After seven years of work, a new mountain bike trail system in northern Michigan is nearing completion — and it’s already being hailed as one of the best mountain bike trails in Michigan. Work will conclude on the Palmer Woods Forest Reserve trail system this year, and a total of 24 miles of bike-specific trails will be open to the public.
Building bike-specific mountain bike trails in a massive wilderness
The new trails have been built by the Leelanau Conservancy in Leelanau County at a cost of about $10 million. Those funds were raised entirely from the local community and were used to acquire the land, build parking, work on ecological restoration, and, of course, trail construction. The Conservancy purchased the 1,155-acre property, which had previously been used for timber harvesting for over 40 years, with the intention of creating a trail system that runs through a strong, environmentally resilient ecosystem.
This unique property is bordered by Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore on three sides. The isolation from being surrounded by 13,000 acres of wilderness “creates this really big deep woods feel,” said Caleb Garone, Land Steward for the Leelanau Conservancy. “When you’re looking at West Coast numbers, it doesn’t feel super, super massive, but certainly thinking about Midwest, East Coast — it’s a very large chunk of protected, intact forest.”
What can mountain bikers expect on the new trails in Palmer Woods?
“Everything that’s built out here is really flow-oriented. So it’s machine-built flow mountain bike trails,” said Garone. The trail system has intentionally been constructed with progression in mind.
“We wanted someone that can show up on a hardtail or a $50 garage sale bike, and they can still get out here and probably ride a couple of the beginner trails and still get a taste for what mountain biking is like,” said Garone. “I was just talking to someone the other day [who said,] ‘You know, I can ride this three and a quarter mile loop, and I can get out there, and I could be riding with my nine-year-old daughter, and she can be doing her thing, and I can be hitting these features on the side, and I’m having a great time. She’s having a great time.”
The A and B lines on all of the beginner and intermediate trails were intentionally built to make them both as accessible and entertaining as possible.
Moving up from the beginner trails, the bulk of the singletrack consists of intermediate-friendly machine-built flow trails. Turkey Tail and Hemlock Hollow are two of the standout intermediate routes. Most of the intermediate trails are one-way directional, with the direction of travel alternating daily.
The main exception is a couple of one-way downhill trails, which offer “white-knuckle, fast as you please downhills,” according to Justin Simpson, Director of Progressive Trails for WMMBA. The “jumps and berms rival some of the best bike parks,” Simpson raved. “Countless side hits let rider creativity show. Unique trail features that aren’t just repetitive table jumps and rollers, but proper shark fins, hips, step downs, jumps in and out of berms, etc. It’s so darn pretty and located near some great beaches for a post-ride dip.”
One of the final trails built by Spectrum Trail Design, the company contracted to build Palmer Woods, is Lion’s Mane. Completed in late summer 2025, this brand-new line is a black diamond one-way downhill gravity flow trail. “It [has] a lot of really interesting dirt jump shapes,” said Garone. “There’s [been] quite a bit of rock added for some downhill kickers.” On Lion’s Mane and other advanced trails, riders will face mandatory drops of 18-24 inches.
Different trails for different user groups
While our focus here is the mountain bike trails, Palmer Woods also offers trails for both hikers and cross-country skiers. However, those trails are completely separate from the mountain biking trails. Instead of having to sacrifice speed and flow to build multi-use trails, the Leelanau Conservancy has built separate trail networks for each of these three user groups to serve their individual needs.
Progressive trails 🤝 ecological sustainability
Along with recreation, the Conservancy places a strong emphasis on ecological sustainability and diversity. Garone explained how these two goals coexist at Palmer Woods.
The woodland that the Conservancy purchased to create Palmer Woods has endured heavy timber harvesting activity for over 40 years, so some sections of the forest have been thinned, and most of the land has been impacted. The construction of the trails actually provided the Conservancy with better access to the interior of the parcel, which allowed them to spread seeds along the new trail corridor to replant native wildflower and grass species. While it “is just visually really neat, [it] also helps hold soil, and then also helps pollinator species,” said Garone. It’s a “really easy thing to do, and again, just kind of creates that elevated experience.”
“I really think these couple projects have the ability to showcase what’s possible to land managers that have potentially been […] more recreation-focused, [so they] can see some really basic strategies we’re using that improve the quality of the trail,” said Garone. “So I think it does create a model that others could potentially emulate, because it feels like sometimes there’s this feeling that when a trail system is being built in a spot, it’s either going to be a trail system and that’s all it is, or it’s going to be this pristine natural space. But I think both Palmer Woods and Sugar Loaf will prove that you can have really strong ecological communities and really high-quality recreation within these spaces.”
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