Big Island mountain bike park gets official stewardship, highway sign planned

South of Hilo, a trail system long known mostly by word of mouth has stepped into the state’s recreation system with a new level of official backing. The Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources and the Big Island Mountain Bike Association signed a memorandum of agreement this month for Ke Ala o Kulanihākoi Mountain Bike Park, a move that formalizes BIMBA’s stewardship and is expected to bring a highway sign, clearer management and more visible public access off Stainback Highway.

The land sits in Waiākea Forest Reserve in South Hilo, identified in the DLNR submittal as TMK (3) 2-4-008:022. DLNR’s board submittal was dated March 13, 2026, and the Board of Land and Natural Resources had already approved the trail’s designation into the Nā Ala Hele Program Trail Inventory on Sept. 9, 2020. In state recreation terms, that puts the park inside a broader trail and access framework, not just as a local volunteer project.

The park’s roots go back more than 30 years. DLNR presentation materials say the area was a 330-acre parcel formerly leased by Puna Sugar and planted with eucalyptus from 1983 to 1985. The first trails were cut by motorcyclists, mountain bikers took them over in 1990, and DLNR later designated the area a “non-land use issue” in 1995. By 2012, DLNR Forestry Division and the Waiākea Timber Management area were working with BIMBA to allow permitted bicycle use, and a GPS trail map was created for those riders.

The network now includes about 10 miles of connected singletrack trails, maintained largely by volunteers. Chris Seymour, a longtime BIMBA member, said the association had effectively been caring for the area already, but the agreement gives that relationship legal and institutional weight. BIMBA’s March 2026 testimony said the group has worked in the timber management area since 1989 clearing roads and singletrack trails, and said it was honored to become the official partner.

Jackson Bauer, the Hawaii Island program manager, said the park matters because demand for mountain biking is growing while designated trails remain scarce across the island. For Hilo, the agreement turns a hidden riding area into a more legible recreation asset, one that can support maintenance, safer access, youth programs, events and visitor use. It also gives one of the island’s few purpose-built mountain bike destinations a clearer public identity, something riders have been building toward for decades.