Northern Heights trail open for riders

May 19—ROCHESTER — It's early on an unseasonably cool Sunday morning in May but the trail at Northern Heights Park in northeast Rochester is already seeing traffic.
Dog walkers and mountain bikers pass Alec Tackmann as he's giving a tour of the recently completed project.
"I remember when we ran the machines here to cut the trail here for the first time," Tackmann said Sunday, May 18, 2025.
Although city parks department staff helped with clearing debris and trash from the woods, most of the work and trail planning was done by volunteers from the Rochester Active Sports Club.
Even after clearing roots and debris the trail was loose at first, surrounded by bare dirt where buckthorn, honey suckle and other invasive plants had been. Now the trail is packed, almost smooth in parts, and plants and ferns grow up to the trail's edge.
"It's really nice to see it look like this," said Tackmann, a RASC board member and volunteer.
Some plants filled in naturally such as Jack in the pulpit flowers. Others were added by Tackmann and RASC trail builder Scott Hogen, who both personally planted more than three dozen ferns alongside the trail.
Two bridges made from deck wood and utility poles and a wooden boardwalk span portions of the ravine and keep the trail at "easy" difficulty level for use and help prevent erosion. Benches along the trail, painted by different artists and volunteers, offer hillside views of the woods.
Overall, it took three months of work, two in the fall and one in the spring, and about $17,000 in funding to make the approximately 1.4-mile Northern Heights Park Trail a reality. The dirt trail loop is designed for walkers and mountain bike riders.
"All that considered, this trail was pretty cheap," Tackmann said.
The project plan received some opposition from neighbors. Now Tackmann sees some of the people who spoke against it publicly using the trail.
"This is a good proof of concept now," Tackmann said.
Concerns included erosion, crowding, people parking in the neighborhood and noise. However in about a month of use, none of those problems have yet appeared.
However trash, invasive species and dead trees have been removed from the previously undeveloped wooded city parkland.
"This is a nice trail, it's nice and wide, it's easy," said Margot Zerrudo, of Kasson, who rode on the trail Sunday morning with her husband Kim Zerrudo.
Kim tried the trail on his own a few weeks ago and thought it would be a fun ride for the couple.
The couple used to live in Rochester and would go out of town in order to access soft trails for mountain biking.
"This is great for Rochester to have this," Kim said.
The trail was designed by Joshua Rebennack, an environmental engineer and mountain biking trail volunteer based in central Minnesota who helped design part of the Cuyuna Lakes Mountain Bike Trail. It fits in a small space but was designed so that it doesn't feel small. Changes in elevation make some of the switch backs hard to see from the trail giving the appearance of uninterrupted woods.
Work is ongoing. Some buckthorn debris and downed trees still need to be removed. Tackmann said he comes to the trail about twice a week to check on it and volunteers from the RASC rotate trail maintenance work days.
However, trail users are already doing their share, Tackmann said. He pointed to a tree that fell across the trail that now sits along the side of the trail. He had found the trail blocked by the tree and called the city Parks Department to cut up the log. By the time staff assessed the job, a group of trail users had moved the tree.
"Some of the maintenance is going to happen organically," Tackmann said.

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