Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance

EDUCATION: 2024 was another successful year for Evergreen; Evergreen Education provided skills courses to 632 adults (357 women / 260 men) and 589 kids through a combination of adult clinics and workshops, and youth lessons and summer camps. Additionally, 196 participants were engaged through community and school partnership programs. This year, Evergreen's education program updated the instructor certification process to enhance the quality of our classes, piloted new programming, and welcomed over 40 new instructors around the state. On-trail classes were piloted at Raging River and Tiger Mountain to support clinic alumni who were ready to start exploring more advanced terrain but preferred the guidance of an Evergreen-certified instructor and the joy of a group setting. These were well-received, and there are plans to offer more in 2025. Instructor scholarships were distributed to 8 instructors around the state who have dedicated hundreds of hours to the education program and wanted to expand their coaching skills. Instructors used their funds to get certified in Wilderness First Aid or PMBIA (Professional Mountain Bike Instructor Association). Recognizing that our classes and workshops are often the first experience new riders have with the sport, we offered focused training to our instructors to develop their skills and awareness to teach with a philosophy of service, highlighting the differences in learning and communication styles among the different cultures found in our communities. Evergreen's education program is powered by close to 100 volunteer instructors, who donated over 1,600 teaching hours in 2024 to introduce about 600 primarily new riders to mountain biking and all the joy that being outside can bring. Our popular "Dirt Camp" program, taught by about 40 paid coaches over the summer, took close to 600 kids onto the trails, serving beginners through advanced riders in skill development, fun games, and even a bit of trail maintenance. Those campers contributed 400 hours of work to our trails this summer.

COMMUNITY BUILDING & ADVOCACY: Our events build community and nurture future mountain bike leaders, teachers, volunteers, and trail stewards. We promoted diversity, equity, and inclusion through adaptive mountain biking events and women and non-binary work parties. We fostered environmental responsibility, sustainable practices, volunteerism, and healthy lifestyles within our community. Evergreen hosted 14 core community events across Washington State in 2024. 240 group rides were offered throughout the state, with 984 registered group ride participants. Of these, 61 were Crank Sisters women's rides, bringing together a total of 353 female participants. The 2024 Evergreen Mountain Bike Festival had 687 registered attendees and an estimated 1,500 visitors over the festival weekend. Spring Fling returned in March bringing 100+ volunteers to Raging River for trail maintenance and community building. Duthie Jam brought over 200 visitors to the Duthie Hill bike park in May, including pro rider Matt Jones from Australia. Shovel & Shred, presented by Red Bull, brought over 70 women and nonbinary riders to Darrington in May for trail maintenance and rides on North Mountain. And an estimated 1,000 people attended Take A Kid Mountain Biking Day in October across 3 Chapters (Cascades To Sound, Central, and East Chapter). EVERGREEN MEMBERS: The 2024 Virtual Member Meeting had 121 registered participants via Zoom, with presentations from 6 Evergreen Staff members and 8 Chapter Board Members. Evergreen Membership peaked in January with 8,534 members. The annual Membership Drive in September brought in 260 new Memberships and 1,938 renewed Memberships from those previously expired (or set to expire soon), resulting in a 127% retention rate (1,521 were set to expire that month). ADVOCATING FOR TRAILS: Our advocacy focused on raising awareness and engaging our supporters in public lands access protection, addressing recreational access challenges and opportunities, and ensuring that mountain bikers have a strong voice in recreational trail planning and development initiatives. Our activities were diverse and statewide, ranging from participating in the Parks and Great Outdoors Legislative Day to advocating for the EXPLORE Act, which passed in December 2024, and partnering with the Outdoor Alliance to communicate advocacy alerts to our followers. We engage our members in advocacy through topic-specific meetings, e-newsletters, social media, in-person interactions at trailheads, and electronic advocacy alerts designed to encourage member participation and comments.

VOLUNTEER TRAIL MAINTENANCE. Evergreen recruits and organizes volunteers to maintain and steward trails on public lands through contracts and agreements with land managers. These trails provide all users the opportunity to access Washington's beautiful places on well-maintained trails. In 2024, we coordinated 665 volunteer work parties, engaging close to 4,000 volunteers who contributed 19,596 hours of trail work on 400 miles of trail. This represents $790,000 in contributed labor to our public trail systems. As part of our commitment to public land and trails, we continue to train and refresh the skills of our sawyer teams. These specialized teams work ahead of our trail crews to clear fallen trees and help bring down trees that pose hazards to our trail systems. Trail maintenance took place at trailheads, sites, and trails within federally managed land, state and county forests and parks, community forests, conservation areas, as well as municipal parks and open spaces. Trail systems included: East Tiger Mountain, Raging River, and Yacolt Burn State Forests, Duthie Hill Mountain Bike Park, Black Diamond Open Space, Squilchuck State Park, Mt. Spokane State Park, Olallie State Park, and Moran State Parks. Community parks included: Beacon Hill, Swan Creek, Iller Creek, Micah Peak, Camp Sekani, and Port Gamble community parks. Trail networks in the Okanogan-Wenatchee, Mount Baker-Snoqualmie, Colville, and Gifford Pinchot National Forests, such as Ski Hill, Freund Canyon, No2 Canyon, Sun Mountain, Hansen Ridge, Kettle Crest, Strawberry Ridge, and along the SR 410 corridor also benefited from our work crews. VOLUNTEER GOVERNANCE AND EDUCATION: Leadership and education volunteers for the organization also included 15 Board volunteers, over 60 chapter council chairs, and 125 educators who contributed an additional 4,500 hours of governance, advocacy, and instruction. Our total volunteer impact amounted to just over 25,000 hours, delivered by over 4,100 individual volunteers, representing over $871,750 in donated volunteer labor.