Why ‘For the Love of Trails’

The name “For the Love of Trails” became clear with COVID-19 restrictions looming over canceled work parties. We love trails, and with the expansion of riders and new members, the bike industry has been booming. While we’re prepping to get back into digging this Fall, things will look very different with COVID and mandatory social distancing procedures. The demand for extra tools is a must, especially if we can’t share as much. On top of that, contracting labor will start becoming a large part of getting things done. More riding means larger-scale trail building, so if you want more trails, “For the Love of Trails” is important. Direct fundraising for trails gives us more freedom over what we can build and more influence on where we can build. Do you love trails? Please show us some of that love. We could not be doing this without CyclepathPDX. They came out with strong support for NWTA and supplied a Pivot frame for us to raise funds. Please visit Drawing Page Here.

What we Plan do with the Money Raised

We can see the pain of having to drive far out of Portland to get to the trails. With these funds, we would like to focus an expansion of Rocky Point and to invest in mountain bike assets on our Portland Parks trail stewardship initiatives. These are the trails that are closest to home and can be accessed to a large portion of our community. They need attention!

Why You are the Hero in this Situation

It doesn’t matter what stage in your mountain bike career you’re in, what matters is how active in the biking community you are. Every sport has a lifestyle and just like tuning up your bike, so you don’t fly over your handlebars, tuning up the trails is just as or even more critical. 

With more trails, more riders with varying abilities can enjoy the area. Thus, there’s no barrier to entry with this sport, allowing beginners to feel comfortable well as underserved groups to participate, learn, and keep coming back. Don’t worry; we want more advanced technical trails as well.

Why you Should Join NWTA

“If you’re a sailor, all you can hope for is wind. If you’re a mountain biker, you can support a trail association to get trails,” Says President Bob Lessard. Just because you purchased a mountain bike doesn’t mean you’re going to bike on thin air. To be able to bike on dirt, it takes money to do it sustainably. You can’t just lay down a trail anywhere. “Consider this: 50 dollars for an entire year of trail support versus 100 dollars for a single day of skiing. It is hard to know how profound the difference would be, but I bet that if every mountain biker within NWTA’s purview became a member, we would probably have the resources to add 25 miles of new trail per year and make a lot of improvements to existing trails too.” Says Lessard.

Thank you to our sponsors CyclePathPDX, Pivot Cycles, Showers Pass, Chris King Components, Reserve Wheels, and Burgtec. To become a member, head to nw-trail.org/join and join our newsletter here to stay up to date with events.