ABOUT NYCMTB

The New York City Mountain Bike Association (NYCMTB) builds and maintains trails in the five boroughs of New York City, advocates locally and regionally for the sport of mountain biking, and fosters a community of mountain bikers in NYC. NYCMTB is a nonprofit, and a chapter of IMBA and USA Cycling.

In addition to building and maintaining trails, NYCMTB is committed to promoting Mountain Bike culture through events, programming and races. Our goal is to celebrate the ride with everyone. From youthful beginners to expert level riders, we are out in the forest riding bikes and building trails within and outside of the city. Revenue from our races funds our trail-building and maintenance work, which creates better trails to race and ride on- a virtuous circle.
Our off-trail social events bring riders together and foster a sense of community, which in turn builds greater volunteer participation. Our race team is designed both to keep racing fun for the racers of NYC, and to support our youth development team- we’re not just racing for our personal results, we’re racing to mentor the next generation of young riders and racers, and to grow the base of the sport in under-served communities in New York City while promoting fitness and a love of the outdoors.

Please consider a donation to help NYCMTB’s efforts to grow the sport of MTB in New York City.

History

NYCMTB was officially founded in 2005 (after a year of kicking around the idea) by Dawson Smith and Jamie Bogner. Smith and Bogner met through an e-mail list of New York City mountain bikers started by longtime advocate and former NYC IMBA Rep Matt LeBow. The group was founded to manage the trail building process at Highbridge Park in Manhattan, which Smith, Lebow and CLIMB President Mike Vitti had successfully lobbied for, and NYCMTB volunteers contributed over a thousand hours to the construction of the trails at Highbridge alongside volunteers from many other regional mountain bike clubs and a dedicated crew of NYC Parks Green Apple Corps volunteers.

In 2007, Matt Lebow invited NYCMTB to join him in advocating for trails at Wolfe’s Pond Park on Staten Island, and in the summer of 2008 the Wolfe’s Pond trails became the third legal trail system in New York City (the Cunningham Park trails in Queens, built and maintained by CLIMB, Concerned Long Island Mountain Bikers, was the second). NYCMTB is actively pursuing potential trail proposals in both the Bronx and Brooklyn—aiming to fulfill the vision that NYC Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe set out at the Highbridge Park Trails opening—of mountain bike trails in all five boroughs of NYC.