PIEDMONT

COGGS info, including a .pdf map, and video from a WDSE Venture North segment

Directions to parking

Piedmont ski trail parking lot: From the intersection of Piedmont Avenue and 24th Avenue West (which is in a small area where Piedmont, West Skyline Parkway, and 24th, and Trinity Road/MN Highway 53 all meet, cross, or run close to each other), bear left on to Hutchinson Road. The parking lot, on the left, is almost exactly across Hutchinson from Adirondack Street.

Haines Road (at the Superior Hiking Trail and State Trail crossing point): Follow West Skyline Parkway west until it meets Haines. Turn right. Look for COGGS, Superior Hiking Trail, and State Trail signs. Stay on the COGGS trail, please.

Skyline Parkway near the Wheeler Field overlook (the most difficult entry point, because it starts with a steep climb): Traveling west on West Skyline Parkway, after crossing 28th Avenue West, look for a COGGS marker (it's not far past a marked Superior Hiking Trail entry). Up you go.


Miles of trail

10


Terrain range and difficulty

Paraphrased from information at the COGGS Web site (www.coggs.com):

The Piedmont Trail, COGGS's most-recent large project, sits in the bluffs overlooking Wheeler Field in West Duluth. The area is bordered by Haines road to the west, Hutchinson road to the east, Skyline Parkway to the south and the Piedmont ski trail to the north.

The St. Louis County Land Department was instrumental in approving and planning of the project. Trail work commenced in October of 2007, and all trail was cut by summer 2008.

In 2009, COGGS will keep improving the trail, installing boardwalks over wet areas and modifying a few "sketchy" sections.

The 10-mile trail, which includes numerous bridges and features, runs over and through terrain that's perfect for technical mountain-bike riding; significant elevation changes and large rocky bluffs provide endless options for the adventurous riders.

Building trail for beginner and intermediate riders was challenging, but accessing the trail from the Piedmont ski trail parking lot, then riding the Deerslayer and Stovetop loops, is a good way for such riders to explore the area.

Planned additions include a 4.6-mile addition west of Haines Road in the Brewer Park area of Duluth; the section has been flagged and submitted to St. Louis County and the City of Duluth for approval.

Trail Map

Larger Version: JPEG (2.6M) or PDF (716k)

Rider insight

"All the different terrains that you can find in Duluth," COGGS President Adam Sundberg told an interviewer for WDSE-TV's Venture North segment about the trail, "are kind of in this little microcosm that is the Piedmont Trail. It [was] an exciting trail to build, and it's a really fun trail to ride." (That segment can be viewed at http://coggs.upnorthmn.net/piedmont_trail.php.)

Ex-Duluthian Patrick McEnany says, "It's technical, but it's a bit more open and fluid" than other Duluth trails. "It's great for the community," McEnaney says, "and it's going to do good things for COGGS."

"This trail has great views of town," says Ryan Nelson. "The bridges, the bay, Lots of Neat vistas. It's a beautiful perspective of and from a massive piece of green space in town."

Sherie Neson says, "It's fun riding all the exposed rock—climbing and descending it, and managing the transitions between rock and hard soil."

Some portions of the trail snake through relatively thick urban forest, on the sort of dirt singletrack most folks might think of when they envision northern-Minnesota mountain-biking. Like Sherie Nelson says, there are also challenging, interesting, very fun portions that cross the rock that's seldom far beneath Duluth's surface. The trail dips in and out of tree cover, occasionally popping into Lake Superior views whose expanse and drama are difficult to explain.

Andrea Grygo-Diamond, a relatively new mountain-biker who spent a few years in Maine, says, "My first time in Piedmont felt just like being in Maine, because of the terrain and the scenery. They're challenging trails. But then I'm not very good. Right into it, I fell and hurt my shoulder pretty bad, so that could have been part of the challenge."

"It's my favorite mountain ride in Duluth," says veteran cyclist Mike Weispfenning. "The first time I rode it was on a dreary day. Rain wasn't supposed to come till later, but it hit me in the middle of my ride. The trail stayed good."

It's only getting better, too. As a new trail, it's still getting seasoned—getting "ridden in" or "buffed out," the connossieurs might say.

Because it sits on top of a hill, it doesn't bust guts and legs as much as somewhere like Spirit Mountain, but there's still a fair amount of up and down.

"Piedmont is challenging enough that when I don't want to have a serious effort, I avoid it," says serious cyclist Matt Evingson. "When I go there it's a full-on effort. I save that for my intense days. By the time I'm done doing two hours there, I don't want to ride home [six or seven miles, depending on the route]."

John Morrison says, "The layout is awesome. The terrain is awesome. It didn't take the trail long to get ridden in. It's already pretty smooth. All the rock is really neat. There are a lot of one-to-four-foot rock ledges to play on if you want to [and they're quite easy to avoid if you'd rather do that], lots of rock to climb, a bunch of little rocks to huck off, and you can really get rolling on the singletrack. There are some nice climbs, tight turns. It's totally do-able for people of various skills and experiences.

"The scenery is great. All the trails here have great scenery, but it's different here. At Lester, it feels like North-Shore stream country [which it is]. Piedmont feels like a typical aspen forest, then you have all that rock and the views of the harbor and the St. Louis River. You could take Piedmont and compare it to trails anywhere else in the country."

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