For people who live to ride mountain bike trails through the wilderness, there is a new dream on the horizon. One day soon, it may be possible to ride all the way from the southern tip of the Baja peninsula up the west coast to the Canadian border. Gabriel Amadeus Tiller is the executive director of Orogenesis, an organization working to build this trail. They have only about 200 miles of the route left to map. Tiller joins us to talk about his dream of the longest mountain biking trail in the world.
Note: The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. For people who like to ride mountain bike trails through the wilderness, there’s a new dream on the horizon. One day it may be possible to ride all the way from the southern tip of Mexico’s Baja peninsula, up the west coast, all the way to the U.S Canadian border. Gabriel Amadeus Tiller is the executive director of the Orogenesis Collective; that’s an organization working to build this trail. He joins us now to talk about his plan to create the longest mountain bike trail in the world. Gabriel, welcome to Think Out Loud.
Gabriel Amadeus Tiller: Hi, thanks for having me.
Miller: Can you describe your ultimate goal here?
Tiller: I really enjoy riding bikes outside in the mountains and the forests. Those experiences really shaped my life from a very early age and I just want to provide those experiences to a lot of other people.
Miller: What’s the closest version of what you’re hoping to create that already exists?
Tiller: What’s really neat is that the Oregon section is essentially already done. The Oregon Timber Trail (OTT) already exists. I was one of the founders of that organization about six years ago and then led that organization (OTT Alliance) for about five years. They’re continuing to do maintenance and build that trail out and that’s about 700 miles long and about 60% single track through the state.
Miller: What does single track mean?
Tiller: Good question. This is really reinforced by our user surveys that mountain bikers really want a backcountry single track experience. So single track is just a trail that is, depending on the specifications, usually about 18-24″ wide that goes through the forest. And, as opposed to double track, which is like an old jeep road or wagon road and of course as opposed to a gravel road or a paved road which are less than ideal to ride a mountain bike on.
Miller: And 18 inches wide. I guess the single implies that you can put one bike through there at a time?
Tiller: Yeah, that’s right.
Miller: So where does the existing Oregon Timber Trail portion of this run through?
Tiller: It runs through four different national forests in Oregon. And those are loosely associated with four really unique environments and landscapes. Down in Southern Oregon, sort of South-Central Oregon, it starts in the Warner Mountains and goes through the Fremont National Forest around Summer Lake, on the winter rim, and ending away south of Bend. Then it crosses over the Cascades down into Oakridge, where you have really dark, deep green lush forests that Oregon is really known for. Then it crosses back over the Cascades sort of around the Bend area where you have a more alpine and really volcanic geology. And then the final tier, the Hood tier, winds north towards Mount Hood and then descends through the Hood River Valley and the Hood River Trail systems all the way down to the Columbia River Gorge.
Miller: So that’s the Oregon side. And you’re saying that out of this entire length, which would involve Washington, Oregon, California and a big chunk in Baja, the Oregon part is the most completed. What are the biggest challenges then? Like what are the parts where you have the most work still to do?
Tiller: In our preliminary sort of assessment of this whole route, which is going to be about 5,000 miles all told, we’ve found about 200 miles of gaps that really need solutions. That usually means there’s an unsafe situation where you’re forced to detour onto a busy highway or you’re descending a lot of elevation on a gravel road where a trail would be much preferable or it’s just a very indirect route or detour where a much more direct trail would function a lot better. So 200 miles of trails is a lot. But when you look at it, with 5,000 miles in mind, it’s only about 5%. So another way of looking at it is this is already 95% complete and we’re just trying to get that last 5% done.
Miller: Is it the case that the last 5% could take longer than the initial 95%? I mean work often feels that way, whatever kind of work you’re doing?
Tiller: Yeah, absolutely. And even if we finish that 5%, which will likely take a decade or more to really build all those trail connectors, we’ll still only be at about 50% single track overall. So there’s still about 2,500 miles that’s on different types of roads. There are many, many lifetimes of work to actually get this trail to be 100% single track across the whole continent.
Miller: Is there a particular place, and maybe there are many, but one that comes to mind now that you’re most excited to have people bike through?
Tiller: Man, there’s so many, it’s really hard to say. One of the themes that keeps coming back for me is just that the landscapes that it passwes through are awe inspiring and beautiful and fun to ride trails through. But also just the people that I’ve met in these areas and are working with to develop these gaps solutions. [They] are just an amazing array of people and characters already doing this kind of work in their local and regional areas.
So I was just on a little bit of road trip through mostly in California, and I bike packed on a section of the route just outside of LA. We’re about 30 or 40 miles as the crow flies from, you know, 20 million people in the LA metro area. And we were riding on this ridge line and this steep sort of rutted double track road with snow capped Sierra peaks in the distance to the north and just this stunning landscape looking out over the Mojave Desert and with these beautiful sunsets. So that was completely new to me. I hadn’t done any bike packing down in that area yet.
And then just a few days ago, I was also meeting up with some folks in the La Sierra and that’s the nickname for the region sort of north of Lake Tahoe. And there’s a really amazing group there, the Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship, that has launched this Connected Communities Vision and it’s connecting I think 16 different rural towns in this region with single track trails. So there they have a very similar vision to Orogenesis and their vision checks all the same boxes that I’m trying to check with Orogenesis. So it’s those partnerships and those visionary groups and people in these areas that are really creating the types of experiences that we’re trying to create as well.
Miller: What does Orogenesis mean? And why choose it as a title for this trail?
Tiller: I really wanted to break the mold of a blank ‘X, Y, Z trail.’ Orogenesis just has a lot more action and emotion associated with it. And it’s essentially the geologic process of two tectonic plates crunching together and creating mountains. Here we’ve got the North American plate pushing up that creates the spine of mountains, all the way from Northern Canada [and] Alaska, all the way down into Mexico. And if you want to be really liberal all the way into South America. So I don’t think this trail will go that far anytime soon.
Miller: Maybe in 2200 it can start that [chucking]. Gabriel Taylor, thanks so much.
Tiller: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Miller: Gabriel Amadeus Tiller is executive director of the Orogenesis Collective, the organization working to build what will be the longest mountain bike trail in the world from the tip of the Baja peninsula to the US Canadian border.
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