Evergreen Mountain Bike Festival Relaunches and Introduces a New Ride Park
People DM the Trail Builder Mag Instagram on a daily basis. Lots of sharing of content, tagging us, and trail builders and companies continue to reach out to us. The engagement and conversations are what make this initiative already spectacular. Even better is when a trail builder in the region invites me to a mountain bike festival that features a new ride park he helped build. So when Brian Tustison, a full-time trail builder with the Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance in Washington, dropped me a DM and told me to come up to the Evergreen Mountain Bike Festival in Port Gamble, I couldn’t say no.
Before I left Portland, I connected with Patrick Walker, the Development Director for the Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance, who was spearheading the festival. We exchanged emails and contact info before I took off. Interestingly enough, when I pulled into Port Gamble and followed the signs for event parking, the very first thing that happened was I got Nacho the MTB Van stuck. The first person to help out was Patrick. It was a great way to meet in person!
Since Nacho was stuck for the day, there was little else to do except hop on my bike. While most everyone parked in Port Gamble, it was a 5-minute pedal to the event. Great access. Not only that, but we were at one of the access points for the whole trail system. The Evergreen Mountain Bike Festival was a celebration of trail building in Washington. I learned from Patrick that in previous years it was held east of Seattle at the Duthie Hill Mountain Bike Park. COVID shut down the festival for two years. When it was time to kick it back up again, the decision was made to move it to Port Gamble, west of Seattle, to celebrate the opening of the Port Gamble Ride Park (within the Port Gamble Forest Heritage Park).
While trails have been in this forest for decades, what was new were the 14 new trails opened in the ride park (with a total of 22 trails planned). Throughout the weekend of the festival, there were numerous vendors and booths, demo bikes, music, food, beer, races, and more. Four hundred demo passes were sold, and around 2,000 people showed up for the event. The weather was spectacular, and the trail conditions were sublime.
After milling around the event and visiting vendors, it was time to hop on a demo bike and explore the trails. With the aid of a Specialized Levo (or was it a Kenevo???), I was able to venture far (and fast!). While I only had the demo bike for an hour, I explored the trail system’s far reaches and rode various trails, from the older ones to the new flow trails. While Port Gamble doesn’t have the same kind of scenery as Whistler or other similarly popular places, the trails were a blast. There was something for everyone and all levels of riding.
On Sunday was the enduro race so I rode out to a couple of the stages to get some photos and chat with those who were there watching.
After I returned back to Portland I was able to have a longer phone conversation with Brian a few weeks later. He had just returned from building trails up at Snoqualmie Pass, east of Seattle. Brian has been with Evergreen for seven years as a full-time trail builder. He’s currently a Trail Project Manager. As one who builds and maintains trails across the state, it was helpful to get Brian’s perspective on Port Gamble. They broke ground in the ride park section of the trail network last summer. A crew of 3-6 full-time trail builders spent seven months there digging non-stop.
I asked Brian what made Port Gamble unique. He shared how the trail builders bring things they’ve learned from previous trail building projects. One of the key components was to create a progressive free ride park from scratch. That meant thinking through and then designing trails that made progression natural. As they built it, they would keep riding the sections to help tweak things as they went along.
Evergreen has around 20 full-time trail builders, including 12 who work year-round. I couldn’t help but think of those numbers compared to many other trail organizations I know and interact with. Even here locally in Portland, our trails are either built by an all-volunteer army or in a combination with subcontracting specific projects to trail building companies with volunteers doing the finish work. Every organization is different in this regard when it comes to size, budget, and people power to get projects done. Evergreen has over 9,000 members. One of the trail orgs that I personally support monthly has just over 100 members. With that said, Evergreen couldn’t do what it does without volunteer trail builders. Even the mountain bike festival was only a success because of the countless volunteers who gave their time over the weekend.
Trail building is not sexy. It’s manual labor … but a labor of love. I was grateful to be invited to check out the ride park and the other trails at Port Gamble. It was a reminder of the importance of building new trails. Not only do mountain bikers benefit, but I noticed in town how packed one of the restaurants was with mountain bikers dotted throughout the outdoor patio with bikes parked close by. New trails are a win-win for everyone. The Evergreen Mountain Bike Festival demonstrated what new trails could do for a region.
Words: Sean Benesh Photos: Sean Benesh
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sean Benesh
Sean is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Trail Builder Mag. He is also the Communications Director for the Northwest Trail Alliance in Portland, Oregon. While in grad school, he worked as a mountain biking guide in Southern Arizona. Sean also spends time in the classroom as a digital media instructor at Warner Pacific University, where he also leads and coaches the WPU Cycling Club.
