RECREATION

Bike shop owner helps put Austin on national mountain biking map

Hill Abell advocates for proper biking etiquette, good trail building practices

By Pamela LeBlanc
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Monday, August 03, 2009

Hill Abell's version of paradise weaves through the woods — a trail as skinny and twisted as a gnarled tree root.

He can spin down that trail on a mountain bike, popping over rocks and around stumps, breathing in the outdoors with every pedal stroke. From his bike, he can't see buildings or hear the buzz of traffic. He's swallowed up in nature, even if he's near the city.

"To me, that's what restores my health and well-being," he says, sipping, appropriately, a slurry of almond butter, spirulina, rice milk, protein powder, cacao nibs and banana known as a Greenbelt smoothie, served up from the counter inside Bicycle Sport Shop, the Austin store he purchased 24 years ago. "It's about being in the back country, the physical challenge."

Since wrapping his fingers around the handlebars of his first knobby-tired bike nearly three decades ago, Abell has helped put Austin on the national mountain biking map, sharing his love of cycling, advocating to grow the state's network of bike paths and educating land managers about how to build sustainable trails.

Abell, 50, grew up in Wichita Falls, a beefy football player not overly concerned with academics. He discovered bicycling after blowing out a knee during his final high school football game. He couldn't run anymore, but he could still pedal a bike. And he was mesmerized when he spotted a picture of a Specialized Stumpjumper mountain bike in the back of a magazine.

When he moved to Austin in the early 1980s to attend Austin Community College (he never graduated), he forked over $550, no small sum, for a Ross Mt. Whitney mountain bike. He and his friends would yank on hiking boots and cutoff jeans — helmets weren't common then — hop on their bikes and head out to explore.

At the time, most people considered off-road bicycles oddball, but Abell loved the feeling he got tearing through the great outdoors. "It's the sensation of freedom and being in a natural setting that's so different than being on asphalt in an urban setting," he says.

He rode his bike everywhere, but few trails existed in the city. The Barton Creek Greenbelt, a short stretch of single track, petered out a few miles beyond Barton Springs Pool.

"Any bit of dirt we found was a new discovery," he says. "We were 20-ish, bullheaded and pulverizing the trail constantly. I had such a passion for it."

Abell's aggressive riding style landed him often at a small shop on Barton Springs Road, where he bought parts to keep his bike working. He spent so much time and money at Bicycle Sport Shop that he took a part-time job there and, when the shop owner told Abell he wanted to sell in 1985, he bought the place's inventory of 38 bikes and a whole lot of surf wear. He was convinced others would share his new love of mountain biking.

Twelve days after the sale, someone burglarized the shop, swiping its entire inventory of bikinis, flip-flops and surf shorts and most of its bicycles. Abell calls it a blessing. He used the insurance check to turn the shop into a mountain bike specialty store.

"Others shops did died-in-the wool roadies. They thought mountain bikes were heavy, clunky and slow," he says. "We didn't have a skinny tire in the store."

Abell's store took off, expanding even during the tech bust of the late 1980s. The store moved twice and added road bikes to its product lineup. Today Abell operates two locations and is looking to open a third shop in Williamson County.

Abell's knees haven't done so well.

After a third knee surgery in 1991, Abell couldn't cycle for a year. When he did get back on the bike after the extended break, two things struck him: Dozens of unauthorized "social" trails had popped up in and around Austin, and an antagonistic attitude had developed among cyclists and other trail users. He felt responsible.

"I realized I had created this situation by pushing mountain biking so aggressively," he says. "I needed to be part of the solution."

He recognized that some people don't like mountain biking for two main reasons: The "it's my trail" attitude of some bikers, and the damage that poorly built trails can cause. The bike community, he decided, needed to get involved, with the goal of educating cyclists on good trail etiquette and maintaining local trails.

"If we don't build these trails correctly in the first place, then they become a maintenance headache for the rest of their existence," he says.

He went to work by helping to start what eventually became the Austin Ridge Riders club, a mountain biking club and advocacy group. In 1993 he joined the board of the International Mountain Bicycling Association, based in Boulder, Co., whose mission is to protect and preserve mountain biking opportunities worldwide. He's served on that board ever since, including four years as chairman.

Under Abell's guidance, IMBA launched a consulting program, hiring out experts to help land management agencies build and maintain sustainable trails, a topic on which it has published two books and is now considered the authority.

"Land managers in the late 1980s and early 1990s were shutting trails down to mountain bikes, and it took a concerted effort to lobby, work with land agencies and Congress to help them understand how mountain bikes can be managed in the back country," says Mike Van Abel , executive director of the association.

Abell did that.In Central Texas, he also helped develop multiple trail systems, including the Barton Creek Greenbelt, Reimers Ranch Park and Muleshoe Bend Recreation Area. He was a principal member of Austin Metro Trails and Greenways, which envisions a trail network that spiderwebs the city; he helped found the Texas Mountain Bike Racing Association; housed the Texas Bicycle Coalition, a statewide cycling advocacy group, in his shop for four years; and helped create the PayDirt Program, organizing volunteers to build and maintain trails around Texas.

"I would call Hill the unsung hero of trails and mountain biking in Austin," says Charlie McCabe, executive director of the Austin Parks Foundation, pointing to the hours Abell's spent working on trails, the races sponsored by his bike shop, and the advocacy he's provided for better access, more funding and laws protecting cyclists.

"I don't think there's been a person who's added more value for folks' ability to bike for pleasure and commuting purposes," says Ted Siff, former Texas director of the Trust for Public Land. "He's made Austin a hub for bikers and biking nationally, if not internationally."

And now, just before his 51st birthday, Abell is preparing to compete in the Leadville Trail 100 on Aug. 15. The grueling 100-mile bike race weaves up and down the Colorado mountains and this year's racers include fellow Austinite and seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong. To train, Abell's been riding long distances such as Austin to Johnson City. He wants to finish the race in 10 hours. If he does, he'll get a silver belt buckle.

"It's total madness," he says of the out-and-back race that took a much-younger Armstrong 6 hours and 47 minutes to complete last year.

But Abell's fit, and weighs 30 pounds less than he did in high school. He rides his bike five days a week, swims regularly at Barton Springs Pool and practices yoga. He's ridden mountain bikes all over the world, and even shared the trail with former President George W. Bush on his ranch near Crawford.

The race, then, is just one more obstacle on the twisty bike path of his life.

pleblanc@statesman.com; 445-3994