“In the last probably 10 years, we built about 40 miles of trail — and then 10 alone last year, which was pretty crazy,” said Emily Strizich, an infectious energy evident in her voice. While Emily Strizich might be the Executive Director of the Pend Oreille Pedalers (POP), even she is amazed at the momentum behind Sandpoint, Idaho’s local MTB advocacy group.
POP has built on that momentum by establishing its own in-house trail building crew, taking a page from the Evergreen MTB Alliance playbook. They plan to build an additional seven miles of singletrack during the 2025 season.
The Lower Basin is the current epicenter of Sandpoint singletrack development
Almost 100% of the 17 miles of new trail construction between 2024 and 2025 is located in Sandpoint’s Lower Basin trail system. While the Lower Basin is home to much of Sandpoint’s current trail development, it’s far from being a new trail system.
“We have been working in the Basin as long as there has been riding around here, honestly. So POP started in 2004, but even before that, people would get up there with their knobby tires and just go rally down these old utility lines,” said Strizich. “There is still a black downhill line there with absolutely no speed control or safety features, but we keep it as an homage to our rich history up there.”
While riders can still find gnarly downhill trails, the current trail development taking place in the Basin is “world-class,” according to Strizich. When speaking of some of the advanced trails, like Missing Lynx, Strizich said, “It blows my mind that it’s available on public land. You know, it’s one of those trails — damn. This is way cool.”
The Lower Basin area is situated along a steep road that climbs to the base of Schweitzer Mountain. The steep mountainside is home to towering timber and massive granite rock slabs. “Once you get out there, it’s very Squamish-like — it’s the rock composition. So it really does become kind of choose your own adventure,” said Strizich.
What types of trails will you find in the Lower Basin?
“What’s so cool, Greg, is it is literally something for everybody,” Strizich exclaimed when I spoke with her. While “something for everybody” is a cliché in trail-building parlance, the Lower Basin appears to qualify.
Advanced mountain bikers will have plenty to keep them busy. Trails like Missing Lynx, built in 2024, offer “hybrid black tech flow.” While this black diamond trail has ride-arounds on all the features, if you decide to send the main line, you’d better be committed. “There is a probably 15-foot wood gap jump that, if you miss, you land in rocks,” said Strizich. “There’s also a rock drop, but it also has decking that you can roll.”
Intermediate riders will find plenty to keep them entertained, with perfectly sculpted blue jump trails. The most popular jump line is the newly built combination of ET and Phone Home. You can just imagine bikes taking off from the lips of the jumps and then never coming back down.
Several XC-oriented trails also run up and down the mountainside, offering both climbing routes and mellow descents on the two-way trails.
In total, the Lower Basin contains about 30 miles of trails, with POP managing 22 of those miles. The Lower Basin provides about 1,600 vertical feet of descending below the roundabout. However, exactly where you should draw the line between one trail network and another is a bit fuzzy.
Incredible trail connectivity in the Basin, including numerous shuttle drops
If you drop into the trails in the Upper Basin, you can stretch that shuttle-served vertical to about 1,900 vertical feet.
But there’s even more singletrack available.
Mountain bikers willing to pedal can keep cranking up the mountainside, climbing purpose-built singletrack out of the forest and into the high alpine, topping out at almost 6,400ft at the top of Schweitzer Mountain. If you were to rip all the way down from the top of the mountain, you’d enjoy over 3,800 vertical feet of downhill! And, of course, if you were to get a ride to the base of the lift, take the lift to the top, and then rip back down to the valley floor, you could enjoy all that vert with very little pedaling.
The scale of these downhills can be intimidating to some riders, but thanks to the easy trail access from the switchbacked mountain road, riders can drop into the Lower Basin trails wherever they wish.
“I would say [shuttle riders] are probably 55% of the traffic, especially on the weekends,” said Strizich. “During the week, you have more locals riding there, obviously. So it’s more people getting out for their daily drive and exercise and stuff. But yeah, on the weekend, it’s so much shuttle traffic, and honestly, so many young kids getting out, especially from switchback four down, because you can roll [everything] on those trails.”
New trails under construction in 2025
POP plans to build five main trails and numerous alt lines, totaling seven miles of new singletrack, in 2025. These trails include a climbing trail, a hybrid blue descent, a hand-built black descent, a hand-built double black descent, and the aforementioned alt lines.
While most of the trail building will be completed by the professional trail crew (known as “The Notorious D.IG.”), the local volunteers are also passionate about building. One of the hand-built tech trails will be constructed 100% by volunteer labor.
“We can’t not have a weekly trail work [day] because we get, like, 30 people a week,” said Strizich. “And I’m like, ‘Oh my God, that’s 50 hours a week of volunteer labor. That’s insane.'”
And they aren’t stopping there. Strizich shared some of their long-term plans, including a network of beginner-friendly singletrack higher in the Basin built in partnership with the Sandpoint Nordic Club.
While the mountain biking in Sandpoint is already renowned across the Northwest USA, with this level of momentum, Sandpoint might just become the next must-ride mountain bike mecca.
3 Comments
1 week ago
Amazing.
1 week ago
1 week ago