To the editor:

We’re Saranac Lake Innovative Cycling Kids, or SLICK, a group of local boys who love to mountain bike. We started our organization in April 2021 because we wanted to bring a mountain bike race to Saranac Lake. We did this at our first annual Pisgah Pedalfest last summer, which brought close to 200 riders to Mount Pisgah, coming from as far away as North Carolina — $4,000 was raised and we decided to put it towards building a local public bike pump track. With help from our parents, we secured permission from the town of Harrietstown to use land off of Ampersand Avenue by the Elks ball field, hired a professional trail contractor, applied for some grants, launched an online fundraising campaign and made it happen! Construction has begun and we’d like to thank to some of biggest supporters, including the Magnus family of Lake Placid, Hyde Fuel, the Adirondack Community Recreation Alliance, Fogarty’s Lake Flower Marina, Bike Adirondacks, Carcuzzi, Emily Reily, Pop Pop Hunt, the Cloudsplitter Foundation, Edward Jones Investments in Saranac Lake, Upstate Auto, the Reynolds Group of Lake Placid, Adirondack Research and Blue Line Brewery. Finally, a HUGE shout out to our builder, Max Van Wei of Backslope Trail Building, Jordanna Mallach and the entire Harrietstown board, the Saranac Lake Rotary Foundation and everyone who has helped make our dream a reality!

Cole Van Etten, Mason Stoddard, Lukas Miemis, Will Miemis, Owen Keal, Kellan Duffy, Paul Fogarty, Asa Schwartzberg, Liam Stoddard and Sam Miemis

Saranac Lake