Two new trails in Concord that have been in the making since 2019 are ready to open to both hikers and mountain bikers.
The land where the trails are located was purchased from the Knowlton family in 2017 and is known as the Knowlton Forest, with a new parking area off Hot Hole Pond Road. The paths will be known as the Knowlton and Bowl trails and will connect to the Dancing Bear Trail, which is part of the Oak Hill trail network in the northeast corner of Concord, near the border with Loudon.
The trails were created with the assistance of the Central New Hampshire chapter of the New England Mountain Biking Association.
The forest itself features many stone walls, steep slopes and wet patches. On one particularly steep hill, two mini paths had to be created to cater to hikers as opposed to bikers, said Matt Bowser, vice president of the local New England Mountain Biking Association chapter. While switchbacks are helpful for bikers, hikers tend to prefer a straight path up, said Bowser. It was also done to protect hikers from bikers heading downhill.
“We built them so they are fun for mountain biking and we tried to accommodate hikers and walkers as well,” said Bowser.
Also helping with the trail construction was a class from the ROPE course (Reaching Our Potential in Education), a class at Concord High School. In addition to helping with trail work, the students also built a bridge, said Beth Fenstermacher, Concord’s assistant city planner.
The parking lot was constructed by Chuck Rose, a logger who has a deal with the city to harvest timber from the forest.
In 2017, NEMBA and the City of Concord worked together on a trail near the Broken Ground elementary school and have worked together since.
“They recognized that they really didn’t have necessarily all the manpower to put in some of the trails that they had hoped for so they contacted us,” said Bowser.
Both of the new trails will be roughly nine-tenths of a mile.