Recently announced funding by the provincial and federal governments toward Sault Ste. Marie’s trail system are just the latest in a years-long strategy to not only create an asset for the community’s enjoyment, but also to bring an increase in tourism dollars to the city.
Consideration for a world-class network of mountain bike trails began around 2018 as part of the Future SSM project, said Travis Anderson, Sault Ste. Marie’s director of tourism and community development.
At the time, the city worked with the local Economic Development Corporation and Tourism Sault Ste. Marie to look into ways of diversifying the city’s tourism offerings.
Anderson said many tourists who are drawn to the area for its outdoor attractions bypass the city all together.
“What we have struggled with is they all do that outside of the community — they are camping or staying at locations outside of the Sault like Pancake Bay or Batchewana Bay and they are not coming directly in Sault Ste. Marie to spend their money, so we recognized that as one of the gaps,” he said.
What’s different about the trail system in Sault Ste. Marie versus some built near other communities, said Anderson, is its connection to just about every part of the city by way of the John Rowswell Hub Trail.
“That will allow anyone — whether they are staying at the Delta, the Holiday Inn, Water Tower Inn or what have you — to jump on our trail system and drive from town to the network,” said Anderson.
The most recent announcement of $600,000 in funding from the provincial government will contribute to a year-round mountain bike trail that will eventually link four lakes outside of Sault Ste. Marie to the rest of the city’s trail network.
A link already exists connecting the anchor trails at Hiawatha Highlands to Farmer Lake. From there a connection to Crystal Lake is currently under construction and expected to be completed this year.
Future plans include linking that trail to nearby Mabel Lake and looping back to the Hiawatha trails and the city’s trail system.
Anderson said the funding received a few weeks earlier by the Federal government will link the city’s Hub Trail to the anchor trails at Hiawatha by way of Wishart Park, eventually connecting everything.
The idea is to give mountain biking tourists enough trails to ride for them to spend two or three days in the Sault and hopefully leave some tourism dollars behind.
“We are really establishing our place on the map as a premiere mountain bike destination,” said Anderson.
Funding for the off-road trail system has come by way of provincial and federal funding, as well as the municipal accommodation tax paid by travellers when they stay in Sault Ste. Marie.
“We have been very fortunate because all of the money has come from out of town,” said Anderson. “It’s not impacting property taxes, it’s not impacting the rate payers across Sault Ste. Marie.”
“It’s a great win for the community because we are developing something that is awesome for the local resident, awesome for tourism and it’s not coming from city coffers,” he added.
The trails have also benefited some local businesses, said Anderson.
Reg Peer and his partners established Red Pine Tours in 2019, right about the time the first of the city’s off-road trails were being constructed.
“We are just avid cyclists who like to show off our trail system and our area to others. We thought this was a great way to go about doing that,” said Peer about the business idea of offering mountain bike tours in the area.
Business ground to a halt in the earliest days of the pandemic, but people who wanted to stay active soon found themselves wanting to spend more time outdoors where physical distancing was less of a concern.
“We found we got busy fast and right around that time the new trails were just getting constructed and we had a ton of locals who were looking for something to do,” said Peer. “A lot of people who had wanted to try mountain biking but weren’t really sure how to get started.”
Now years later, Peer said he often sees some of those people he helped get started in mountain biking out on the trails.
Once things opened up later in the pandemic, Peer said some people decided to explore other parts of Ontario instead of flying out of country.
“We were getting a lot of folks coming up from southern Ontario area who had heard of Sault Ste. Marie but didn’t really know where it was and had never been here,” said Peer. “To be able to show people you don’t really need to travel that far to get amazing beaches and mountain bike trails — that was a cool thing to experience.”
Since it started, the business has grown along with the city’s trail system.
“We brought someone on board to help us with some tours and recently we just purchased a few bikes for a slow build of a rental fleet,” said Peer. “That’s pretty optimistic and it’s not just the trail system, it’s the push form the city for cycling in general.”
Recently, Red Pine Tours linked with another tourist attraction passing through the Sault.
“We had one of the cruise ships that came in and we did a tour with some of the members on that boat,” said Peer. “It’s something we never really thought we would be doing as a touring company, but to get them reaching out asking about good places to ride a bike is pretty awesome to see.”
The trails under construction to the lakes outside of town are going to add a lot of interest to the local system, said Peer.
“A lot of us ride that loop in the winter time, following those snow machine trails on our fat bikes. It’s going to be amazing to tour people all-year around basically on the same system,” said Peer.
On July 29, Red Pine Tours is hosting a 50 kilometre bike race called the Salty Marie Big Brine will be using some of the trails. Peer is working to finalize the route
“It seems like every other week there’s a new trail being built and I have to go back to the drawing board,” he said.