For years, Jack Lansford and his mountain biking buddies in Franklin would have to load up their bikes and hit the road for a minimum of 30 minutes before reaching the nearest trailhead. As any biker, hiker or paddler knows, the longer the drive to reach your playground, the less frequently you find yourself doing what you love.

"Most of them were out some distance," said Lansford

On the plus side, the Nantahala and Pisgah national forests are rife with old logging roads open to riding. Few were actually mapped as official mountain bike trails, however.

"We would just take off on a trail and see where it went. We found out which were good ones and which were not such good ones. It was trial and error," said Lansford, an IRS employee.

But the long haul to get there wasn 't always practical for after work jaunts, a quick Sunday morning ride or beginners wanting to test their new fat tires.

That 's now a conundrum of the past, however, thanks to two new networks of mountain bike trails that have cropped up over the past year in the backdoor of major population centers.

One is the Lewis Soles Memorial Trail in Franklin, a network of three interconnected loops with 2.6 miles of single-track. It was constructed by local volunteers on land owned by the Macon County Recreation Department adjacent to the Little Tennessee Greenway.

Lansford said the new trail system will be a great starting place for newcomers to the world of mountain biking.

"I think it will bring out mountain bikers who have not ventured off the pavement yet,"  Lansford said. "These beginning trails will give them a place to start in real trail riding. 

That 's not to say the trails aren 't any fun for more advanced riders.

"If you ride them slowly they are fairly easy, but the faster you ride them the more challenging they are, " Lansford said.

Another new trail in the region is a 10-mile trail system in the Canton area of Haywood County in the Rough Creek Watershed. The trail system has a gentle grade, suitable for beginning mountain bikers and meant to encourage family recreation. Three loops comprise the trail system, making it easy to tailor a ride to the length you want. The 830-acre preserve is described as beautiful by those who have seen it.

"People are so excited about it. This is a place where people can go and commune with nature," said Marcia Tate, who wrote a grant through the Haywood County Health Department to pay for the trail construction. "It 's right there, so you don 't have to have a whole lot of time or spend a whole lot of gas money to find a place to go where you can enjoy the environment. I hope people will find it and go use it and enjoy it for years and years. 

The mountain bike trail will likely be a major drawing card to the community, said Ed Sutton of Trail Dynamics, the company that built the trail.

"I 'm not alone in saying a lot of people choose where they live based on how close it is to a public trail system," said Sutton. "I think it 's really a major step for Haywood County to have trails close to town. 

When Sutton 's firm tackled the trail design for Rough Creek, their marching orders were clear.

"They wanted something that would be a relatively easy trail for a wide variety of people. You don 't want to make it intimidating or too challenging. What we wanted was to make a trail to encourage the beginner,  Sutton said. "Let 's make it beautiful, spectacular, but as easy as possible. Let 's get families on the trail.