are pages and pages of off-road cycling trails (I stopped counting after 50) without much direct involvement from the mountain biking community.

My appeal to all mountain bikers out there is to double check that your regular riding spots are included on the site. Are the specifics correct? Are they listed as allowing mountain biking? If your riding spots are not listed then please submit them. There is a submit form on the site.