The ribbon got cut on June 6th. Twelve years of land acquisition, coalition meetings, volunteer work parties, and phased planning — and now there are 18 miles of new nonmotorized trail open in the Teanaway Community Forest, with a proper trailhead, 65-vehicle parking, and a mountain bike repair station to greet you. Phase 1 of the West Fork Teanaway Trails Plan is done.
The Teanaway opening is worth celebrating on its own terms. But the more interesting story is what it reveals about how Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance actually operates — and why that model matters more right now than it did even two years ago.
The Kittitas Chapter Did the Work. That's the Point.
Evergreen's Kittitas Chapter built the Upper Big Sandy Trail, the Lower BST climbing trail, and is currently mid-build on Windy Ridge. That's not a press release claim — that's ground-level trail construction, the kind that takes seasons, not weeks. The chapter didn't show up after DNR announced a project; they were embedded in the coalition that shaped the project from the beginning.
The West Fork Trails Coalition structure is worth understanding. Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust describes it as a multi-group effort where DNR and WDFW opened the door and invited recreation organizations to develop a trail system collaboratively — each group advocating for their users, then working together on designs and flagged routes before a single shovel hit dirt. The Kittitas EMBA handled the mountain bike-specific trail work. Washington Trails Association built the Frog Pond Loop. Mountains to Sound Greenway volunteers tackled Cheese Rock Trail improvements, including a mountain bike down track off the sandstone slab.
This is a coalition model, not a permit model. The difference matters enormously. A permit model means you wait for an agency to design something and then ask to be included. A coalition model means you're in the room when the design decisions get made. Evergreen has spent years building the relationships and credibility to operate in the second mode — and the Teanaway is what that looks like when it works.
The long-term vision is 55 miles of multi-use trail in the community forest. Phase 2 is already underway. That's not a promise — it's a plan with chapters already building.
Why This Matters More Now
Back in late April, I wrote about the federal budget cuts hitting Washington trail infrastructure. The picture hasn't improved. And this spring, the current administration issued an Executive Order rescinding long-standing travel management frameworks on federal lands — frameworks that have historically given non-motorized users, including mountain bikers, clear protections and defined spaces. Outdoor Alliance called it directly: "Motorized recreationists, hikers, mountain bikers, hunters, anglers, climbers, and conservationists all benefit from having clear, durable rules that reduce conflict and protect the places we care about. Dismantling those frameworks will foment controversy, increase user conflict, and make it harder for agencies to manage public lands effectively."
That's the federal picture. The Teanaway is state land — Washington's first state-owned community forest, established in 2013. That distinction is doing real work right now. State-managed land with a community advisory structure and embedded advocacy partners is considerably more insulated from federal travel management chaos than Forest Service or BLM ground. Evergreen's investment in state and county-level relationships isn't just good strategy in the abstract — it's a hedge against exactly the kind of federal policy instability we're watching unfold.
Commissioner Dave Upthegrove said it plainly at the opening: "Recreation is one of the last affordable activities for families across Washington... At a time when recreation funding is being cut across the state, I'm proud that DNR is still hard at work providing opportunities for people to get outdoors." That's a land commissioner explicitly positioning state recreation investment against the federal retreat. Evergreen is well-positioned to work within that framing.
The Urban-Wildland Interface Is Where Access Gets Won or Lost
The Teanaway sits in the Kittitas Valley, roughly 80 miles east of Seattle — close enough to the metro population center to matter, far enough to feel like real backcountry. That's the urban-wildland interface in practice: land that's under pressure from recreation demand, adjacent to private property, ecologically sensitive, and politically contested. The West Fork Trails project specifically rerouted sections to bring user-built trails up to standard, get them off private property, and avoid sensitive habitat — which is exactly the kind of work that converts informal riding areas into durable, defensible access.
Evergreen operates 10 chapters statewide — Tiger Mountain, Duthie Hill, Beacon Hill, Yacolt Burn, and others. Each one is doing some version of this same work: showing up before the ribbon, building relationships with land managers, and converting informal use into formal access agreements. The Teanaway opening is the most visible recent example, but it's a template, not an anomaly.
Phase 2 is already in progress. Watch for the Windy Ridge build to come online — that's the next concrete milestone in the Teanaway system, and it'll be a useful test of whether the coalition momentum from Phase 1 holds through the harder terrain.
