The Rimview Trail, which circumnavigates the City of Page in a scenic 10-mile loop, has long been beloved by hikers and mountain bikers who visit or live in the area. 

Starting this weekend, residents and tourists will have nearly 11 more miles of singletrack to enjoy when the City of Page unveils the new Red Mesa Rim Trail. The grand opening will be held on Saturday, July 22, at the trailhead at 2155 Coppermine Road. A ribbon-cutting ceremony will be held at 8 a.m., followed by a scavenger hunt and other activities until noon.   

“Anybody can bring their hiking shoes or their bikes and meet at the top,” said Lynn Cormier, the director of community and recreation services for the City of Page. She explained that the scavenger hunt will involve going to different locations along the trail system to collect stamps and engage in activities like taking selfies or photographing insects. 

“Depending on how many stamps they do, they can get stickers, food, T-shirts, and we have two bikes that they can enter a drawing for,” she said.

The grand opening will be organized in conjunction with Page Public Library, which has been promoting a project throughout the summer encouraging people to paint small rocks with messages about kindness, friendship and unity. 

“We’re going to hide about 25 of these little rocks from the library all over, and if you find one – only one per person, please – bring it back with you and you can trade it in for another prize,” Cormier said.  

The new Red Mesa Rim Trail system encompasses 10.8 miles of singletrack designed for hiking and mountain biking. For cyclists, different sections are rated green (beginner), blue (intermediate) or black (advanced). Most of the beginner and intermediate sections are on the top of the mesa. Riding the black-diamond sections involves dropping down into the slickrock terrain east of the mesa. 

Cormier spearheaded the development of the new trail system. The conception dates back four years ago when a couple of local entrepreneurs who were starting an e-bike business took Cormier for a bike ride on the current Red Mesa Rim Trail location.

“I remember thinking, ‘Wow, this is really cool up here,’” Cormier said. She started looking into grants to fund the design of a nonmotorized trail on the mesa, but like many projects, it was put on hold when the COVID pandemic began sweeping across the globe in early 2020.

Then, 18 months ago, as the pandemic waned, she got the green light to proceed and succeeded in getting a $149,250 nonmotorized recreational trail grant through Arizona State Parks and Trails. 

The original idea was to build an easy 5-mile loop on the top of the mesa, but when the trail builder that the city hired – Doug Hansen, president of Idaho-based Cuddy Mountain Trail Company – saw the extensive slickrock terrain to the east of the high ground, he suggested adding a few miles of black-diamond terrain that would attract serious mountain bikers to Page.

“[Hansen] was instrumental in his vision and knowing what bicyclists want – seeing the red rock and saying, ‘Man, people at this level love rock and you’ve got rock, so let’s make the most of it,’” Cormier said. 

Hansen called in a black-diamond bicycle specialist from Idaho with whom he had worked in the past, and they spent a week mapping out how the whole biking scenario would work. The black-diamond sections more than doubled the trail’s length from the original 5 miles to nearly 11 miles. 

“When they were done, I was blown away at how amazing of a trail system that we now have,” Cormier said. “I’m absolutely ecstatic with how it turned out.”

Hansen, whose experience as a trail builder dates back 40 years and spans locations throughout the United States, first visited Page in November 2022, just prior to the time Cuddy Mountain Trail Company bid on the project. 

Before then, Cormier had already been consulting with Hansen over the phone to get the information she needed to write the grant proposal, including how much it would cost to develop and build the trail system. Once the City of Page was awarded the grant, Hansen decided to bid on the project. 

During that first trip to Page, Hansen walked about 1 mile of the proposed trail with Cormier. 

“It was so unique compared to anything I’ve done in the last 40 years. I’ve probably done some kind of work on a thousand miles of trail, and I said to myself, ‘I just want to do this trail because it’s different than anything I’ve ever done,’” Hansen said.  

What was “unique” was the amount of slickrock. 

“You just don’t see that opportunity very often. It’s something that mountain bikers are just craving, something that’s challenging, something that’s different,” Hansen said.

“There’s so many things you can do with rock that you can’t do with dirt because it doesn’t erode and it provides a unique experience for mountain bikers and a more challenging ride that is environmentally friendly, too, because they don’t leave any marks, there’s no big erosion. People will travel for this, I guarantee it.” 

Hansen added that he has a nephew who has been a serious mountain biker his whole life who lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, but who occasionally travels to Page for his work as an attorney for the National Park Service.

“He came down when we were just getting started [on the trail project] and he looked at what we were doing. He said, ‘I can guarantee people will come from Salt Lake to ride this and spend the weekend,’” Hansen said.  

Indeed, feedback from Page-based mountain bikers who were invited by the city to pre-ride the trails has been has been exceedingly enthusiastic and positive.

“Just the few locals that I have extended an invitation to who have gone out there have said, ‘Wow, these are trails that we spend three hours driving to, and now they’re in our backyard. This is incredible,’” Cormier said.

One of those cyclists is Jerod Viers, who told the Chronicle that the new Red Mesa Rim Trail is a great improvement for recreation in the City of Page. 

“Riders of all skill levels will have fun here, with scenic easy riding on the mesa and challenging rock and slickrock below the rim,” he said.

“I love riding the more technical trails. Normally, riding similar trails would require a drive to the St. George or Flagstaff areas, but now we have some right in our backyard. The variety at Red Mesa, along with the Rim Trail, makes Page an excellent stopping point for riders visiting trails in the Grand Circle.” 

Cormier said the new trail system will open a whole new door to the biking and hiking communities. 

“People who hike have access to it, but I really think those people who are bicyclists will be blown away not only by the levels of the different trails, but also by seeing the beauty of our landscape,” she said.  

“I would really like to see all these people who are driving through Page with bikes on the back [of their vehicles] stop and spend a whole day just playing out there. My desire is to put Page on the map in regard to that elevated level of bicycling experience. I think the Red Mesa Rim Trail might be the doors that make that happen.”

Trail builder Doug Hansen stressed that Cormier deserves a lot of credit for Red Mesa Rim Trail because she was the one who took the time to make it happen.

“Lynn and the city really need to be commended for what they’ve done because it took a lot of time and effort,” he said.

“Not only that, but they were willing to not just have preconceived ideas of what was going to happen but to listen to mountain bikers in the community, leave their ego at the door and say, ‘These are the guys that really know how to do this, so we’re going to do what they say.’ It’s not that way all the time. The citizens of Page should know that this is an amazing project that has happened because their civil servants did a good job.”