Bend, Oregon, has long been a mountain biker’s paradise. The Central Oregon Trail Alliance (COTA) manages a massive trail footprint in Bend and surrounding Central Oregon communities.
Now, proposals to add about 20 more miles of singletrack over the next few years have been approved. The new trails will help reroute around sensitive areas, get riders off fire roads, and provide first-of-its-kind (for Bend) DH trails at the popular Wanoga Trailhead.
And some big names on the gravity side of mountain biking will be involved.
20 miles of new singletrack coming to Bend
While 2025 is the season that COTA is finally making headway on the 20 miles of proposed singletrack, the plan has been in the works for quite a few years. When conversations started four or five years ago, COTA attempted to align grant approvals with NEPA process approval. COTA was approved for the grants, but the Forest Service was backed up and unable to complete the environmental review. And so the waiting game began.
Patience paid off, and COTA has already broken ground on several of its many new projects this spring. While many of the projects consist of reroutes due to drainage issues or adding short connections, others include protecting wildlife habitat and building miles of new trail.
Oh yeah, and did we mention — new downhill trails.
The first public, lapable downhill trails in Bend will be built at the Wanoga trailhead
Plans and proposals have been approved for new downhill mountain bike trails dropping off a butte immediately south of the massive Wanoga trailhead. Despite having hundreds of miles of trails, Bend has yet to build DH-specific, lapable public trails. While the nearby Mt. Bachelor Bike Park does offer lift-served downhill trails, the new trail development at Wanoga will be free to ride.
The Wanoga trailhead is already home to a progressive skills park, which was recently revamped by professional trail builder Kyle Jamison. The new DH trails at Wanoga will tie into the skills park, creating a progressive riding hub that will allow riders to advance their skills.
While the Wanoga DH trails will be built in 2025, Alex Brieger, COTA Trails Program Director, shared that they have been a part of COTA’s conversation for years. Now that a plan is in the works, COTA is ensuring it is done right. COTA has hired Cam Zink’s trail-building company, Sensus RAD Trails, to build the Wanoga DH trails. They also anticipate professional riders such as Carson Storch, Cam McCaul, and Dusty Wygle will consult and lend a hand in the build.
Five new trails are planned for the project — a climbing trail, a blue flow/jump line, and two black trails. A fifth trail will connect from the top of the butte to an existing trail called Tiddlywinks.
The blue flow trail will be built on an old road grade. Brieger said riders can anticipate intermediate-level jumps, berms, and maybe a wallride or two. They will use the width of the existing road, allowing jumps to have multiple lips next to each other — one mellower and one steeper.
“There will also be two black trails from the top,” Brieger shared. “We’ve talked about one being more flowy and one more technical. The hard thing is that there’s not much rock up there.”
While there may not be much rock, Brieger said there are quite a few downed trees. COTA is toying with using the logs and moving dirt to create drops and the tech they want for the trail.
COTA will know more about how each trail will snake its way down the butte once Sensus RAD Trail’s crew is on sight. For now, Brieger was able to share that they expect the DH trails to be around half a mile long, descending around 300 feet. The blue flow trail doesn’t start from the top of the butte, and as a result, will be a bit shorter in length, dropping about 130 feet.
Brieger and COTA have their fingers crossed that the DH trails will be completed by November. At the time of this writing, they’re waiting for the snow to melt so shovels can hit the ground.
Work is already underway on the Pine Drops Extension
One of the first projects COTA broke ground on was a rework of the Pine Drops trail. Pine Drops is a popular climbing trail that provides access to one of Bend’s most well-loved jump trails — Lower Whoops.
Pine Drops covers two miles as it climbs nearly 500 feet to the beginning of Lower Whoops. While the trail is very much a beginner-friendly green, some sections were not, including a 100-yard grunt up a steep section of fire road. Instead of using fire roads, COTA rerouted Pine Drops entirely onto singletrack, adding several modest switchbacks to replace the steep climb.
But this isn’t the end of COTA’s work with Pine Drops. More mileage is on the way.
“[Pine Drops Extension] — that’s a pretty big deal; that’s like three more miles of trail,” Brieger told us.
If there is a “Lower Whoops,” one can assume an “Upper Whoops” also exists. Right now, there are two ways to access Upper Whoops — a nearly three-mile fire road climb or pedaling up the trail itself, which is primarily descended. COTA plans to extend Pine Drops to the top of Upper Whoops, providing a singletrack climbing option and allowing Upper Whoops to become descending only.
The Pine Drops Extension is scheduled for the 2026 building season.
A beginner-friendly route, thanks to the C.O.D. Bypass
Another project COTA was able to start on early in the building season was the C.O.D. Bypass. “Marvin’s is green and ties into a black section of C.O.D.,” Brieger explained. “There is an old road that got decommissioned, and if people didn’t want to ride the black section, they went onto that road.”
The decommissioned road cuts through sensitive wildlife habitat that COTA and the Forest Service wanted to protect. So, to get riders off the road, COTA added a green bypass trail to get around the technical C.O.D. section, effectively creating a continuous beginner-friendly ride. Doing so added roughly 80 acres to the existing 400 acres of wildlife habitat.
Finishing the Bachelor to Bend route
One new project COTA is planning to complete this year is the “Bachelor to Bend” trail. In actuality, the project will involve the construction of several new trails, connecting several popular trailheads.
Three popular trailheads — Swampy, Dutchman, and Wanoga — are the launching point for many of Bend’s further out westside trails. However, there are currently very few — or no — trails connecting these trailheads, despite all three being on the same highway.
Dutchman is the furthest west, directly across from the entrance to Mt. Bachelor. Currently, the only singletrack from Dutchman is a trail called Flagline, which is closed until mid-August due to elk in the area. The only other option from Dutchman is 3.5 miles of old doubletrack that reconnects to singletrack leading down to the Swampy Trailhead. New singletrack is planned to keep riders out of the sensitive elk habitat and provide another option, getting them off the old fire road.
Also planned is a singletrack connection from the Swampy Trailhead to the Wanoga Trailhead, as riders are once again on a dirt road between the trailheads. These connections will keep riders almost exclusively on singletrack in this area of Bend.
1 Comments
0 minutes ago