Central Oregon Trail Alliance to celebrate 30th anniversary with ‘weekend extravaganza’

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) -- This year, the nonprofit mountain bike trails organization Central Oregon Trail Alliance is pleased to announce the celebration of its 30th anniversary. To commemorate this achievement, COTA is hosting a weekend-long extravaganza packed with festivities!

The events will take place the weekend of Oct. 14-16.

The weekend will proceed as follows:

• Friday, October 14th: 30th Anniversary Party at Silver Moon Brewing (24 NW Greenwood Ave. Bend, OR) from 6pm-close.
• Saturday, October 15th: Fall Trail Love at The LOGE Bend (19221 SW Century Dr. Bend, OR) from 9am-2pm.
• Sunday, October 16th: Nacho Grandma’s Bingo at Silver Moon Brewing from 10am-2pm.

The weekend will kick off with a party at Silver Moon Brewing that will include live music and stories about COTA’s early days. COTA will be selling 30th anniversary beanies and riding jerseys-- all proceeds go to maintaining local trails! Look for the COTA table on the raised patio and talk to us about trails.

Saturday will consist of the bi-annual event Trail Love. The goal is to have 100+ volunteers work together on one day maintaining mountain bike trails to keep them riding great! No trail work experience is necessary to participate in this event, just a good attitude and willingness to get dirty. Youth are welcome with a parent/guardian. Check out our Meetup Group for details and remember to RSVP on Meetup!    

The final event of the weekend will be “Nacho Grandma’s Bingo” hosted by Silver Moon Brewing. Several rounds of bingo will occur at different price levels depending on the difficulty of the round. It’s a 50/50 split-the-pot system, where each round half the earnings go to the bingo winner and the other half goes to COTA! This is a great way to give back to the trails monetarily, while also having a good time with family and friends.

COTA was established in 1992 by a group of avid mountain bikers who wanted to build and maintain trails. One year later, COTA’s first volunteer agreement with the Forest Service was formed, and trail work began. The first trails COTA adopted were those in the Phil’s, Flagline, Skyliners, and Swampy Lakes regions. Expansion of trail networks continued in all directions throughout Central Oregon. As the population and tourism increased, COTA volunteers knew they had to stay ahead of the crowd to not only keep the trails well-maintained, but also to plan for the future of Central Oregon’s trails.

Established as an all volunteer based nonprofit organization, COTA has come a long way in the last 30 years. With 3 staff and 15 Board members, bandwidth for projects has immensely expanded. COTA now maintains more than 500 miles of singletrack trails in Central Oregon with over 2,000 members spread throughout 6 chapters.

As a nonprofit, COTA depends on donations to maintain Central Oregon’s trails. To celebrate our 30th anniversary, COTA is asking mountain bikers and others who love our community’s trails to give back by joining our 30 for 30 Challenge. If every mountain biker in Central Oregon celebrated COTA’s 30th anniversary by giving $30 to support trails, it would fund our operations for 3 years.

For more information, please contact COTA’s Program Coordinator, Vanessa Fron at  Vanessa.fron@cotamtb.com. Find us online here: cotamtb.com.