(Photo: Oregon State Parks)
Two Portland-area mountain bike advocacy groups hacve been given the green light by Oregon State Parks to begin building a network of freeride and singletrack trails in the newly opened Stub Stewart State Park, a 1,600 acre park located just 31 miles west of Portland in Washington County.
According to Roger Louton of the Portland United Mountain Pedalers (PUMP), they will work closely with another local mountain bike trail advocacy group, the Westside Trail Federation (WTF).
Louton says they have the go-ahead to improve existing, secondary logging roads (aka “skid” roads that are about six feet wide) and build singletrack trails as long as they stay within 100 yards of the existing roads.
PUMP will focus on building cross-country oriented singletrack trails and the Westside Trail Federation will focus on building freeride/downhill skills trails.
A trail work day, where volunteers will begin flagging routes, has already been scheduled for this weekend.
PUMP club president Roger Louton says they are looking for a volunteer that lives in Hillsboro, Forest Grove, or surrounding areas to be their Area Representative for this project. If you’re interested, contact Roger at rwleleven [at] msn [dot] com.
This would be awesome! I was up there last weekend to hike around. It is pretty boring for hiker, but the trails seemed awesome for biking. There is not a lot of singletrack – a lot of the trails were created by driving a cat through the forest.
But creating singletracks nearby would be great – and reduce any potential issues with the horseriders… Plus they have sweet cabins at the park too!
Creating good single track requires pushing back a lot of the undergrowth to properly cut in the track. A lot of times a cat or \”ditchwitch\” is used to do this. Once the trail is cut in and graded properly the natural underbrush will be allowed to grow back.
If built properly, in a year the plants will grow back and you\’ll have a great single track trail, that requires a minimum of maintenance.
This is awesome news. The more single track there is available close to Portland the better. Can\’t wait to ride the trails!
It is still nice to be legally immersed in nature on a bicycle.
wow! this must be amazing! how\’s the status of this project going so far?
There should be some freeride trails as well.