Seven years of fundraising, volunteer labor, and creative problem-solving. No grants. No permanent public access. A half-finished jump line sitting dormant for four years waiting for excavator time. That's what it took to open 14 miles of singletrack near Ellensburg — and the Kittitas chapter of Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance did it anyway.
The Cookie Cutter Trail System officially opened May 16 in the Naneum Ridge State Forest, and the story behind it is more instructive than the ribbon-cutting.
The Access Problem Hiding Inside the Win
The Naneum Ridge site has no permanent public access. Surrounding private landowners granted DNR management easements, but that technicality locked the project out of the grant funding that typically underwrites trail development on state-managed land. As Evergreen's Kittitas Program Manager Jesse Cunningham explained to Singletracks, without permanent public access, they couldn't touch the publicly available grant programs that make most Washington trail projects viable.
So EMBA did what advocacy groups increasingly have to do: they self-funded it. Grassroots fundraising, volunteer labor, Washington Conservation Corps crews, and incremental DNR contributions when budget allowed. The first trail, Basalt Flow, wasn't built until 2019 — four years after the recreation plan was published — because that's how long it took to raise enough money. The expert-level Basalt Assault jump line sat unfinished for nearly four years until the chapter finally secured excavator time this spring.
The result is genuinely impressive: 12 new singletrack trails, a skills area with seven short trails, and a proper trailhead. DNR Commissioner Dave Upthegrove called it "world-class recreation" and credited the partnership. He's not wrong. But the partnership worked because EMBA absorbed the financial and labor risk that the agency couldn't.
The Budget Cuts Make This Model More Necessary — and More Fragile
Here's the tension: the Cookie Cutter opening happened the same month DNR confirmed campground closures and service reductions across Washington tied to $580,000 cut from the agency's maintenance fund in the 2026 legislative session. Four campgrounds closing. Shortened seasons at others. DNR's recreation division running 60 field staff across the entire state — one person per 50,000 acres of managed land.
I wrote about this budget pressure two issues ago. What's new is the context the Cookie Cutter story adds. When DNR launched the Naneum Ridge project, the agency was explicit that it did so "in anticipation of continued volunteer support" — meaning the maintenance model going forward depends on EMBA showing up. That's not a criticism of the partnership; it's an honest accounting of how public land recreation actually functions right now in Washington. The agency doesn't have the staff or budget to maintain what it manages. Advocacy groups are filling that gap, and the gap is widening.
The risk isn't that EMBA walks away from Naneum Ridge. They won't — they built it. The risk is that this model gets treated as proof that the funding problem is solved, when it's actually proof that the community is compensating for a structural shortfall. Those are different things.
What Burnaby Is Doing Differently
Across the border, Burnaby city council just approved a draft $10 million trail management plan for Burnaby Mountain — a 15-year commitment to restore and rebuild roughly 35 kilometres of trails that have been degrading since issues were first identified in 2019. The plan goes to community input before final approval, with information sessions and an open house over the next two months.
The contrast with the Naneum Ridge situation is instructive. Burnaby is committing dedicated municipal funding with a defined timeline. Washington DNR is launching trail projects in anticipation of volunteer support materializing. Both approaches can produce good trails. Only one of them is structurally sustainable when volunteer capacity gets stretched thin or a chapter loses key organizers.
The Burnaby plan also addresses something the Cookie Cutter story sidesteps: rogue trails. Parks planner Amy Liebenberg noted the mountain has "many kilometres" of unmaintained unofficial trails that present safety hazards, and the plan includes decommissioning them while redirecting riders to a redeveloped Mountain Air Skills Park expected to complete this year. That's a managed system thinking about the whole picture — not just new builds.
What to Watch
The Cookie Cutter opening is a genuine win and EMBA deserves full credit for making it happen against real structural obstacles. But the signal here isn't "partnerships work." It's that the advocacy model is now load-bearing infrastructure for Washington's public trail system, at exactly the moment DNR's budget is contracting.
Watch whether Naneum Ridge gets the ongoing maintenance investment it needs once the opening celebration fades. Watch whether DNR's 2027 budget proposals restore any of the $580,000 cut this session — Upthegrove has been vocal about the shortfall, and that advocacy matters. And watch whether Burnaby's funded, long-horizon approach produces measurably better trail conditions than the self-funded model five years from now.
The Cookie Cutter is a template. The question is whether it's a template for what's possible, or a template for what's expected.
On the calendar: Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance chapters across Washington run regular trail work days through the summer — check your local chapter's calendar if you're riding trails that EMBA helped build. Showing up with a Pulaski is the most direct way to keep the model working.