Your Support In Action

Your Support In Action

NWTA carries out our mission with three main programming pillars: maintaining and building trails; getting people of all ages and abilities out on the trails; and advocating for more places to ride. Membership, donor and sponsor dollars make all of this possible – read below to find out how!

WHY WE NEED TRAIL STEWARDSHIP ORGANIZATIONS

Trails don’t exist without a partnership between NWTA and our land management agencies. Trail stewardship organizations are incredibly important: they support the limited resources and capacity of land management agencies while engaging local communities with their favorite trails. Land management agencies provide the official oversight and management plans, but trail stewardship organizations supplement or provide the on-the-ground effort, community connection, and supplementary funding necessary to keep your trails running.

Alongside land management agency staff, NWTA provides: 

• Volunteers: We recruit, train, and manage large numbers of local volunteers. This massive volunteer labor force performs essential routine maintenance tasks—like clearing brush, controlling erosion, removing fallen trees, and picking up trash—that agencies often lack the budget or staff to handle regularly. 

• Local knowledge and dedication: Our Local Stewardship Teams, the lead volunteers that coordinate trail system projects and keep a close eye on local trail needs, have a deep, understanding of specific trails, knowing exactly where problem areas are and what needs attention. Their local connection fosters a sense of community ownership and pride in the trail system.  

• Specialized expertise: As a cycling-focused trail stewardship organization, NWTA volunteers possess specialized skills (and the ability to train volunteers in these skills) like building sustainable bike-optimized trail features.

• Advocacy: We play a critical role in advocacy — raising funds, securing grants, and advocating for consistent agency funding for trails and bike access. Often, land management partners are not able to engage as deeply in needed trail advocacy.  

• User education and public engagement: We act as ambassadors for the trails. Educating users on proper trail etiquette and sustainable principles promotes responsible use and helps to mitigate the impacts of all trail uses.  

It’s no secret that many of our land management partners — from the federal to the local level — are facing budget challenges and a new landscape of funding priorities. Your contributions to NWTA will not only continue our ongoing work for trails and outdoor recreation, but will help strengthen the work of our land management partners as they navigate these challenges. 

BUILDING TRAILS, PROTECTING NATURE, AND INSPIRING STEWARDS

Our Trail Sustainability Institute (TSI) promotes the coexistence of conservation and recreation. Born from Northwest Trail Alliance’s 35 years of sustainable trail building experience, TSI was created to foster the skills, knowledge, and stewardship capacity of over 5,000 members and volunteers — ensuring that the places we ride and explore thrive for generations to come.

In 2025, NWTA hired our first full-time Trail Stewardship Director. This position is 100% dedicated to trails and trail programming, and was made possible by your continued support. 

In 2026, NWTA will host at least 7 immersive TSI classes that include everything from basic trail fundamentals and crew leadership to habitat restoration and advanced topics like berm building. Other TSI classes have included archaeology training, sawyer certification, and heavy machinery operation. Each class, which costs about $500 to run, grows volunteers’ collective capacity to steward public lands and ensures our trails remain safe, resilient, and ecologically sound. 

All places where trails exist are home to plants and animals that make up the rich ecological diversity of the Pacific Northwest. Trails connect riders and communities to these places and the outdoors. By contributing to NWTA, you are investing in the future of both our trails and our environment by giving us the ability to grow TSI and our trails programming. Together, we can ensure that recreation and conservation continue to thrive side by side.

MACHINES!

NWTA owns and operates 3 large trail-building machines, along with a host of smaller brushing machines, tillers, plate compactors, and a motorized wheel barrow. This group of machinery is critical to our trail work, allowing us to take on complex projects with precision and efficiency and help bring big trail projects to life.

Every hour these machines are in use comes with real costs: fuel, maintenance, replacement parts, and upgrades… and those costs add up quickly. But every dollar invested turns directly into miles of new trail and trail improvements.

Thanks to the generosity of our donors, these machines have already helped volunteers accomplish incredible things:

• 6 miles of new trail built in Cascade Locks
  
• Rebuilt berms and features made smoother and safer with tillers and compactors
  
• Heavy gravel loads moved by our motorized wheelbarrow (volunteers’ backs thank you, too!)

NWTA is mobilizing our machines across seven trail systems in 2026. The cost for that is not small — especially for a $7,000 upgrade for our ST240 that will breathe new life into the machine for big reroute projects at Hagg Lake and rebuilding logged trails at Stub Stewart.

Volunteers are a key component of running machines, but your dollars put the machines in the hands of our volunteers who run them and keep them maintained. 

SMALL TOOLS

Volunteers are the most critical piece of the trailwork puzzle, but coming in at a close second is tools! From basic leaf rakes to specialized McLeod hoes, your support helps NWTA put tools in the hands of every single volunteer at every single trail work day. 

What’s more, clippers, brushers, shovels, tamping tools, rock bars, and so much more are stored on site all across the NWTA region, allowing easy access for crew leaders on dig days. Multiple tool locations are so critical to the efficiency of our work, and wouldn’t be possible without your generosity to grow each and every tool cache. 

NWTA’s small tool budget alone has grown to $6,000 each year to support this amazing trail system growth, a feat that we couldn’t have done without you – and one that your donation helps support in the coming year. 

BIKE PROGRAMMING FOR ALL AGES

NWTA’s after-school mountain bike program reaches around 75 kids each year at schools across Portland. Kids learn mountain bike skills – some learning to ride for the first time ever – while exploring adjacent parks and greenspaces on two wheels. Participants leave our program with improved mountain bike skills and enhanced confidence. New riders become cycling ambassadors, encouraging their families and friends in riding, getting outdoors, and deepening their sense of agency. Simply put: our program helps to steward the next generation of the mountain biking community.

Afterschool programming is made possible in close partnership with the Schools Uniting Neighborhoods (SUN) program, Portland Parks & Recreation, and the Immigrant and Community Resource Organization.

• Summer Programs. NWTA offers summer day-camp programming in partnership with the Montavilla Community Center and Portland Parks & Recreation. Similar to our afterschool programs, summer classes with NWTA include loaner bikes, helmets, and professional coaching for ages 4-12. 

• Social Rides. NWTA knows that mountain biking is a lifetime sport, and welcomes the opportunity to bring together riders of all ages and abilities. Our social rides take place at all skill levels, from beginner to expert, across our service area. Rides feature trained ride leaders and showcase NWTA’s work as trail stewards in the region. We are proud to partner with many local businesses that prioritize the mountain biking community, and often co-sponsor events.

• Adult Classes. NWTA also offers a range of adult mountain biking classes throughout each year, including beginner courses and ride leader trainings. NWTA’s adult programming is focused on building community and welcoming new people into our sport. We know that mountain biking faces serious barriers to entry, and take our work to welcome newcomers seriously. By creating welcoming spaces for learning and socializing, we aim to help people improve their skills, build friendships, and become part of our broader community.

LOOKING FORWARD TO 2026

We have a huge slate of plans for 2026 that we can only do with your support:

• 5 reroutes at Hagg Lake
• Rebuilding logged trails at Klootchy Creek and Stub Stewart State Park
• The start of Phase 3 at Cascade Locks CLIMB system
• Monthly Trail Sustainability Institute classes during dig season
• Six annual after-school mountain bike class sessions at underserved Portland Public schools
• A full slate of 2026 summer camps and adult MTB classes 
• A $7,000 upgrade to our ST240, a necessary investment that will breathe new life into the machine for projects at Hagg Lake and Stub Stewart
• 10+ trail work days each month during dig season across NWTA-stewarded regions
• 3+ trail stewardship campout weekends
• And more!