I’ve ridden a number of mountain bike trails over the years and I love reading about new dirt around the world – in fact I read just about every trail review posted here on singletracks (almost 6,000 and counting!). One pattern I’ve noticed is that certain trail names seem to get recycled, either for convenience or because of commonly-named landmarks nearby.
First, the convenience trail names. Oftentimes trails are given a descriptive name like inner loop, outer loop, left loop, or right loop. North/South/East/West loops pop up every now and then and colors are also popular choices (red loop, blue loop, etc.). These names are used almost exclusively to describe trails within a larger named network so there is often little chance of confusion with other trail systems.
Of course there are countless examples of recycled place and landmark names around the US. In fact I’m pretty sure that every state in the union has a city named ‘Greenville’ or ‘Columbus’ but even within a state a landmark name can be recycled dozens of times. Take ‘Bear Creek’ for example. There are Bear Creek trails in Georgia, Idaho, Arkansas, and at least 4 or 5 trails across the state of Colorado that contain ‘Bear Creek’ in their names. Other common creek-based names: Reedy Creek, Big Creek, and of course Little River (isn’t a little river just a big creek?). Foothills trail and Lake trail are also popular monikers that can be descriptive but when you have more than 1 of these in a state it can get confusing.
I’m planning an upcoming post to discuss uncommon mountain bike trail names but in the meantime, I’ll see you out at Bear Creek next weekend 😉
Left: Bear Creek (GA) Right: Bear Creek (Morrison, CO)
