WATERVILLE — John Wells of Albion has been walking the city-owned Pine Ridge Recreation Area trails for about 20 years. He’s excited that they are getting an upgrade.

“I think it’s wonderful,” Wells, 84, said Monday as he entered the trail head off Kennedy Memorial Drive, just after noon. “I love the trails up here, and it will be nice to see some new ones.”

With Wells were his two black labrador-mix dogs, Rickie, a female, and Toby, a male.

About a half-mile into the 8-mile trail, a crew from the New England Mountain Bike Association’s Central Maine Chapter was raking, moving rocks, smoothing out terrain and creating drainage on a new trail they had cleared using an excavator.

Their contracted work with the city is part of a $158,000 project to build and rehab trails in the Pine Ridge Trails network, which also has an entrance at Rummel’s Field off West River Road.

“It’s a great place because during the day, people are working, so you don’t get in people’s way and they don’t get in yours,” Wells said. “There’s almost never anybody on the trail at that time and the dogs can run free.”

Wells and the dogs hiked slowly into the wooded trail, with Wells saying he had spent much of the summer in the hospital and was easing his way back into the activity. The older dogs stayed close to him.

“It’s good exercise for all three of us,” Wells said.

Matt Skehan, Waterville’s parks and recreation director, said the city applied for and received a $69,850 Recreational Trails Program grant from the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation & Forestry to help fund the work, which includes rebuilding about 4.24 miles of trail that were impacted by construction of a solar farm project at the adjacent Waterville Regional Airport. The city is using $78,150 from a 2022 recreation bond, and $10,000 from the airport fund, for a total project cost of $158,000. The state grant required a minimum city match of 20%, or $13,970.

The  Waterville Parks and Recreation Department partnered with the Outdoor Sport Institute for assessment and recommendations for the trail system rehabilitation. Kennebec Messalonskee Trails, of which Pine Tree Trails are a part, and the Central Maine Chapter of the New England Mountain Bike Association, also got involved.

The Kennebec Messalonskee Trails system includes more than 60 miles in Waterville, Winslow, Fairfield, Oakland and Benton.

Skehan, who also is Waterville’s public works director, said the city has been anxious for the last four or five years to start the Pine Ridge trails work, which he anticipates will be completed at the end of next summer.

“Basically, we recognized things beginning to deteriorate after the solar farm project in 2021,” he said. “With the environment the way it is, and the severity of the storms, it really went downhill.”

BUILDING NEW TRAILS, REHABBING OTHERS

Chris Riley, president of the Central Maine Chapter of the bike association, was supervising the summer crew of mostly college students and high school juniors and seniors on Monday. While the crew is getting paid for the work, Riley is not, as he is volunteering.

While it was close to 90 degrees and humid, much of the trails were shaded by hemlock, oak, white pine and beech trees. Riley said design and layout work for the trails began in April and the crew started working in May, starting with the clearing of hundreds of trees that had blown down.

“We will have completed close to 3 miles as of tomorrow,” Riley said. “Eighty percent is brand new trail and we renovated old, eroded trail.”

All but three members of his crew are local mountain bikers who work from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Thursday with an option to work Fridays, he said. The crew also has built trails at Quarry Road Recreation Area in Waterville, Bond Brook in Augusta, Titcomb Mountain in Farmington and Mount Apatite in Auburn.

“They’re great — we’re so fortunate,” Riley said of the workers. “We have, probably, the only paid summer crew in the organization of this nature. We started seven years ago with two people and it’s grown. We’ve had, give or take, 10 people working. In all, we do maintenance on 11 or 12 different trail systems in any given summer.”

Riley said people who mountain bike, walk, run or snowshoe on the Pine Ridge trails have told him they are happy to see the area being improved.

“This is a well-loved trail system,” he said. “Waterville will have another really fantastic trail system to complement Quarry Road.”

Crew member Bailey Shink, 18, of Fayette, said the job involves moving a lot of heavy rocks by hand.

“It’s a lot of fun — it’s very rewarding work,” he said.

A Maranacook High School graduate, Shink recently completed his freshman year at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island. He said he doesn’t mountain bike like most of the crew, but they are trying to talk him into it.

Most of the student crew will leave Aug. 15 for the summer, and work will resume with a smaller crew in September, according to Riley. The goal is to get another mile built, for a total of 4, before snowfall, he said. From where the crew was working Monday, it was about 3/4-mile from the other trail head at Rummel’s Field.

Skehan, the recreation director, said the bike association’s work has been exceptional.

“Chris (Riley), in particular, has a real knack for making trails unique and special, using natural things he’s seeing in the environment, and topography — rocks and logs and downed timber — whatever he can use,” Skehan said. “He’s an artist, and I’m excited to see what he’s coming up with.”

Like Wells, the trail walker from Albion, Marc Averill, 57, of Waterville said he has been using the trails for several years, to both mountain bike and snowshoe, the latter of which his wife also enjoys. He took a hiatus from biking, got back into it in 2017 and in 2019, took to Pine Ridge Trails near his home.

“It was Pine Ridge that really got me hooked back on riding again, as a 50-year-old-plus kid,” he said.

The trail system is appropriate for people of all abilities, according to Averill, who said as trails age, roots and rocks become exposed and the work being done now will help refresh the trails.

A member of the Central Maine Chapter of the bike association, Averill said he is looking forward to using the improved and new trails.

“It really holds a special place in a lot of people’s hearts in this area,” he said.