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The 2.8-mile North Bank Trail overlooks the James River between Nickel and Lee bridges. (Photo by Kyle LaFerriere)
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Pocahontas State Park’s Poca Go! race series tests riders on the park’s single-track trails. (Photo by Laura Carson)
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(From left) Rams Racing coaches Leigh Busby, Amanda Harris, Chris Harris and Wil Loy and riders Olivia Nichols, James Lautemann, Logan Harris, Sam Bowman, Pappas Trice, Spencer Bowman, Josey Nichols and Walker Boyd (Photo by Jay Paul)
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The Rams Racing team hits the trails in Forest Hill Park. (Photo by Jay Paul)
On any given day, the North Bank Trail is thronged with Richmonders getting fresh air — some walking dogs or on a jog, others on wheels cycling on the dirt path along the James River. Stroll the forested urban oasis and you might convince yourself the route has always been a part of the riverbank, but just 25 years ago, that trail did not exist.
The story of Richmond’s love affair with its trails — currently measured at more than 22 miles of mixed-used adventure in the James River Park System and many more farther afield — is long, full of bends and jammed with wildly passionate (or just wild) mountain bikers who have been stewards of the land for decades.
Clark Jones (Photo courtesy Clark Jones)
“Back in the day, when we first started working on the James River Park System trails, people weren’t sure what we were doing down there,” says Clark Jones, now mountain bike trails manager at Pocahontas State Park in Chesterfield County. “They just knew there was this kind of crazy group of mountain bikers that were building something along areas that were hard to access.”
That “crazy group of mountain bikers” became rvaMORE (Mid-Atlantic Off-Road Enthusiasts), a loose confederation of cycling devotees who had met on various internet forums in the 1990s and early 2000s. Today, the organization is a chapter of the International Mountain Bicycling Association and still supports trail access for mountain biking and other outdoor sports by maintaining trails and hosting events, including the annual Tour de Fall Line, a race over multiple distances (up to 52 miles) along all the trails in Richmond.
RvaMORE “started with five to 10 overzealous mountain bikers looking for a little more mileage,” Jones says. But all the land that they hoped to turn into “more mileage” was publicly owned and couldn’t be improved without permission.
“In order to talk the city into doing what we were doing on public land, we had to build trails with some type of standard,” Jones says.
“The whole thing was built with hand tools. We walked the landscape, picked the challenging places, and went in with picks and loppers,” says Vince Carman, a mountain biker and the first president of rvaMORE. That work led to the relationship with IMBA, which taught the group how to build trails properly.
(From left) Volunteers on the Buttermilk Trail in 2016; a completed trail project in Pocahontas State Park; an rvaMORE outing in 2025 (Photos courtesy Clark Jones)
Today, Richmond is a bronze-level IMBA ride center, a designation that places the region as one of the 30 best places for mountain biking in the United States and Canada. In addition to trails along the James River, there are purpose-built trails at Pocahontas State Park; Powhite, Larus, Dorey and Forest Hill parks; and Pine Camp, plus a “pump track” circuit at Deep Run Park.
“I can’t think of any city that has a trail system like we have,” says Wil Loy, head coach of the Rams Racing mountain bike team at Good Shepherd Episcopal School in Forest Hill. “We’re really, really fortunate.”
Among the beneficiaries of rvaMORE’s trail work are Richmond’s next generation of mountain bikers. The sport is gaining popularity among elementary, middle and high school students, evidenced by the dozens of teams that race in the Virginia High School (aka VAHS) Mountain Bike Series. Loy and the kids on his team — some as young as 7 years old — train on the JRPS trails.
“You’d be blown away if you saw what a 7-year-old can do on a bike,” he says. “They have an advantage: lack of fear.”
Rams Racing competes with schools and clubs across the state and beyond in VAHS mountain biking races each spring. Loy says the local trails prepare his team to challenge their competitors from more mountainous regions such as Charlottesville and Roanoke.
“There’s a good amount of technicality on the JRPS trails. There’s an armored climb called Bill’s Hill on the North Bank Trail that’s really hard to get up,” he says. “And the best view in the city is from the top of Belle Isle looking upriver. You could be out in the mountains somewhere — you can’t even see civilization.”
That wilderness in the middle of the city is “something that can’t be replicated,” Carman says.
“You get down there, below the brow of the hill — you’ve got the rushing of the river, and you feel like you’re out in the mountains, out in the wild,” he says. “It’s extraordinary for its connectivity, for the fact that it’s right on the river and for the extreme challenge.”
I can’t think of any city that has a trail system like we have. We’re really, really fortunate.
—Wil Loy, Head Coach, Rams Racing
As mountain biking’s popularity grew locally, riders eyed the natural wonderland at Pocahontas State Park for expansion. Today, there are some 50 miles of dedicated mountain bike trails, marked like ski slopes: green for beginners, blue for intermediate and black for advanced. Many of the trails at Pocahontas — including the Gateway, Bell Lap and Blueberry trails — were built in the mid-2010s, in part to secure the bronze rating from IMBA.
“To achieve this bronze-level ride center designation, you have to have true beginner trails,” Jones says. “You need a lot of diversity — they also want old-school ‘rake-and-ride’ trails, they want purpose-built flow trails, they want jump lines.”
Pocahontas makes up the southern end of Richmond’s IMBA ride center; the epicenter is the Buttermilk Trail along the south bank of the James River, and all trails within a 30-minute drive of the Reedy Creek trailhead are part of the trail system.
“If you’re just getting into mountain biking, Pocahontas is a good place to start,” Jones says. “The trails at Pocahontas are dedicated [biking] trails, so there are no hikers or walkers, and they are all single-direction trails, so when you’re blasting downhill, you don’t have someone coming up the opposite way.”
For true beginners, pump tracks such as those at Dorey Park and Pocahontas are teaching courses where riders can work on short hills and banked turns that train you to create your own momentum, according to Jones.
Achieving the bronze-level designation, which involved blazing the North Bank Trail, connecting the Buttermilk Trail and building other trails throughout the metro Richmond area, has benefits beyond mountain biking. Trail building has reduced trash in riverside ecosystems, opened paths for a variety of outdoor sports and led to the creation of a full-time trails maintenance staff at the James River Park System, says JRPS Superintendent Andrew Alli.
“A lot of the work the crew does is dealing with reducing water runoff,” Alli says. “A sustainable trail is one that is resistant to erosion. You can armor trails by burying rock into the trail. There are standards for maximum grades — if a trail is too steep, water will find its way there. We also deal with downed trees and with cutting back the corridors.”
As organizations like rvaMORE and JRPS hope to upgrade the trails’ IMBA ranking and improve the city’s status as an outdoor hub, preserving a wild feeling across the trails is equally important, Alli adds.
“There’s so much variety in what you experience, from one end of the trail to the other,” he says. “It provides an escape from the city. It’s got a wilderness to it that people really appreciate. We try to maintain that sense of adventure.”
Editor’s note: Wil Loy is married to Richmond magazine Online Editor Mandy Loy.
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