Mountain Biking Portland Maine area Trails, Portland Maine

Mountain Biking

Portland - North Deering Area Trails

Portland, Maine

With a network of mostly uncharted neighborhood trails, a single track adventure awaits!

by Dana Farnsworth, Outdoor Travels

Portland is a bikers community. In the surrounding wooded areas, there is a thriving network (around 30 miles) of single track that are not formally mapped. Check with a local or trail shop. Maps show starting locations but since trails are built, changed and altered from time to time, no current map is available that illustrates everything accurately. For instance, there are currently three separate areas of what is known as “The River Trail”. While riding any one section is a nice ride, all three can be strung together with a little road riding in between. The challenge though is finding the sections, as not all sections have been formally mapped.

There are also many miles of paved multi-use trails running in and around the Portland metro area. A lot of mountain bike rides begin at the door step or local bike shop for group rides. Nice wide bike lanes on neighborhood streets lead to little access points cut out in the bordering woods that lead to single track ranging from easy riding smooth track to rocky, tight and rooted technical sections. On our ride, we left from our host’s house and entered the trail at the Oat Nuts Trail system. The name of the trails came from a cereal company that ran a promotion in the 1930’s where they parceled out 10’ x 10’ plots of land “in the Maine woods” for those who ate enough Oat Nuts cereal and sent in the box tops. Largely unused and unclaimed, the city eventually used imminent domain to claim the land and build a park. For years only a few riders were enjoying the trails by bike. Even the best kept secrets can’t be kept forever. As other riders found out about these trails, it became an immensely popular ride for locals. Now, trail building is an ongoing activity. From Oat Nuts we accessed the first section of the River Trail. The trail’s surfaces in both areas vary little from the prototypical north east trail profile, which is to say, they are more “hard to pedal” versus “hard to ride”. All of the aforementioned roots, rocks, tight turns, technical climbs and technical descents are all in full effect.

A rider would be VERY hard pressed to string together a ride that was predominately any one level of riding. If your skill level hovers around beginner or beginning intermediate, there are parts where you will be pushing your bike or pushing terra firma with your face. With a bit of patience though, you’ll soon find sections of trail (predominately along the bank of the Presumpscot river) that are more or less smooth rolling. Along the Presumpscot river sections, there are also little loops that branch off of the trail that our local guide and friend Larry, refers to as “extra credit”. These little advanced level loops are about .2 miles or so in length and include a technical climb up the bordering hillside and a fun descent back down to the trail.

I’m afraid that in this dynamically growing network of trails built with healthy doses of love by proud local riders, my review may not be of much help. I have no really great map to provide, I have no real perfect ride to provide detailed directions to, I have no real specific trailhead to send a rider to and I certainly can’t cover every mile of the Portland trail network in the day that I had. What I can recommend though is a stop at a local bike shop. From there, you can hook up with a local group ride or venture out on your own for an adventurous, picturesque and fun trek.