Virginia Trail Builder of the Year 2023

Allen Wagner is an adventure racer, adventure race director, and, now, a “trail builder of the year.”

Recently, Wagner, the race director for Broad Run Off Road, was named by MORE (Mid-Atlantic Off-Road Enthusiasts), a chapter of the International Mountain Biking Association (IMBA), as the Virginia Trail Builder of the Year 2023.

“In the last two years, through our volunteer days we have gotten upwards of 40 different people and logged 500 plus volunteer hours of people actually out in the park doing work,” explains Wagner. “It’s those 40 people who come out and do the work that really make it all happen.”

He and Chris Myers are the co-liaisons for James S. Long Regional Park, a 230-acre park in Haymarket, VA. In 2023, the volunteer group led by Myers and Wagner built and opened a brand new, one-mile trail, as well as extended and rerouted other trails, and rock armored a problematic stream crossing. Without any designated trail maintenance staff at the park, these are improvements that would not have been done otherwise.

As MORE’s liaison for the park, Wagner meets with representatives from the park such as the rangers when there are issues such as vandalism. More often, he meets with the county parks and rec planner to scout new trails or decide on reroutes of a trail because of erosion.

“Many people think building trails is ‘I just go out there with a rake and clear a line,” he explains. “But a lot of it is making sure it is up to the standards of the park, that it is something that is going to last 10, 20, 30 years.

“Also, our park has two main creeks, so we have to work with stream mitigation people to make sure we are not doing damage,” he says. “When you are crossing a creek, you can’t just build a bridge or a sweet jump. It is trail building by the book.”

“By the book” trail building takes time even before the volunteers show up on a Saturday with their rakes or a McLeod to bench cut a flat trail into the side of a 45-degree hill.

“You have to do tons and tons of walk-throughs … identifying indigenous plants or rare mushrooms to avoid and see where a trail can go,” he says.

Wagner was inspired to build trails in part because his first Spring Bloom Adventure Race went through the park. He knew that introducing new people to the park could tax the system.

“A bunch of people when we did that race said ‘we didn’t know this was here.’ That is why I wanted to do the race in that park to point it out. But also I thought it should be more than this.”

When Wagner started trail building in Long Park, there were two miles of trails. He says that trails are not revenue generating like other potential aspects of a park such as sports fields. Long Park now has over five miles of trails with the hope of eight by the end of the year. There are also plans for a mountain bike race in the park with the proceeds going to trail building.

The majority of the funds for trail building come from donations with a top donation of $3000 last year from an anonymous donor. They also work with local equestrian groups and other interested groups to fundraise. For the newly built, one-mile “home run trail,” Wagner’s group raised  $10,000 and MORE matched the fundraising with a grant to pay for the heavy machinery needed to complete the trail.  

Another perk of a local park is a shorter commute to ride.

“Where I live, I have a 55-minute drive to do a nice ride that has more than 4 miles,” says Wagner. “The best biking in our area is at Fountainhead. It has great biking, but it’s an hour drive away.

“There is a project in our county to connect our park to another park,” he explains. “If they connect all of the different parks, we would have 22 continuous miles of trails.”

The trail building has also been lucrative for Wagner’s adventure race company, Broad Run Off Road, and not just because he is giving back to the areas he uses for his races.

“Adventure racing is incredibly niche. You tell someone you want to put on an adventure race and they say ‘you want to do what?!’ But if they know me because I am out there and volunteering, they will be more apt to listen to me.”

“Spring Bloom this year we are at a brand-new park called Leeyslvania State Park. They reached out to me,” he says. “I did not even realize the park was there. They knew me because of past races I have done at other state parks. And also because they are in Prince William County where I live, and they have seen my name come up. That opened a door for me. I have a new venue to put on an adventure race where there has never been an adventure race before.”