Through the spooky forest, ‘round a bend and down a quaint little hill on the East side of Beaver Lake lies the Tour de Wolf trail, the location for the inaugural Memphis Outdoor Festival, a new local event bringing beer, barbecue, bike racing and outdoor music to Shelby Farms.
The MOF website states that the festival is intended to provide a diversion for Memphis bikers and draw attention to preserving and improving Shelby Farms Park, but Patrick Culligan Jr., Memphis Outdoor Festival Facilitator of Fun, says it’s a little more involved than that.
“The longer story is that the Tour de Wolf Trail hosted the Tour de Wolf Mountain Bike Race for several years,” Culligan said.
Previously, Outdoors Inc. owner Joe Royer hosted the event.
“Basically, he finally decided after 9/11 that he just couldn’t lose all this money putting on the event,“ Culligan said. “His job is to sell North Face jackets, not put on a mountain bike race.”
Even though Royer helped to create the trail originally, he stopped hosting the Tour de Wolf races and a mountain bike race at Shelby Farms Park hasn’t happened since 2002.
“It’s just one of those kind of sad declines,” Culligan said. “Mountain biking in general has slowly declined in the area, I think, as a result of losing excitement in that trail, taking care of that trail, really putting time and effort into it.”
A moving back from Colorado three years ago, Culligan, a U of M alum, was riding the Tour de Wolf trail and thought it was a shame that the trail hadn’t been built up more. So he talked with some friends he knew in bike shops and other places and found out that taking care of a bike trail is hard work, and without someone dedicated to that trail it wasn’t going to change for the better.
“When I left Tennessee I realized just how much of an absolute treasure Shelby Farms is for any city, but especially for Memphis,” Culligan said.
He spoke with Kate Phillips, Shelby Farms Facilities Manager, and asked what needed to be done to start a mountain bike race that would support building the trail. She told him that while the trail would be better maintained due to a $40,000 grant the park had just received, a race couldn’t be put on until the trail was improved.
That was three years ago, and Culligan believes that since then other construction projects have pushed improving the trail to the wayside.
“They also started the big construction project that you see that’s completely unrelated to the trail where they’re moving the lake, the visitors center and all that stuff which has now completely affected the actual route of the Tour de Wolf,” Culligan said.
Like in other Memphis events, beer is an important part of the festivities, and beer drinkers will likely look forward to the large selection of Memphis-crafted beers that local breweries like Wiseacre, Memphis Made and Ghost River will bring to the festival. Lazy Magnolia, Schlafly. Sam Adams, Blue Moon and Miller will also be available.
Festivities begin on Oct. 19 at 10 a.m and end at sundown. Events will include a seven-lap race of the Tour de Wolf across 43.4 miles as well as half and full lap races and dock dog competitions.
