WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — As a Purple Valley Trails Alliance board member and a visible public advocate for its mountain bike trail network, Bill MacEwen is tapped into all things mountain biking in the Village Beautiful.

 

But sometimes, even he can be surprised.

 

"I ran into a guy over the weekend wearing a Purple Valley Trails T-shirt," MacEwen said this week. "I said, 'We never made a T-shirt. Where did you get that?' He said, 'I got the logo off your website, and my wife has a screen printing thing.' 

 

"There's a community forming around the network here, and that's always been our No. 1 goal."

 

The PVT network will be celebrated on Sunday when the alliance hosts a grand opening celebration at the Berlin Mountain Trail Head on Berlin Road.

 

The network has been open for riding since its "soft opening" in July, but the event Sunday will give local mountain bike enthusiasts and newcomers to the sport an opportunity to learn more about the trails, give them a try or just share time with others who already have discovered the region's newest outdoor recreation opportunity.

 

The celebration is scheduled from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and will offer a barbecue, raffle with prizes donated by local businesses, guided tours of the intermediate and expert trails and learn-to-ride clinics for children and adults.

 

 "One of our big goals is to get more kids into this," MacEwen said. "We designed the Green Wave Trail around kids.

 

"This coming weekend, we partnered with Girl Scouts locally and hired an instructor to come out and give free lessons to kids. If there are any kids out there who want to try mountain biking, this is a good opportunity."

 

Participants will need to bring their own bikes, but MacEwen said most children's bikes will work for the beginners trail.

 

"You just can't have training wheels," he said. "As long as you have brakes and wider tires … even something like a BMX will work if you have a brake on it."

 

In fact, due to the limited parking at the trail head, organizers are encouraging anyone who can do so to park at the base of Berlin Road and ride up to the trail head, site of the main access trail. Anyone who does drive to the trail head is asked to be aware of the bikers who will be sharing the road.

 

Some of Sunday's attendees likely will already be familiar with the parking situation and the trails themselves. MacEwen said that usage in the first couple of months has shown the demand for the network.

 

"It's been really amazing," he said, referring to data from hiking, biking and running app Strava, which allows riders to "check in" at the the areas they use. "Since we opened in July, we've had 160 individuals log rides on Strava up here. For what's truly, at this point, a small network, that's a big number."

 

MacEwen said users have come from New York (the networks straddle the New York/Massachusetts state line), Connecticut, Vermont and Eastern Massachusetts.

 

"Some have been here over a dozen times," he said. "And those are just the tracked rides. Let's assume there is another number of people coming here and riding. You can probably double that. We've probably had over 300 visitors and, I'm sure, we're well over 1,000 rides, which for a very small, very early stage network, is crazy."

 

Currently, Purple Valley Trails has a network that covers five miles with a vertical change of about 375 feet.

 

But, MacEwen said, that is "scratching the surface."

 

Eventually, planners envision a 20- to 25-mile network of trails with the greatest vertical drop in Southern New England, more than 1,200 feet.

 

The network is built on both public and private land with funds generated through individual donors and large foundation grants, including from the Massachusetts Office of Outdoor Recreation and the New England Mountain Bike Association. Williamstown's town meeting in May awarded Purple Valley Trails $16,000 in Community Preservation Act funds.

 

For now, those funds are concentrated on buildout of the network. At some point down the line, there will be a need to redirect some of the PVT's funds toward preservation of the trails, MacEwen said. But, for the foreseeable future, that is a job for the alliance's volunteers.

 

Fortunately, he said, there is no shortage of people willing to help.

 

"Mountain biking is a unique sport in that the people who ride take a huge amount of pride in the upkeep of the trails," MacEween said. "People are out every weekend cleaning up trees or fixing a berm here or there. A big part of what we're doing here is community building.

 

"Fortunately, the soil we're working with is perfect for trail construction. As a result, we're finding the trails we're building are holding up very well."

 

For more information about Purple Valley Trails, visit its website or Facebook page.