The 2026 season of Little Bellas has wrapped up in Madison, and CORP Trails was a huge part of this year’s success! Little Bellas, a youth program in its second year, helps girls build confidence and skills for life through mentoring on mountain bikes. This year 15 incredible Little Bellas volunteer mentors worked with 28 girls.
A new and exciting part of the CORP Trails and Little Bellas partnership this season was the debut of parent clinics. Thanks to the hard work of Beth Ross and the CORP Trails Events Committee, a three-part clinic series for the parents of Little Bellas helped them grow their mountain biking skills so that they could keep up with their little rippers! These parent clinics were timed such that parents could drop off their kids for Little Bellas and then meet the CORP Trails clinic instructors at the same park where the kids practice - Quarry Ridge.
A returning favorite this year were the Little Bellas volunteer trail work days at Seminole and Quarry Ridge. At this year's Seminole work day, mentors removed barbed wire from the new inner loop addition. Volunteer mentors were afforded not only a chance to give back to the trails, but also to connect off the bike and deepen the mentor team's camaraderie that helps make the Little Bellas program a success!
The second work day, held at Quarry Ridge, imparted an important lesson best summarized by parent Kian Wagner: "no diggy, no ridey." Hosting a kid-friendly trail work day allows Little Bellas to show our participants that volunteer trail work is an integral part of being a member of the mountain biking community. This year, volunteers repaired the three uphill trails: Ambulance, Sandy Climb, and Rewind, improving water bars and digging out drainage trenches to make the trails more resilient against erosion.
Finally, CORP Trails supported Little Bellas through its 8-week season by providing open-access to trails used for programming. Unlike other programs nationwide, Madison’s Chapter paid no fees to make use of the trails, which allowed Little Bellas to invest more resources to benefit the kids' experience such as supplies (i.e. glitter, glitter, and more glitter), snacks, loaner bikes, and helmets. The all-weather trails available at Aldo Leopold Park were especially beneficial (most notably the paved pump track), allowing Little Bellas on two occasions to ride when it was too wet elsewhere, avoiding practice cancellation.
Looking ahead to 2027, the Madison Little Bellas chapter hopes to expand programming to include a summer camp in addition to the fall season. This growth is possible thanks to the essential relationship and support with CORP Trails!
