With the 2026 riding season on the horizon, we’re excited to share our 2025 Annual Report, recapping all that we accomplished last year and where and how we worked to achieve the goals laid out in our 5-year Strategic Plan.
Overall, the 2025 season felt like the first in several years in which we were able to mainly proactively focus on pursuing the goals laid out in our Strategic Plan, supporting our Chapters, and working for more and better trails. Unlike 2023 and 2024, we did not have to deploy our Major Storm Recovery Fund, and instead supported climate resiliency upgrades across the state that will ensure we can better weather a changing climate and the next round of historic storms.
Through our Trail, Naming, and Adaptive Upgrade Grant programs, we directed over $120,000 in trail project funding to our Chapters, helping to create 22 miles of new trail and significantly repaired or upgraded 50+ miles. Many of these improvements were guided by our Adaptive Assessment program, a collaboration with Vermont Adaptive and the Kelly Brush Foundation, that reached fourteen trail systems and saw us designate an additional 38 miles of trail as aMTB-friendly.
We also made major headway on the Velomont Trail, a cooperative project with Vermont Huts & Trails, including the official approval of over 100 miles of newly-designated trail corridor in the Green Mountain National Forest. All told, over 180 miles of the Velomont are now either complete or shovel-ready, significant progress towards the vision of a 485-mile hut-serviced trail corridor.
We made significant gains on the advocacy front, too, introducing legislation that would explore how to recognize landowners who host trails and taking major steps towards a potential less onerous and more effective regulatory model for trails. We continued to build a more informed, inclusive, and diverse community through our communications, events like Elevate, and as a founding partner of the Vermont Trail Accessibility Hub.
That said, it wasn’t all hero dirt in 2025. For the second year in a row, overall membership declined, albeit slightly and despite external evidence showing that more and more Vermonters are hitting the trail on bikes. We doubled down on upgrades to the VMBA App and a new Visitors Guide to Mountain Biking in Vermont with the aim of bringing back our lapsed Members and encouraging more riders to join and support the trails.
Financially, we again sent over 90% of membership income to our Chapters in the form of direct and indirect support and managed to close out the year with a small but positive net income, driven primarily by success in our fundraising initiatives.
Perhaps the greatest indicator of our success last season came from our Member Survey, in which 95% of respondents said they had either a four or five-star experience out on the trails in 2025.
All-in-all, we are stoked at all we were able to accomplish last season and grateful for our Chapters, Members, and partners – we wouldn’t be here without you!
Want to learn more about what we’re up to? Check out the full report and join us for our Annual Meeting & Season Kick Off, April 9th from 5-7 PM at the Lawson’s Taproom in Waitsfield.