The Oregon Timber Trail Alliance is dedicated to stewardship, education, community, and quality trail experiences throughout the Oregon Timber Trail corridor.
Conceived in 2015, the Oregon Timber Trail links communities and backcountry landscapes through mountain biking experiences. Inspiring outdoor recreation is a pathway for personal growth and well-being, as well as a benefit to the economies of Oregon’s rural communities. We strive to make these experiences accessible to everyone and welcome riders from all over the world and all walks of life.
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Stewardship
Well-designed and well-maintained trails are a basic ingredient for a satisfying adventure on a mountain bike. And where trails become unrideable due to fallen trees, brush encroachment, or erosion, we rally our own volunteers to help restore them or encourage other mountain bike groups and the Forest Service to respond in kind.
OTTA volunteers have logged over 15,000 hours to clear and maintain trails since 2017. We:
Helped restore 175 miles of the neglected Fremont National Recreation Trail and Crane Mountain National Recreation Trail in southern Oregon.
Helped maintain and extend the Bunchgrass Ridge trail that connects Oakridge to Waldo Lake.
In partnership with Trans-Cascadia and Alpine Running, helped restore trails along the Old Cascade Crest north of Santiam Pass.
Partnered with Back Country Horsemen and Go Beyond Racing to begin restoring neglected trails west of Olallie Lake.
Annually maintain a section of the Fifteenmile trail east of Mount Hood.
Are installing signs and tags along the trail to aid navigation, especially in southern Oregon.
The OTTA will continue to secure funding and rally volunteers to help maintain trails in the OTT corridor.
©Dylan VanWeelden
©Daniel Sharp
Education
The OTTA believes we have a role to educate riders about the landscape they’re traveling through and provide them the skills to help maintain trails if they choose to volunteer.
We hosted a series of chainsaw certification courses, resulting in over 50 new certified volunteers who in turn cleared thousands of fallen trees.
In partnership with the Willamette National Forest, we developed a course to train volunteers about how to maintain trails.
The route guide we prepared informs riders about the history, ecology, and geology along the OTT route.
We’ve coordinated skills courses that cover bike camping, backcountry navigation, and camp cooking.
© Gabriel Amadeus
Community
Interacting with the communities along the OTT is one of the enjoyments of riding the route or when volunteering to maintain local trails. It is a chance to connect and find common ground with folks that may have different backgrounds and viewpoints.
The OTT route guide contains detailed descriptions about what these gateway communities have to offer for those who travel by mountain bike.
Our footprint may be small compared to other factors that drive the economies of these communities, but we like knowing that the recreational dollars we spend locally make some difference.
To that end we’ve:
Hosted a series of educational and inspiring film nights to grow our community of riders.
Partnered with Springwater Environmental School to educate students about the natural and cultural history along the OTT and incorporated their feedback in the OTT route guide.
Teamed up with a landscape architecture course at the University of Oregon to develop a map and guide for the Willamette Tier.
Helped the National Interscholastic Cycling Association (NICA) coordinate their first bike camping trip on the Deschutes Tier.
The OTTA will continue to engage with local communities and look for opportunities to foster a sense of pride and care for adjacent public lands.
© Gritchelle Fallesgon
© Gabriel Amadeus
Experience
The OTT is a unique network of trails and little-used roads that the OTTA has mapped and presented to the wider mountain biking community. The OTTA helps maintain some of the trails along the route but the success of having this long distance route is possible only because other mountain biking groups and the Forest Service are maintaining trails each year throughout the corridor. It’s indeed a joint effort and we’re pleased to be a part of it.
The OTT route isn’t static. A catastrophic wildfire will close off a section of trail during and after the fire, thus requiring us to come up with an alternate route for bikers. Logging operations or construction projects may close off a road for the summer and require a re-route. A trail might become abandoned from disuse or a new one built that prompts us to come up with a better alignment. The OTTA strives to respond quickly to these changes and get the word out to riders.
We’re always on the lookout for mountain biking experiences in the OTT corridor other than riding the entire route in one shot. We’ve mapped alternate routes (we call them bypasses) around a section of the OTT that a rider might choose because it’s easier or to hook up to make a loop for a weekend trip. We’ve defined two official loop routes up north that lend themselves to 2 to 4 day rides and take in some spectacular terrain.
How do we measure our success?
Riders from 28 different countries have downloaded our route guide.
We’ve had 200,000 unique website visitors.
Bikepacker.com awarded the OTT “Best New Route” in 2017.
50 media outlets nationwide have published news of the route.
OTTA leadership
Steve Brook is the president of Atainium, a business consulting firm. He enjoys the Oregon backcountry and the Oregon Timber Trail for its opportunity to highlight the beauty, adventure, and challenge that exists along the route. With a tendency to look for the road less traveled, he is often inclined to choose the logging road, overgrown path, or just plain bushwhack as the preferred route. Steve is committed to working with the Oregon Timber Trail Alliance to improve the accessibility, ride options, inclusivity, and mutual support between trail towns and the Alliance.
Ben Mayberry is a native Oregonian, long-distance hiker and biker, one-time trail builder, and current recreation manager working for the State of Washington. Some of his life's best experiences have been on long-distance human-powered trips like the Pacific Crest Trail and a cross-country bike tour, and he hopes to one day experience the Oregon Timber Trail in its entirety. Ben joined the Oregon Timber Trail Alliance to help encourage others to experience long-distance trails, steward our public lands, and experience the diversity of Oregon's natural landscapes.
Erik Simshauser joined the OTTA Board in November. His interest in the OTTA was driven, in part, by his recent experience completing the Oregon Outback. During the Outback, he saw firsthand how stewardship supports accessibility, as well as how quality trail experiences can drive an outsized community impact. For him, supporting the OTTA’s mission and agenda represents another milestone on a long-winding, two-wheeled journey that got its start many years ago.
Erik is a graduate of Gonzaga University, and also earned an MBA from Portland State University. In 2013, he launched Left Turn, A Marketing Consultancy to participate in the growth initiatives of emerging healthcare technology companies.
Ryan Dutcher was introduced to mountain biking while at the University of Colorado in 1990. Loved it so much, he cycle-toured the length of South America, starting in Caracas, traveling through the Amazon and then to La Paz with his partner. The route then took them to Buenos Aires, west to Santiago, and then through Chile and Patagonia to end the trip in Ushuaia, Argentina. Since then, bikes have played a consistent role in where he has chosen to live and how he spends his time.
Ryan has a B.A. in Economics from the University of Colorado and a MBA from Cornell University. When he is not riding a bike, he provides executive leadership and financial consulting to organizations in a variety of industries. His areas of expertise include cash flow management, profitability improvements, investor relations, board relationship management, transaction readiness and leadership, and operational management.
Joe Miller relocated to Portland in 1994 and bought his first mountain bike shortly thereafter. Over the past 30 years, he has explored the Pacific Northwest backcountry by foot, bike, ski, and raft. An advocate of self-imposed suffering, he enjoys the traditionally long cross-country trails and steep mountainsides that are hard to get to. He is a consultant who helps municipal utilities plan, build, and manage water and wastewater infrastructure. With a background in mapping, Joe is intrigued by the Oregon Timber Trail route and all its variations.
Joe looks forward to learning and maintaining the route, keeping up the Ride with GPS and FarOut apps, and giving back to the mountain bike community through trail work and stewardship.
Chip Andrus of Hood River gets his thrills watching folks finish the OTT from his front porch. He's a fan of long distance racing and touring and hopes to get a few more under his belt soon. He once had a career in restoring salmon habitat but has now moved up in the world and fixes bikes for kids.
Mike Vanderberg is a forest professional and volunteer trail steward based out of Ashland. Mike loves backcountry experiences, especially on a bike, and wants to help ensure that others can love them too.
Nancy Serrano is a college student who advocates for DEI in the outdoors. She currently works for the university’s Outdoor Program as a bike mechanic. She loves taking friends out to go mountain biking, rock climbing, and camping. Nancy joined the Oregon Timber Traill Alliance in hopes of getting folks of all backgrounds and ability levels out on the trail. Bikepacking is an amazing experience that everyone should have the ability to enjoy!
Jeffrey Kingman has called eleven states home and now resides in Atlanta, Georgia, with his wife and a household of rescue dogs. Jeffrey brings extensive outdoor recreation experience to the Oregon Timber Trail (OTT) board, including a successful Appalachian Trail through-hike in 1998. His connection to Oregon runs deep, with over a decade of residency (including fighting forest fires with the Oregon Army National Guard) and a multi-generational Oregon heritage dating back to the early 1920s.
With professional expertise spanning gastronomy and communications, Jeffrey now leads a brand communications agency that operates at the crossroads of food, outdoor recreation, hospitality, travel, tourism, and lifespan wellness for humans and canines. As he works toward completing the Iditarod Trail Invitational 1000 by age 65, Jeffrey has also embraced the world of bikepacking—a new and exciting venture. His passion for public lands and long-distance trails drives his dedication to raising awareness of the Oregon Timber Trail and its purpose. Jeffrey’s board involvement focuses on amplifying user engagement and media visibility for this iconic trail.
Contact Us
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