Building the Future of Trails

Steve Kasacek | Trail Development & Education

Hi there! My name is Steve Kasacek and I’m thrilled to be a new member of the Outdoor Sport Institute team. As a native New Englander, avid trail user, and enthusiastic teacher, I feel very much at home with OSI assisting communities with trail development and education.

I grew up in a rural New England village where my parents regularly dragged me outside. Family vacations were spent camping in the White Mountains or staying at the lakefront cabin my grandfather built on Maine’s Midcoast. I fondly recall hikes, bike rides, and winter adventures where my mom and dad let me explore nature at my own pace. Years of scouting helped cement a love of the outdoors and receiving my first mountain bike (a Gary Fisher Mamba) was a gateway to a world I am still in awe of.

As a student, I studied civil engineering at Pennsylvania State University. Civil engineering was fascinating, especially the water resources discipline where I dove into subjects like hydrology and environmental science. What really made Penn State shine, though, was the outdoors. My junior year I brought that Mamba to campus, and I started spending my free time in Rothrock State Forest-- a bewildering giant of public land. Those early rides were full of mistakes, like wearing jeans and getting them caught in the cogs, only to rip them to shreds. Working through mishaps, natural challenges, and my own physical limitations helped me to grow as a mountain biker, and as a person.

When college ended, I set out to work on farms and explore the western United States. I visited terrain and culture completely foreign to me while working for room and board on small, organic farms. Of course, I carried my mountain bike the whole time, hitting places like Fruita, Boise, and Bend.

When I finally returned to New England, I fell in with a group of locals older than me. These folks mountain biked, hiked, surfed, skied--whatever it took to get outside. It was their weekly Thursday mountain bike ride that inspired me the most. Long before Strava, Trailforks, and enduro; I was falling in love with two wheels -- chasing 50-somethings down crappy trails. This crew was not in mountain biking for glory, so I learned to suffer --suffer through a tough long climb, a difficult rocky section, a scary steep downhill, a wet winter night. On the other side of all that suffering was good times with friends. As I got in shape and gained experience, the suffer turned to fun. Here was my community!

My journey into trail development was unusual, not many people leave a blossoming engineering career to labor in the dirt. But only four years into my office-based engineering job, I knew I needed to do something else. Thankfully, Rich Edwards, a 20-year veteran of the International Mountain Bicycling Association’s (IMBA) Trail Solutions division, and a venerable godfather of modern trail building, saw my potential. Through his mentorship, I gained crucial knowledge about why people use trails, how trails impact the natural environment, and how to meld those two distinct ideas to create long-lasting, low-impact, and enjoyable trail experiences for everybody.

Rich held many a Waffle House lecture on how forest management and trails intersected, or led late night discourse on the complexity of human psychology and how it influenced trail design. IMBA let me travel the east coast for seven years, putting 30,000 miles a year on my car while visiting a wide variety of terrain and communities. Diverse destinations granted me new insights and perspectives while I stretched my trail building wings under the full spectrum of projects.

One of those communities was Millinocket, where I spent a few weeks every summer and fall for nearly five years. Mike Smith, and OSI, were the reasons I returned to this small town on the edge of a vast, north Maine wilderness. Mike had lived through the reality of intentional and progressive trail design, education, and construction – Rich Edwards was the catalyst for the Nordic Heritage Center’s singletrack in Mike’s hometown of Presque Isle.

In 2022 Mike approached me with the news of funding to build capacity in one of OSI’s primary project areas, the Katahdin region. He was looking to hire someone to lead a technical assistance and education effort around trails. While leaving IMBA and my time on the road was difficult, the opportunity to be close to my family and share my passion more deeply with communities meant a lot. I was tired of handing over reports and hoping folks could tackle the next steps. OSI was offering me the chance to make a long-term investment, work side by side with community members, and guide them on the journey of trail development.

Six months in and this role is exceeding expectations. There are new projects in communities I’ve never been to. There are partnerships I did not expect. There are great people working hard to learn about, and improve upon, the trail culture. The wealth of trail work across the state of Maine is staggering. Even before coming to OSI, I had a hand in planning nearly 500 miles of trails in Maine. To see all my dreams come true it’s going to take a lot more people working on trails with the right skills and knowledge – and that is a huge reason I joined OSI.

My wife and I moved here because Maine feels like home. I suppose if I was raised in the desert or the Rockies, I’d long for them, but I was raised in the hardwood forests where wetlands proliferate, where the soils have been churned and mixed by glaciers, where we grow rocks, and where the seasonal changes provide a wealth of weather.

I can picture my future in Maine-- in New England. There are vibrant trail communities that welcome and embrace all users, regardless of their preferred mode of recreation or desired trail experience. In Maine, many school districts own property, I want a world where every school has a trail behind it that offers high-quality introductory experiences to children. Maine is full of small-town ski hills, many defunct, and these could provide unique opportunities for bike-optimized parks. In turn, this could offer whole new options for our residents and visitors to play outside.

I dream about big, rugged, backcountry riding. New England mountain biking is very front-country; dense networks with short segments abound. One has to travel out of New England to get long-distance, remote experiences. But Maine has the terrain! We have some of the wildest lands in the east, vast stretches of wilderness far from population centers. We can create world renowned epic trail adventures right here in our state. I imagine big mountain climbs and descents, challenging long trails-- the sort of trails that push people to their limits and offer transformative experiences.

Most of all, I want to create a world where my young son can grow up playing outside. A world where he feels confident, safe, and invested in his local and regional trails. A state where he and his community have a deeper appreciation for recreation, for why his neighbors use trails differently than he does, and why he should respect and help the trails. And when he wants to help, he has access to the knowledge and skills needed. I want him to develop his own unique love for nature, like I did all those years ago in the woods. I want him to be able to grow, to rise to the challenge, to improve his health, and to have all of this in his home community.

Hear more about Steve’s career in trails on the Trail EAffect Podcast.