The Trails That Bind Us

Trails of the Wagonhound Offroad Park

Across Wyoming

Photography contributed by Jerimiah Rieman and Jay Goodrich/jaygoodrich.com

For Jerimiah Rieman, the line between work and play blurs on Wyoming's singletrack trails, where his passion for mountain biking weaves seamlessly into his professional life as Executive Director of the Wyoming County Commissioners Association.

A sixth generation Wyomingite born in Lander, Jerimiah's connection to the state runs deep within his blood. 

“Wyoming is a beautiful place with such wonderful and wild landscapes. It’s amazing how everyone has a connection to the land,” he said. “I think that builds self-reliance. But we are also connected to our small communities scattered throughout.”

Jerimiah’s first childhood memory involves doing spin outs on his Big Wheel trike until he had burned through the front tire. By age ten, his parents found a few community members willing to piece together a patchwork bike using a mix of mountain bike and road bike parts. 

It wasn't until college that Jerimiah acquired his first proper mountain bike, which served as his only form of transportation. It also happened to be the foundation for a lifelong passion.

By 2014, Jerimiah had been riding trails throughout Wyoming for years. The only available guidebook on trails was nearly 15 years old and primarily focused on forest service trails and two-track roads. 

Meanwhile, the mountain biking landscape across the state was evolving rapidly. Jerimiah saw an opportunity and decided to author a guidebook featuring mountain bike trails.

"Initially I thought it would take six months," he laughed, recalling his first modest plan to cover just southeastern Wyoming. 

The project quickly expanded as he realized the need for a guidebook encompassing the entire state of Wyoming. His self-imposed rule was simple but demanding: he wouldn't feature anything in the guidebook that he hadn't personally ridden.

When Jerimiah first began the project, he was working full-time under Governor Matt Mead. He approached the Chief of Staff, Kari Jo Gray, and Governor Mead to ask if he could take time off every third Friday to complete research at the library or explore trails across Wyoming. Imagine a state where you can ask your boss, the Governor, for time off to ride your bike. The Governor and Chief of Staff readily agreed.

"On workdays I would wake up at 6:00 a.m. and write at the kitchen table for an hour before going into the office," he recalls of his routine. “And then on my Fridays off, I would go ride trails to collect and compile the information I needed.” 

All told, Jerimiah visited and represented 97 trails across 34 trail systems between 2015 and 2019. The final year of production focused on enriching the guidebook with photography. Jerimiah collaborated with professionals like Jay Goodrich from Alpine, who provided images to help readers envision themselves in these landscapes.

The project demanded sacrifices. "I spent a lot of time away from my family," Jerimiah admits. They took beach vacations without him while he traversed remote corners of Wyoming. 

One particularly memorable adventure found him in the Wyoming Range, navigating the challenging Cliff Creek Falls trail. Halfway up, he encountered a landslide that had obliterated the trail and surrounding landscape. As he searched for where the trail resumed, he ended up in a mud bog "up to my shoulders with my bike over my head." Somehow he managed to slog out of the bog, protecting his phone and GPS as essential research tools.

Another time, while exploring hand-built trails near Newcastle, Jerimiah and a few friends encountered what they thought were bobcat kittens. 

"We quickly realized our error when a mother mountain lion approached to collect her kittens before eventually walking away,” Jerimiah shared with a smile and eyebrows raised.

Through it all, Jerimiah enjoyed the journey. He recounted, "If I had ended this adventure with a pile of papers and an experience, it still would have been worth it."

Instead, his hard work and persistence translated into Wyoming Singletrack: A Mountain Bike Trail Guide. This beautiful collection does more than direct riders to trails—it helps them connect with Wyoming's soul. 

When asked what he hopes people see when opening his book, Jerimiah answered simply, "I hope they find themselves."

The same skills that allowed Jerimiah to compile this comprehensive guide serve him well in his role as the Executive Director of the Wyoming County Commissioners Association, where he began working in 2019. 

“The process of writing this book is not much different from the way I operate our organization," he observed. 

Just as he organized 97 trails into a cohesive guidebook, Jerimiah now works with 93 commissioners across Wyoming's 23 counties breaking complex issues down into solvable problems and showcasing each community's strengths.

"Going out and taking my bike on a work trip is about connecting with Wyoming communities and getting to know the backroads of each of the 23 counties,” he explained. 

When commissioners see his bike on his car, they smile—it's become part of his identity and his routine.

For his twin boys, Boden and Potter, Jerimiah hopes Wyoming will provide what it has given him: "A connection to people and a connection to landscapes." That sense of belonging that washes over him when he passes Muddy Gap, where his great-great grandfather homesteaded, and where "the landscape just opens up"—that's the legacy he wishes to pass down to his boys, now freshmen in high school. 

In both his guidebook and his work with Wyoming's counties, Jerimiah lives by the Benjamin Franklin quote, "Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing." Amid Wyoming's wild landscapes, he's managed to do both.

You can find Wyoming Singletrack: A Mountain Bike Trail Guide at:
www.fixedpin.com/products/wyoming-singletrack