On the second weekend of October, the mothership lands at South Germantown Bike Park. That is what the organizers call it, and the name fits: a staging ground of tents, registration tables, food, and parked cars that serves as the hub for a weekend of riding that sprawls across Montgomery County, Maryland. The MoCo Epic, set for October 10 and 11, 2026, with a rain date of October 17 and 18, is not a race. It is a festival, and 2026 marks its 16th anniversary.
The event is run by the Mid-Atlantic Off-Road Enthusiasts, known almost universally as MORE, a nonprofit that has been building and advocating for natural-surface trails in the DC, Maryland, and Virginia region since 1992. MORE is a local chapter of the International Mountain Biking Association, and the MoCo Epic is its biggest community event and fundraiser of the year. Montgomery Parks co-sponsors it, which is why the county's own events calendar carries the listing alongside the organizer's site.
The premise is simple and a little audacious. Rather than confine riders to a single trail system, the Epic strings together the best singletrack in up to eleven different Montgomery County parks, offering courses of varying lengths so that a first-timer and a hardened endurance rider can share the same start line. Bike Maryland's event listing describes the possibilities as endless, with riders touring flowing singletrack at their own pace. Support on each course includes a detailed map, well-marked trails, aid stations, and a post-ride party with a meal ticket.
Those aid stations have developed a reputation of their own. MORE's own description notes that they have historically featured hula dancers, fog machines, inflatable flamingos, and jambalaya. It is the kind of detail that tells you what kind of event this is: serious mileage, unserious atmosphere.
The weekend is split in two. Saturday is a family day, built around fun for riders of all ages and abilities, with a kids' ride, skill clinics, and group rides on the schedule. It is also a practical convenience, since riders can pick up their packets on Saturday and skip the longer lines on Sunday morning. Sunday is the main event, when the longer courses roll out and the county's trail network fills with riders working through distances that in past years have ranged from 13 miles up to 70.
South Germantown Recreational Park, where all of this begins and ends, is a fitting home base. The 15,000-square-foot South Germantown Bike Park on the grounds is itself a product of the same partnership that produces the Epic: it was built and is maintained jointly by Montgomery Parks and MORE. The facility is designed with progression in mind, offering small, medium, and large features for every ability level, including two pump tracks (one of them all-weather composite), dirt jumps, flow trails with wooden kickers and wall rides, drops, teeters, skinnies, and two mulch jumps. Access and parking are off Central Park Circle, across from the model boat pond. Motorized vehicles and RC cars are not permitted.
The park sits within a larger recreation complex that includes playgrounds, ball fields, picnic shelters, miniature golf, a splash and adventure playground, the King Farm Dairy Mooseum, the Maryland SoccerPlex, and a golf driving range. The Hoyles Mill and Diabase trails thread through the property and connect to a wider local network, and a hard-surface HeartSmart path loops the park with bronze medallions embedded every tenth of a mile.
Where the money goes is a large part of the story. For the past five years, half of the event's net proceeds have been placed in a fund dedicated specifically to improving the trails the Epic uses. That fund has paid for professional and volunteer refurbishment of the Schaeffer White Loop, work aimed at making it both accessible and challenging for adaptive riders. It has bought three brush mowers, two string mowers, and multiple gas- and battery-powered hedge trimmers to keep Montgomery County trails open through the summer growing season. It has replaced rotting bridges on the Seneca Ridge Trail. A major project now underway is upgrading 3.5 miles of the Seneca Greenway trail to open it to bikes, including two miles along Game Preserve Road. MORE also plans to replace two more rotting bridges on the Seneca Greenway and Long Draught trails and is looking at upgrades to popular trails near Clopper Lake.
The other half of net proceeds has gone into MORE's general funds, and the organization says $50,000 of that money has helped finance new trails at Bacon Ridge, Frederick Watershed, James Long, Lake Fairfax, Locust Shade, Patapsco, River's Edge, and Windy Ridge, as well as a paved pump track in the City of Frederick. In other words, the entry fees riders pay in October come back as the trails they ride the rest of the year, in Montgomery County and well beyond it.
None of it happens without people. MORE credits sponsors, partners, and more than a hundred individual volunteers with making the Epic possible. That volunteer corps is the reason a ride spanning eleven parks can be marked, mapped, staffed, and fed.
For 2026, the organizers are adding something new. For the first time in the event's history, camping will be available at the mothership from Saturday through Monday. Space is limited to 20 tents and 10 RVs or camper vans. There are no hookups for RVs, and open fires are not permitted. The camping fee covers permits and the rental of an additional portable toilet and sink. Campers are invited to join a community dinner on Saturday, extending a festival that has always been as much about the gathering as the riding.
That gathering has been going on for a decade and a half now, long enough that riders who showed up for the early editions are bringing their kids to the family day. The formula has not changed much: mark the trails, staff the aid stations, feed everyone at the end, and send the proceeds back into the dirt. What has changed is the scale, from a club ride among friends to a two-day county-wide festival with camping, clinics, and a guest list that includes Montgomery Parks itself.
Riders interested in the 2026 edition, including day-of updates, should check the organizer's website. Registration is open, and the rain date is already on the calendar.