The jumps were gone, but that was not stopping the riders.

One by one, the teenagers rode their bikes down the dirt path — a steep drop in the woods near Tiffany Pond that weaved through some trees to the level ground below. The tires whirred and kicked up gravel as the mountain bikes built up speed. The riders formed a blurred line of wheels, helmets and hoodies as they raced to the bottom.

The single-track jumps would have started about half-way down the trail, an elaborate and completely hand-built series of wood and earthen ramps and drop-offs, banked turns and cross-overs. 

But on Wednesday morning, Oct. 28, the town bulldozed the course, removing the dirt jumps and wooden ramps. 

To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video

“I was the first one to find out,” said Logan Konz, a teenager from Bristol who has been building and riding the trails for years. “I came here right after school and there was just nothing left. It was all plowed over. No signs, nothing. They didn’t talk to us. The fire department was here on Monday and they were telling us that everything was fine. It wouldn’t be them if anything got plowed. And they would probably tell us first. They thought it was cool. A lot of them used to ride BMX. We thought it was fine. We were just going to keep riding. And then it was just gone.”

Logan and more than a dozen other teenagers gathered at the trails on Thursday afternoon, Oct. 29, still reeling from the town’s decision to remove the bike jumps. Some parents and neighbors were there, too. 

“Pretty gutted,” said Jim Konz, Logan’s dad. “No conversation, and you consider the thousands of hours these kids have put in, digging and building.”

Earlier in the day, Barrington Town Manager Phil Hervey explained the decision. He confirmed that the trails were located on town-owned property and that they created a liability for the town.

“It’s not safe, it’s not a sanctioned dirt track,” Hervey said. “The extent of it was surprising, as we got out there and saw the situation. So we had to act because it’s a significant liability. It’s town property. The ramps were extremely steep, at least that one ramp. It’s pretty steep. You can understand why kids would try to do something back there, but you’ve got to take it seriously. The fire chief and the acting police chief, they came and said ‘We have to do something.’ As soon as I heard that, I knew we had to do something. We immediately took action and they (DPW) took them down. They got up there with equipment. We had a little bit of a problem getting some of the equipment in there. We had an excavator. 

“This isn’t a theoretical liability. It’s a significant safety concern…”

Hervey spoke about a co-worker whose 19-year-old nephew fell while riding jumps with his mountain bike in another part of the country. He broke his back, Hervey said. 

“That’s what he’s going to have to deal with the rest of his life,” Hervey said. 

History of trails

Markus Early stopped by the trails on Thursday afternoon. Early said he moved to Barrington in 1994 and not long after discovered the trails near Tiffany Pond. At that time, the trails were still rough cut-outs and had not been developed. 

“There were deer paths and I turned them into single tracks, like along the pond and along the ridge,” Early said. “And then just kept riding, and then as the kids came back here I said, ‘Hey, let’s keep it friendly, leave no trace, don’t leave litter.’ It has exploded. Unfortunately, I think some of the stuff has gotten out of hand. In terms of the extremities of the jumps with the wooden scaffoldings. I do that kind of stuff, but not here. I do it in official bike parks where they’re structurally sound. I’ve seen some jumps here that were held up by a rock cairn. Seriously. I have pictures, because of my concern.”

Early said the trail work by young riders kicked into high gear during Covid. Matthew Gramitt agreed. 

“Our son, he’s sort of aged out. He was in the first group. He’s 20 now. .. they were the group that really went at it, all the jumps,” Gramitt said. “And Covid hit and these kids didn’t have a lot to do. And he fell in with some of these mountain bikers and they started coming out here and someone got permission, I was told, from the police, I think, to make things out here. They said sure go ahead, so they (the kids) started making jumps and stuff. Our shovels started disappearing. They’d be out here and sometimes we’d come out and check on him. There’d be one or two kids just going at it, making jumps, laboring away… And we loved seeing it.”

Gramitt said his son Tashen found his passion mountain biking on the trails near Tiffany Pond, and helping build the jumps. 

“He went on to do all this, and then he went on to work at BikeWorks in Swansea for a while. Then he went on to become a downhill racer, mountain bike racer, and he’s gone all over New England,” Gramitt said.

Logan Konz said his older brother introduced him to the trails, and he quickly grew to love it. He spent most of his free time in the woods, building and fine-tuning the jumps, and also riding them. Logan posted a video to his social media account shortly after he discovered the town had cleared away the jumps. The video compiles clips of him riding the trails, catching air on the jumps. One of the clips shows Logan completing a full flip off one of the ramps. 

“There’s no where else in Rhode Island. There are no other places in Rhode Island with these kids of jumps,” Logan said. “There’s other spots for different styles of riding, cross country, BMX, but this is the only spot like this — these kinds of jumps.”

The other young riders agreed. They said the trails near Tiffany Pond offered something other nearby courses could not. But Early said the trails at Village Park in Swansea were just as big, if not bigger. 

“And there’s more trails. And there’s more jumps. And they’re well-made,” he said. 

Early’s comments drew push-back from the young riders. They said people from all over the region have been visiting the trails near Tiffany Pond — riders from other parts of Rhode Island and across Massachusetts. 

Recent crash

The trails near Tiffany Pond are nothing new. In fact, the area is very popular with a number of people. The area is also used as the home course for the Barrington High School cross country running teams. Earlier this year, Barrington also completed work on a new walking/bike path that runs along the pond, through the woods and connects with a small park near Foote Street. 

On Saturday, Oct. 24, the Barrington Police and Fire departments responded to the downhill biking trails after an 11-year-old boy crashed while riding his bike over a jump. The police dispatch report stated that the boy struck a tree and injured his face. EMTs transported the boy to the hospital. 

The people who gathered at the trail on Thursday said that injuries are part of the territory with mountain bike riding. 

“He’s not the first kid who’s been hurt back here,” Gramitt said. “We knew that when our son was out here all the time, he’d get hurt a little bit. Some of his friends got hurt quite a bit. Like, they were in a cast for a couple months. But it didn’t stop us because boys this age, they want to take risks. They need to take risks. So, do you want them breaking into peoples’ homes, and setting off fireworks, and doing drugs? Or do you want to give them an outlet?”

Jim Konz said mountain biking is inherently a dangerous sport.

“This is the type of thing where these kids know their limits. And they push them and they push them,” he said. “And it’s the type of thing where you need to figure out how to advance your skills carefully. You have to do things dangerously, but carefully.”

Early said he believes the extreme nature of some of the jumps was a factor in the town’s decision to bulldoze the trails. 

“My own opinion, being a guy who’s been here the longest, when there was nothing and then there was everything. Now it got torn down. I think it was the wooden structures that were somewhat questionable in their structural integrity, and then the fact that a kid got hurt and sent to the hospital,” Early said. “I think that was probably a trigger that made the town say OK, boom, … they lowered the boom. And it would now be a good idea to enter into a conversation with the town and be like ‘How can we co-exist?’”

Some of the young riders challenged the town’s decision to remove the jumps.

“You’re not going to go bulldoze a football field if someone gets a concussion from that,” Logan said. 

Mike Ristuccia is the grandfather of one of the kids who rides on the trails. Ristuccia said he was upset with the town’s decision. 

“There’s kids here who have learning differences. There’s kids here who have a hard time going to school and learning good and feeling comfortable. And when they come here, they’re king. They make their skills count and they take every advantage of it,” Ristuccia said. 

“They came here and they sweated thousands of hours, making what they had here. And the town didn’t have the decency to call a meeting to discuss it with everybody, like is happening right now. I think it’s deplorable. I think these kids got the short end of the stick. I think that nobody cared and thought to care about what it would do to these kids.”

Ristuccia added: “I’m 78 years old. I’ve seen a lot in my lifetime. Kids are everything. This land belongs to the town. Who’s the town? It’s everybody that we see here. And yet they don’t tear the football stadium down because … somebody tore a knee, somebody broke a hand, somebody broke a leg. They don’t do anything with the hockey rinks because somebody got a concussion or a broken arm or whatever. All those other sports, and yet the town spends thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars a year providing that for the kids. These kids didn’t ask for a dime. The kids. The kids. The kids built this. I didn’t have anything to do with this, I just enjoyed watching everybody have a blast here. The kids did this and yet they were just kicked aside, like their thoughts and their words didn’t mean anything.”