Sick of trekking to Draper for mountain biking trails, west-siders broke out their own shovels to carve new paths

West Valley City • Thirteen year-old Sam Anderson rides his mountain bike over to Lodestone Regional Park a few minutes from his house once or twice a week, often bringing along his 11-year-old brother, Jacob.

Without the new collection of paths at the park, the Anderson kids may have never even tried out mountain biking or, in Sam’s case, joined a team that rides there.

“My mom heard about the team and I came down here to check it out,” Sam said. “And I loved it.”

Sam pedals with the West Granite Composite mountain bike team. The group includes west-side students from seventh grade all the way up to high school seniors.

When coach Rochelle Bartschi started the team about a decade ago, if she wanted to practice on real mountain biking trails, parents and kids had to commute up to an hour and 15 minutes during rush hour to Corner Canyon in Draper. At the time, there were no public trails in the Oquirrh Mountains, which are largely owned by multinational mining company Rio Tinto. Since then, more trails have opened a little closer, in Herriman, but getting to that corner of the Salt Lake Valley can still be a pain.

Now, the West Granite riders have six miles of trails right in their backyards in the nearly complete Lodestone Bike Park, part of the larger regional park that straddles the border between Kearns and West Valley City.

While the trails have been partially open since 2021, construction is due to wrap up early this spring, bringing a vision of fun obstacles and amenities for all skill levels to life.

Clearing new trails

The county-owned bike park off the Mountain View Corridor at 6200 South was originally slated to be a dog park, but dirt bikers had carved trails into the hillside.

West Granite mountain bikers were used to riding on the grass and paved walking trails nearby, and when they asked to practice on the unauthorized paths, Bartschi told them they’d have to go about it the right way, and that meant asking the county.

County officials were open to it, so they asked the coach for a plan.

Bartschi went to Jo Darton, another mountain biking coach and a Trails Utah board member, to design the paths.

“When you see it on a map, it really does look like a spaghetti bowl,” Darton said, “but that’s because we were trying to get in as many miles as possible [in] this space.”

Bartschi and Darton received county approval for a bike park and hosted a trail-cutting day in May 2021. The event drew over 200 volunteers, including West Granite riders and their parents, who were eager to chip away at the new trails by hand.

Bartschi and Darton, with the help of Trails Utah, later secured grant funding from the Utah Division of Outdoor Recreation and South Jordan tech businessman Spencer Millerberg’s foundation to improve the paths. The construction project, in motion since 2023, has added banked turns, rock gardens and wooden drops in an effort to better prepare riders for races and offer trails suitable for bikers at all skill levels.

The trails are open to the public, too. Darton said the spot dries out quicker than most other paths in Salt Lake County, so it attracts riders itching to get out during the winter and spring.

Something for everyone

Bartschi said the variation in trails and obstacles allows her to craft practices that push all of her riders.

“They just work on different skills at different levels, just because everybody learns at a different pace,” she said. “You can teach a lot of advanced skills, but there’s so much to say about going over the basics.”

She also likes how clustered the paths are because it gives younger riders the opportunity to see what the older bikers are working on and the older bikers a chance to cheer on the younger ones.

Bartschi has made it a point to break down barriers to mountain biking in this working-class portion of the valley. When she started her team in 2014, there were only six kids. Now, 45 students ride with West Granite.

To get more kids sending it on the trails, the team offers loaner bikes to families that might not otherwise be able to afford them. Having biking paths close by is just the next step in improving accessibility to the sport.

Now, residents on this side of the valley don’t have to seek out or travel far for mountain biking options. They can stumble upon them at a major park while shooting hoops or playing in a Saturday soccer game.

“I didn’t know there was a whole universe,” Emily Anderson, Sam and Jacob’s mom, said. “It’s a whole new world. It’s connected us with some of the best people in the community and amazing role models for them.”

The park should be fully complete come springtime; all that’s left to do is put up fencing and build out some places to congregate.

When it’s finally done, Sam and Jacob will be there, gearing up for the next race.