Weekend Road Trip: Southern Oregon
posted 5.25.06

You may have heard about the riding in Ashland, Oregon; specifically the Mount Ashland trail, which takes you from the summit of Mount Ashland, down Time Warp, to Marty's Trail, to BTI, and eventually dropping into Lithia Park. It's a super fun ride, spanning over 14miles of DH pleasure. Depending on what route you take, maybe even more.

Unfortunately, due to land use issues, the creation of new trails is for the most part, a no-no, and while some progress has been made on making the current fire road sections more interesting, the locals can't build there, and have started spending more and more time out on the backside of Mount A.

This is where the cool new stuff is going down.

We took a run down a new trail, fondly dubbed "PBR." At this time, it isn't quite done, so we were forced to hike back up the trail we had just descended. This part wasn't fun. The stuff we did ride definitely was.

my little bro Izaak leaps his I-drive DH over some rocks

just riding down the trail..

It's not technically a hard trail to ride. There are some ladders, log rides, doubles and other fun stuff, but nothing is very big. Instead, these obstacles serve to liven up the mountain biking experience. It's just fun. In fact, our downhill bikes were a lot more than was needed. a 5-7 inch travel bike is just about right.

photo of the author by Izaak Van Horn

Here's another great example of the fun we had riding this trail. Here's a little bump in the road, with an easy way around it.. when you come down the trail at speed though..

it turns into a booter- to a step down.

fun times..

according to Joey here, there's a sweet trail right there that follows the ridge line down.

The whole backside of Mount A is accessible via fire roads. The trail we were riding is still in progress, which forced us to hike back the way we came. My brother wanted to bushwhack down to the bottom of the hill and ride out on a fire road, but we had plans to ride some dirt jumps that afternoon and wanted to conserve on energy.

Evidence of the work in progress..

The trail's namesake: beer

After hiking out to the trail head, we headed over and rode Chuck's Chips, another fast and swoopy trail before heading back into town to grab some BBQ. Morning ride mission accomplished.

Izaak, rock drop on PBR trail

Izaak, step up to ladder