Bike Destination: Ashland, Oregon

In Ashland, Oregon, the play’s the thing.

A half a million people a year flock to the town of 21,000 just north of the California border for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, where national touring companies perform amidst the pines and pinot noir grapes of the arid Rogue River Valley.

But on the northern flank of 7530-foot Mount Ashland, which rises some 6,000 vertical feet above town, another form of play has quietly emerged on nearly 50 miles of mountain bike trail literally out the back door of the steeply sloping residential streets.

That access had both Nathan Riddle and Gilad Gozlan, elite racers and co-owners of the Handlebar Ashland bike shop, instantly smitten.

Riddle relocated from Santa Cruz, Calif. in the late ‘90s, after a friend invited him to ride the trails of the 15,000-acre Ashland Municipal Watershed, which provides drinking water and easy dirt access to the city. Even in their infancy, the trails—'90s relics like Alice in Wonderland, BTI and Hitt Road—combined with a small but passionate bike community, provided enough of a lure to reel Riddle in.

Gozlan grew up racing in Israel before moving to Eugene, Ore. in 2006 and opening a bike shop in the University of Oregon community. In 2012, Gozlan and his wife visited Ashland for a race and immediately fell in love, and after five years of working toward moving to the small town he sold his shop and relocated to Ashland.

The trails seem tailored to riders with Riddle’s and Gozlan’s enduro backgrounds: “out-and-back” here is more up-and-down, with a steep, pedal-stroke-stalling ascent of closed-to-motors Ashland Loop Road accessing most of the Watershed trails; the amount of climbing required to enjoy the local trail network often surprises out of towners.

But the high-speed descents pay off in spades on trails such as Time Warp, a rehabbed historic trail off the shoulder of Mt. Ashland Ski Area that descends 2500 vertical feet through boulder fields and loamy turns at PR-pushing speeds.

In addition to the steep slopes of Mount Ashland, the secret to the city’s trail success, Riddle says, is in the soil: the decomposed granite acts like packed beach sand, draining quickly and solidifying under Ashland’s infrequent rainstorms. The result is high-velocity Velcro tread that largely self-heals in the winter after a summer of dust.

“I call it bizarro dirt: it’s the opposite of anything you’d expect with soil,” says Riddle.

Between the soil and the Mediterranean climate, Ashland also boasts a bizarro bike season relative to most of the Pacific Northwest. Inland from the southern Oregon coast and in the shadow of the Siskiyou Mountains, Ashland averages only 20 inches of rain a year—about half of Portland’s total. Although Ashland rides well year-round, the locals’ not-so-secret tip is this: when snow and slop shutter the rest of the Northwest, it's prime riding season here.

“I remember coming here in the summer and being like ‘Man it’s good,’ and then the locals told me ‘Oh, the winter is mind blowing,’” says Gozlan. “And I said, ‘What, better than this?!’”

Particularly in the shoulder season, the jaw-dropping velocities of Jabberwocky and Marty’s Trail test riders’ fast-twitch reflexes and trail vision, with steep G-outs and deep-pocket berms coming fast and furious. Forget to pack your goggles or glasses? You’ll be grasping for gas-station Ray-Bans after one Ashland Watershed lap.

“One of the things that slows you down in the winter is literally your body’s ability to handle the G-forces,” says Gozlan. “If you go any harder or faster you might collapse into the bike.”

The eye-watering speeds of the Watershed call for a unique approach to trail management: if the play’s the thing on the streets of downtown Ashland, “parallel play”—routing foot and bike trails next to, but separate from, each other—is the thing on the trails.

The Rogue River – Siskiyou National Forest, the primary land manager of the watershed, worked with the Rogue Valley Mountain Biking Association (RVMBA), the City of Ashland Public Works, Ashland Parks and Recreation and others to reinforce the parallel play philosophy, with trail design that would discourage mixing streams; for example, the foot-travel trails might access a city viewpoint but feature staircases and tight turns that would be awkward on a bike. With users self-policing the system, the parallel paths have curtailed conflict.

Parallel paths are at play in Ashland’s culture too, with the city’s reputation as a rain shadow recreation destination having lived in the long shadow of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. However, during the covid-19 pandemic, when restrictions on large indoor gatherings shuttered the Shakespeare Festival, the city’s outdoor recreation economy took center stage. The seasons complement each other, too, with the Shakespeare Festival running early spring through late autumn and prime bike season running autumn through spring.

“The city in the last couple years has really flipped on mountain biking and outdoor recreation, recognizing that trails have a flow and actually buying property to reduce impediments to trail flow,” says Gozlan. “The city has done a great job of bringing more access to more trails. They’re pretty much 50/50, they’ll build a hiking trail and then a biking trail.”

Now, the Bard and bikes share, if not top billing, at least the same playbill.

“Ashland has something that almost no town this size has: it has culture,” says Gozlan. “I go for a bike ride and then we go watch a play. It serves both of my needs, whether it’s arts and culture or the athlete in me.”

“If Disney designed a mountain bike community just for me, this would be it.”

“Ashland has something that almost no town this size has: it has culture,” says Gozlan. “I go for a bike ride and then we go watch a play. It serves both of my needs, whether it’s arts and culture or the athlete in me.”

As an outdoors town, Ashland is “basically perfect,” says Riddle.

“You can ride from your garage and descend 6,000 vertical feet literally to the back door of the shop or coast right into a restaurant.”

The city has no shortage of either. Thanks to its worldwide bona fides as a theatre destination and a location almost exactly halfway between Los Angeles and Vancouver, BC, on the I-5 corridor, Ashland has cultivated a robust pre-show/post-ride scene. In addition to a restaurant density rivaling that of New York or Paris, Ashland has six bike shops for its 21,000 residents—ten times more per capita than Portland. It’s a testament to both the local interest in mountain biking as well as Ashland’s growing prominence for out-of-towners; the community has become both waystation for Whistler-bound riders and destination for mud-weary Portlandians.

And with 6,000 vertical feet of Mt. Ashland trails literally out the back door of those six bike shops, Ashland has earned its new spot in the Oregon riding pantheon alongside Bend, Hood River and Oakridge. There may be parallel play on the trails, but Ashland is going its own way as a bike town.