St. Joseph mountain biking trails grow

St. Joseph’s mountain bike trails grow miles longer every year, due to volunteers with a passion for pedaling.

“For the number of people we have riding here,” said Lancen Milhouse, 30, an engineer at Boehringer Ingleheim Vetmedica who has been riding for 12 years, “a very high percentage do trail work.”

An estimated “hundreds” of hours of work have gone into clearing wooded areas off the city’s Parkway in the past few years. Chain saws, pruners, industrial weedwhackers, rakes and leaf blowers are used to make paths through thickets along the Parkway. The occasional poison ivy breakout and slithering reptile are hazards of the work, but the payoff is an intense ride.