HONORA BAY—Maja Mielonen, president of Manitoulin Island Cycling Advocates (MICA), and her team of hardy volunteers have quite a number of feathers in their cap when it comes to cycling tourism on Manitoulin Island and beyond. Soon MICA will be able to add the construction of a new expansive mountain bike trail to that extensive list.
“We are starting pretty much on Monday (January 6),” said Ms. Mielonen. She notes that MICA included a project coordinator in their funding request and put out a request for proposals seeking to hire someone. “We chose Stephen Martin out of Kagawong as our project coordinator,” she said.
“We have a young board and they are really pumped to be able to partner with the Manitoulin Nordic Ski Club for a land use agreement,” she said. “It will put a little more life into that property and utilize the chalet to a bigger extent.”
Ms. Mielonen was quick to assure that their plans will not affect the popular Café in the Woods concert series that takes place in the chalet, but will prove complementary. “There are opportunities to do all kinds of programming, all kinds of cool events, that attract a different demographic.”
“We’ve seen a lot of younger, folks, 55 and below or 40 and below, coming to live on Manitoulin Island who cycle that are super excited because they mountain bike. There might be more of them than we think.”
The project has also garnered great support from Manitoulin Secondary School (MSS) and its principal.
“Carolyn Black, she is a mountain biker, and so is her husband Alex Anstice,” said Ms. Mielonen. They farm out of Tehkummah. She’s a high school teacher and she has an MSS mountain bike group under her of students that enjoy the outdoors and sports in the outdoors. And so that was kind of neat to see that our high school has gone in that direction too, because it seems to be the direction that society in generally sort of moving.”
MICA’s survey research has shown that the cyclists coming to Manitoulin Island on the Chi-Cheemaun ferry for the annual Passage Ride also mountain bike—even though they use road bikes primarily for the tour.
“Over 40 percent of our road riders, which is a different bike, have mountain bikes. So many, many cyclists are cross sport kind of oriented,” she said. “So, they road bike but they also mountain bike. Some of them even fat bike.”
MICA has plenty of experience with cycling on Manitoulin and across the North, efforts that were recognized with a Tourism Innovator Award at the 2024 Northern Ontario Tourism Summit.
The new park will be called the Channelview Adventure Park, at least for now, and MICA has a plethora of ideas for expanding even more outdoor leisure opportunities at the site, but one thing at a time.
Both the project coordinator and the trail builder have been chosen, but Ms. Mielonen wasn’t free to name the builder yet as contracts have yet to be finalized.
The builder has been out to the site twice to, literally, get the lay of the land.
“He’s been on the hill twice to familiarize himself with what he’s looking at and we expect that design to be scrutinized by the Manitoulin Nordic Ski Club so that we can really come to a consensus amongst all of us. What will suit all the users best? Because we have also the hikers that use that to go up to the escarpment trails. So, there will be hiking trails included that are not interfering with the mountain bike trails that will bring the hikers up to the escarpment.”
“There will be a cost to use the trails, as MICA intends for Channelview Adventure Park to be sustainable. MICA builds that into everything we do,” she said.
“We will need to have staff on site,” said Ms. Mielonen. Some of that staff will likely be students gaining volunteer hours. “But they will need to be supervised.”
Plans are to start work on the trails this coming spring, with hopefully a soft open in the late summer or early fall—with a full ribbon-cutting opening in 2026.
Funding of $112,500 is being provided for MICA to create the Channelview Mountain Bike Park and will see the redesigning of the 80 acres of the former ski hill to accommodate mountain bike trails. Over the past decade, MICA has brought more than an estimated $4 million in infrastructure improvements to Island roads through its lobbying for paved shoulder bike lanes and likely even more through the spinoffs from the Manitoulin Passage Ride and the various guided and unguided cycling tours they offer.
