In the summer of 2000, a handful of riders sat on the deck of the Village Inn in Outing and decided the trails around them needed someone looking after them. That conversation turned into the Over The Hills Gang ATV Club, incorporated the following year, and twenty-five years later that same club, not the state and not a tourism board, is still the one deciding which loop gets plowed this winter and which one gets left alone.
If you live in Fifty Lakes, Emily, or Outing and ride regularly, you already know the trails exist. What you may not know is how much of what happens on them, when a section opens, when it closes, whether it's groomed or left natural, comes down to a volunteer board that still meets on Saturday mornings at 9:30, not a government office in St. Paul.
The club behind the kiosks
The Over The Hills Gang started with eighteen members. Fran Olds was the first president, elected in 2001, and Meri Lysne held the role for the next fifteen years before current president Perry May took over in September 2017. Today the club counts around 500 members, including more than 300 paid memberships and over 50 local businesses that pay into the same organization.
That business membership matters more than it sounds. When you park at a trailhead kiosk in Emily, two blocks east of Highway 6 behind the Log Cabin Bar, or start a ride near Sweets N Such, you're standing on infrastructure the club built and still maintains, not something the DNR dropped in. The Over The Hills Gang plans, cuts, and grooms around 72 miles of trail across three named systems in the Outing and Emily area, and that work happens because local businesses and riders keep funding it year after year, not because a state agency assigned it to them.
Three systems, one club
The 72 miles break down into three distinct trails, and they don't all behave the same way.
| Trail | Length | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Moose River ATV Trail | 26 miles | Year-round, includes the Cedar Lake Loop |
| Emily-Outing ATV Trail | 30 miles | Opened 2014 after ten years of permitting work |
| Emily-Blind Lake Trail | 16 miles | Seasonal, May 15 to October 31 |
The Emily-Outing Trail is the newest of the three, and it wasn't quick. The club spent roughly a decade working toward its 2014 opening, which tells you something about how much permitting and negotiation goes into a trail that riders now treat as a given. The Emily-Blind Lake Trail is the connector piece, a multi-use route open to Class I and Class II ATVs as well as off-highway motorcycles, and it links the Emily-Outing and Moose River systems into Aitkin County's Northwoods Regional system, stretching the full loop to more than 70 miles across two counties.
Why October 31 matters more than the calendar
Here's the detail most riders miss. The Emily-Blind Lake Trail has a hard end date. It closes October 31 every year, full stop, regardless of snow or weather. That's the deadline that actually governs your fall riding window, not the first frost or the first flurries.
But the Moose River system doesn't close the same way, and this is where the club's judgment calls start to show. Once winter sets in:
- Draper Road and the main ATV parking lot are plowed all winter long, keeping access open even in deep snow.
- The Plantation and Wren Lake loops get groomed once a solid base forms, making them rideable but maintained.
- The Cedar Lake Loop is left natural on purpose, for riders who want the unplowed, ungroomed version of the trail.
None of that is dictated by a state trail calendar. It's a set of decisions the club makes about which loops get resources and which stay wild, and it changes slightly year to year depending on snowpack and volunteer availability. If you've been riding here a while and assumed the whole system just goes quiet in December, it doesn't. Part of it gets plowed on purpose.
The Corn Feed pays for the culvert
The club's two signature fundraisers aren't just neighborhood tradition, they're the funding mechanism behind the trail work described above. The Pork N Ride happens the first Saturday in June, a ride-and-roast that raises money specifically for trail maintenance. The Lions Corn Feed at the Pickled Loon Saloon runs the third Saturday in August, which this year fell on August 15, just before this piece went live.
That timing isn't a coincidence worth glossing over. The club combines Grant-In-Aid funding from the state with its own fundraising and business membership dues to cover the actual cost of trail work, the bridges, the boardwalks, the culverts. When you eat at the Corn Feed or ride the Pork N Ride, you're not just showing up for a community event. You're funding the same infrastructure you rode in on.
The businesses are trail infrastructure, not just amenities
It's easy to list local spots as a lifestyle amenity: the Pickled Loon Saloon, Red Pine Cookhouse, the Channel Bar and Grill, the Fifty Lakes Bar & Bottle Shop, Up A Creek Campground on Daggett Brook. That framing misses what's actually going on. These are club-paying members whose parking lots, kiosks, and driveways are literal trail access points. Up A Creek Campground sits just west of Fifty Lakes with direct ATV and UTV trail access built into its layout, not as a marketing feature but as part of the physical trail network.
That's a different relationship than a business simply being nearby a trail. It means the food and fuel stops that make a long ride comfortable are the same entities that keep the club solvent enough to maintain the trail you rode in on.
What this means for the rest of your season
The club meets the first Saturday of most months, February through October, at 9:30 in the morning, to talk through exactly the kind of decisions covered here: which sections need work before the October 31 close, what condition the Cedar Lake Loop is in heading into fall, and how the Corn Feed proceeds get allocated. If you want to know what's actually happening on the ground rather than what a trail map from a few seasons back says, that meeting is a better source than any app.
The trail system in Fifty Lakes, Emily, and Outing runs on volunteer judgment more than fixed rules, and that's been true since eighteen people decided to do something about it back in 2000. Knowing that doesn't just make you a better-informed rider. It's a small but real piece of what it means to actually live here rather than just visit.
If you're weighing a move to this part of the lakes area, or you already call it home and want a team that understands these details the way a neighbor does, Larson Group would be glad to help. Work With Us.
