The Rooted Mountain Bike Festival has attracted 125 athletes from 10 states to Maple Springs this weekend. OBSERVER Photo by Christian Storms

MAPLE SPRINGS — A couple of years back if you wanted to partake in a mountain biking festival for women you would need to travel a great distance away from the southwestern corner of New York state.

Chautauqua County native Heather Kinal ran into this issue when she first got into mountain biking and wanted to learn how to get better at the sport.

“I still was fairly new at mountain biking and wanted to look up festivals in mountain biking around here,” Kinal stated. “There was one in Sedona and Bentonville, so I just decided to do one here.”

Things changed in 2018 when Kinal started getting local women together for mountain biking.

“I started a local women’s mountain bike group in 2018,” Kinal stated. “So I’ve been encouraging women to join me on the single track in the forest for a while. We would learn things together and practice in the woods. Rooted is a really big project, but it is also a very natural progression of things.”

That group has evolved into what is now the Rooted Mountain Bike Festival and going into its third year things are progressing extremely well. This year, Rooted sold out with 125 athletes from 10 states, including as far away as Colorado.

“I worked with the bike shop Loud Performance,” Kinal said about Rooted’s origins. “I worked with the instructors, the first time we had 20 people sign up and last year it grew to around 70 people from seven different states. This year there are women from over 10 different states and the event used to be one day, but now it’s three.”

What has helped the event grow is all of the sponsors and support it receives.

“Rooted wouldn’t be what it is without all of the support,” Kinal stated. “From my team; major sponsors like Loud Performance, Cosmic Dirt and Mazza/Five & 20; our local mountain biking chapters WNYMBA and NAMBA; and the many other businesses who are donating to the cause.”

Rooted is a nonprofit and it donates any proceeds to charities in support of mountain biking.

All the support allows Rooted to put on a great event for women looking to mountain bike on the local trails. But it has expanded beyond that, bringing in mountain bikers from around the country to visit the county and according to Kinal, many of those riders plan on coming back to visit.

“Someone is driving all the way from Colorado and then the states on the east coast,” Kinal said about the reach Rooted has. “My favorite win from last year is that a woman visited Chautauqua County and now has been back a dozen times and is looking for a house here.”

The riders this year have been experiencing a jam packed schedule that will show them some of the beauty of Chautauqua County and help improve their mountain biking skills.

“The bike shop has trails, like 6 or 7 miles there,” Kinal said about the event in Bemus Point. “We also ride over to Long Point State Park; the terrain is pretty beginner-friendly.”

Helping out the campers are some great instructors who will improve mountain biking skills on and off the bike.

“We have found some really awesome female instructors,” Kinal added. “I want to make it worth their time, I’ve got them doing clinics all three days. The clinics cover a lot of different skills, we do have yoga scheduled every day as well.”

The types of events off the bike include fixing flat tires, cleaning the bikes and a nutrition clinic.

“We’re trying to be all encompassing,” Kinal said about Rooted. “The main thing will be that people go home with new friends and new skills.”

On top of all that, the campers will get to learn more about women in the mountain biking industry.

“We are doing an industry panel today,” Kinal said. “It will feature women that work in the industry. The panel will be for women that might want to work in mountain biking or be involved beyond just riding the bike.”

Rooted has evolved from Kinal not finding a mountain biking festival for women in closs proximity to Chautauqua County into an event where people now travel from around the country to Chautauqua County for women interested in mountain biking.