Central Oregon is considered to be one of the capitals of mountain biking in the US and for good reason. To grasp the amount of trails available there are at least 262 miles of continuously linked single track trails that can be accessed from the west side of Bend. There is at least another 222 plus miles in less than an hour and a half drive from town. Most of these are smooth and fast on pumice soils.  Lots of towns claim extensive mountain bike trail mileage that in reality contains a lot of dirt roads or atv trails. Some of the trails elsewhere in Oregon like in Oakridge or on the North Umpqua are on steep hillsides with blind corners where going off the trail at full speed is going to involve some air time and big trees. For most of the trails in Central Oregon, your speed is only limited by your cornering ability. Although the majority of the trails are technically easy and not too strenuous, they are far from boring if you ride them fast enough. If it is any indication of the quality of cross country riding in Central Oregon, three of the four top pro men finishers in the 2008 USA Cycling Mountain Bike Nationals were from Bend.  Speaking of mega mileage there is a 100 mile no whiners "fun ride" event if you are so inclined.

The risk averse or those in the DWI (dads without insurance) category will be glad to know that the few rocky technical sections are generally short and easy to walk. For those who are looking for technical challenges, there are increasing numbers of optional man made features popping up. If you are planning a vacation and are really into man made features head to Post Canyon in Hood River. Although there are some technical rock features here and there with some trails having more than others, Central Oregon does not have anything like southwest "slick rock". By the way the term Central Oregon is a widely used local term for Bend and a few surrounding local towns like Redmond and Sisters. Geographically is roughly about a forty five mile radius from Bend.

There are a couple of other things that make Central Oregon riding great compared to say, a lot of five star trails in the Rocky Mountains. The trails here are not part of any cattle range except for Gray Butte, so you don't need fenders to keep the crap off your I'talian shoes or ride trampled mud that has dried. There are horses on a small portion of the trails but except for some of the Sisters area rides the horse traffic is pretty light. Also, these trails are not shared with ATVs like so many in the Rockies are. ATVs have a separate trail system here. If you are planing a vacation here you should be able to do most of the popular rides without a personal navigation assistant, no problem.  With the exception of some of the trails on BLM land the trails are well signed and correspond to the maps on this site and the maps available in the bike shops. If you have a bad track record reading maps and or do not have very good internal compass there are guides available. Regular shuttle services are available if you are trying to minimize your uphill peddling. That said most of the climbing is easy compared to many other areas where mountain biking, like the name implies involves riding up then down some mountain. Except for the Willamette Pass Ski Area about 70 miles away there is no lift assist trail riding. 

Most of the trails are pumice soils. Except for the very early season, where the ground is thawing on top and frozen underneath, there is generally no mud and if it rains the trails become firmer. Later in the year, on heavily used trails, the pumice gets ground into a fine dust which on group rides can be an issue. For the most part, the trails are maintained and, in many cases built by the Central Oregon Trail Alliance (COTA). The Forest Service does clear some trees on some trails but thanks to the legacy of elected right wing politicians and a wrecked economy they have less and less funds every year, and rely heavily on COTA. In an ideal world maybe our federal government would wise up and turn our public lands over to Walt Disney, Ted Turner and Weyerhaeuser.

GEAR: Cross country full suspension mountain bikes are more than adequate. The trails are easily smooth enough for hard tails. Due to the nature of the trails, single speed and cyclo-cross bikes are becoming increasingly popular. For the vast majority of trail you can leave you downhill body armor in the car. That said there is a about a hundred yard long freeride park just west of the Phil's Trail parking area and the small new Lair freeride park where body armor might be appropriate.

CAMPING: Despite the amount of public land that surrounds Bend, there are pathetically few campgrounds close to town other than Tumalo State Park. (There must be some type of conspiracy with the abundant local hotels.) Tumalo State Park is however a very nice park right on a beautiful stretch of the Deschutes River with a half a dozen yurts, solar showers and a natural hiking trail along the river. There are campgrounds near most of the high lakes west of Mount Bachelor but they are at least half an hour from most of the local trails, and town. There is some great riding up near the high lakes it just depends on what you want to do in the area when you are not riding. You can stay anywhere in the National Forest for two weeks, unless otherwise signed. The vast majority of trails are on Forest Service land and this land starts close to town. If you do camp outside of a campground, pack your garbage out and keep the area clean. Public showers can be had at the Juniper Fitness and Aquatic Center which also has a coed sauna, hot tub and steam room on a pool deck.

WEATHER and GEOGRAPHY: Central Oregon is frequently referred to as the high desert. Most of the Bend area is in a rain shadow of the Cascade Mountains and is, consequently, pretty dry and sunny. However, being in the transition zone from the temperate rain forest of the western part of the state, and the deserts of the east, there is a great deal of variety in the climatic zones of the rides within relatively short distances.

Most of the rides, especially at the higher western elevations will be in snow until pretty late in the spring but there are some rides in the desert which can be ridden practically all year if you're so inclined.

Note: If you open the above Google Earth page with Firefox and do not already have the Google Earth plug installed you may get an error message that reads something like "Google Maps API key was registered to a different site". This is a bogus error and you just need to install the plug in. Open the same page with Microsoft Internet Explorer and you will be directed to a site to install the necessary plug in. This is only slightly less time consuming than installing the desktop Google Earth and you do not have the control that you do with that. As this becomes more common more people will have the plug-in installed and it will be more seamless to have Google Earth as part of a page.