“Having a site like Marshall Mountain is super critical, right? I mean, this is kind of the story of mountain biking in the West, is most places that have really gone gangbusters, it hasn’t been on federal land.”
That’s John Stegmaier, Executive Director of the Missoula Mountain Bike Coalition (MMBC). (Since our November interview, Stegmaier has stepped down from his role after five years as ED.) While Missoula has access to incredible tracts of National Forest lands, getting new legal mountain bike trails approved on USFS land has been an uphill battle. This trend is especially prevalent in Montana. Earlier this year, we wrote about the most exciting new trail development to take place in Bozeman in many years, and that build is happening on a large tract of private land for the exact same reason — the Forest Service has been difficult to work with.
Similarly, Missoula built its first legitimate purpose-built mountain bike trails ever on an old ski resort known as Marshall Mountain around 2016/2017. The owners extended mountain bikers and hikers/runners an easement to use the land, and since then, Marshall Mountain has become a highly desired piece of real estate for trail development. Unfortunately, it got caught up in a legal nightmare.
The fight to preserve Marshall Mountain
Bruce and Kim Doering listed this defunct local ski hill for sale for roughly $3 million. Many local organizations, including land conservancies, attempted to purchase the 156-acre property, but unfortunately, it never appraised for that amount of money. “So that created issues with public acquisition, right? Because public money typically needs to be no more than market value, right?” Stegmaier said.
During the pandemic, a local hospital recruited a cardiothoracic surgeon named Spencer Melby to work at the Heart Institute. Before moving to Missoula, Melby and his wife, Colette, went under contract to purchase the property from the Doerings.
“So this physician kind of fell in love with the idea of owning the site, and that was when the town came unhinged, basically, and fought tooth and nail against the idea of what was, in fact, a completely legal real estate transaction,” said Stegmaier. “You know, we wrote a petition appealing to them, ‘please do not do this.’”
“Ultimately, the physician group that he was going to join put a lot of leverage and […] effectively said, If you don’t let go of this as your property, you will move here, and you won’t have any referrals. So essentially, in that line of work, he wouldn’t have a job, right?”
The Doerings apparently decided they wanted to pull out of the real estate deal, and they got the opportunity after receiving an offer from local Missoula real estate developer Rick Wishcamper for $10,000 more than the Melbys offered. The Doerings then inserted language into the contract that they hoped the Melbys would reject, saying, “selling Marshall Mountain to the Melbys would no longer ‘fulfill Marshall’s mission,'” according to official court documents.
Bruce Doering told the broker to relay a message to the attorney that the additional language, which was a required easement to the entire property, was a plan to “keep us out of litigation land.” In a deposition, Bruce Doering admitted that “the issue of proposing that easement and having it disapproved was just a means to effectuate that decision,” i.e., getting the Melbys to withdraw from the deal.
Due to that added language and likely due to the pressure from the physician group, the Melbys withdrew from the real estate purchase and decided not to move to Missoula. They then filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit against the Doerings, arguing that the sellers had intentionally sabotaged the deal. The district court ruled in favor of the Melbys, but the Doerings have appealed. The case is currently working its way through the Montana Supreme Court.
The near loss of public access to this incredible parcel of land galvanized local individuals, land trusts, and the local government to work together to acquire it. Izzy Dog LLC, formed by a group of investors including Wishcamper, acquired the 156-acre parcel in 2021. Then, in 2023, Missoula County purchased three adjacent Marshall Mountain properties totaling 480 acres for a total of $3.2 million, with additional costs bringing the total investment to $3.88 million. Missoula County purchased the parcels from Five Valleys Land Trust ($73,000 parcel), Izzy Dog LLC ($1.8 million), and The Conservation Fund ($400,000). It’s unclear how much Izzy Dog LLC eventually purchased the parcel for from the Doerings, but now that the land is finally in public hands, the saga has mostly been laid to rest.
New trails come to Marshall Mountain
With the land finally preserved in perpetuity, the City of Missoula and Missoula County got to work drawing up a master plan for mountain bike trail development, and MMBC soon put tools to dirt. In 2024, MMBC contracted Radius Trail Solutions to build Mission to MARS and DeWolf Dirt Co. to build Izzy Up, both of which opened to the riding public in June 2025.
Mission to MARS
Both Mission to MARS and Izzy Up are adaptive-friendly trails that now form a fantastic loop on the mountainside. Stegmaier shared that while accessibility and inclusion have always been goals for the Marshall Mountain project, the construction of this adaptive trail has been propelled by community members seeking to provide recreational opportunities for people with disabilities. Unfortunately, several Missoula locals have “fairly recently [been] rendered quadriplegics, that were big mountain bikers, big skiers,” said Stegmaier. One local rider “was working a contract logging job and had an accident, and […] took a tree to the back.”
After climbing Izzy Up, riders will drop into Mission to MARS and enjoy a 1.6-mile flow trail ripping down almost 600 vertical feet through a series of rollers and absolutely massive banked berms with 9-10-foot embankments. “It’s got a handful of little side jumps, kind of the start of like, ‘this is how you approach a jump,’” said Stegmaier. “Everything is low consequence.” Even though the trail is rated a green, “you can clock high speed. […] You could ride it as though it’s a blue based on how fast you’re going, because it’s become so freaking fast.”
Mission to MARS has become incredibly popular, but you can’t please everyone with just one trail. “One of the things when we were building it that was somewhat tough for me was advanced mountain bikers who were already feeling overlooked for advanced trails, and us saying, ‘Look, we’re going to do the right thing, which is to prioritize beginners and new mountain bikers and adaptive riders, and if you don’t like it, that’s on you,’” said Stegmaier.
He went on to say that, unfortunately, it’s often the younger riders who’ve been criticizing MMBC, because they “don’t have the longevity and don’t have the same outlook.” It takes patience to build great trails, and that patience has led to an all-new double-black masterpiece.
Marshall Arts
During the 2025 build season, MMBC (with consultation input from Radius) constructed a gnarly “old school tech” trail on the entirely opposite end of the spectrum, known as “Marshall Arts.” The new double black diamond trail opened on October 24, 2025, and measures 3,865 linear feet and drops a whopping 744 vertical feet over that distance.
The trail begins with a seven-foot drop with a wooden bridge takeoff, with three more substantial drops further down the trail. While you might think the massive drops are the most challenging features, Stegmaier claims that the steep corners are the hardest part.
“A lot of it is just hairy, steep, loamy, weird, hard corners with penned-in cross bracing,” he said. There’s a log skinny, steep, loamy fall line riding, and plenty of old school gnar.
They included “as much rake and ride sections as we could,” and wherever possible, “we just took the duff off and then raked out to six to 10 feet to allow for line selection.”
“[When] we were building, people [were] saying, ‘This isn’t going to be a true double black. You won’t be able to do that. That’s not your history.’ Just skepticism and mistrust,” said Stegmaier. Despite that initial skepticism, “I do believe people feel satisfied with what they’ve gotten.”
“It’s been a good opportunity for us as a trail association to talk about the realities of […] being above board,” he explained. “You know, being above board is hard. It’s hard going out and building illegally — not that hard, but getting permission and doing things right and having signage, that’s a lot harder.”
8-9 more downhill trails are planned
Marshall Mountain currently boasts 7-8 miles of singletrack right now, and the master plan calls for 8-9 more downhill trails and a couple more climbing trails. In 2026, MMBC plans to extend Hello Kitty all the way to the bottom of the mountain. Hello Kitty is a blue flow trail originally built in 2018 that’s one of the most popular trails at Marshall Mountain. During the extension, they’ll also make some updates to the existing trail.
If time allows, MMBC hopes to begin building a black tech trail, too. All told, Stegmaier anticipates it could take MMBC through 2030 to build out all the trails they have planned, depending on funding. While MMBC has been successful in raising funds via Montana RTP grants, from Athletic Brewing Company, and with help from the Friends of Marshall Mountain, the exact timeline will ultimately be funding-dependent.
While it may have taken a critical threat—albeit a totally legal one—to galvanize the local community to action, this incredible piece of land is now protected for recreation and conservation for generations to come.
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