Where to ride in Bend, Or.

Depends what you want. I grew up there and did alot of desert riding out by Millican which is about 30 miles east of Bend on Highway 20. You can ride all day out there and not hit the same trail twice. There is a motocross track in Madras but I'm not sure of the hours. There are some trails in the Cascades also, but I'm not sure what is open or closed.

PK

East Fort Rock is one of the best trail systems out there IMHO, but will be very dusty this time of year. Click here for a map & description.

Here's a link to North Milican mentioned earlier

Edison Butte might be a good choice if you're trying to avoid the dust, there is usually some snow at the higher elevations until late summer.

Link to Edison Butte info, click on Developed OHV Opportunities, left side of the page.

I grew up near there as well, 30 miles south in La Pine.

What type of riding do they want to do???

Both PK and Johnrock included a couple of great possibilities. The riding around Bend, Oregon is endless and offers excellent opportunities in every direction. Depending on when they will be around here I'm sure that we can hook them up with a couple of different people that would be happy to show them around.

Here is a website showing some of the different local area's they have to consider. http://www.fs.fed.us/r6/centraloregon/index-cohvops.html It will also keep you posted on weather conditions and any trail closures.

There are quite a few riders from central Oregon that frequent DRN and most are always up for a good excuse to go riding so keep us posted. ;)

If they are looking for the easier trails they might consider the East Fort Rock trail system. It is very well laid out, mapped and marked.
Depending on when they arrive some of the higher elevations might be accessable and will offer endless miles of two track forest service roads with lots to see.

Are the trails in the Bend area fairly wide, as in wide enough to be Quad friendly?

I'm curious because there is a trail contractor from that area that has been talking to the District Ranger that is in charge of our Batey Bould Recreation area. This contractor is working very hard to convince the Ranger, who is not a dirtbiker, that they should let a contract out for them to come in with a trail machine and redo the trail system. Basically, they want to turn it into a quad friendly system. Batey was built as a DIRTBIKE trail system and is well known for it's tight technical singletrack.

The contractor commented that they had done many trails around Bend and some were extremely challenging for dirtbikes.

My question is - are any of the trails that were built by trail machine actually challenging for dirtbiking or is this contractor simply trying to tie up a job?

There are a lot of wider trails in the improved and mapped trail systems like East Fort Rock and Millican Plateau. Most of them are mixed use, but some of them are designated quad only and some are dirtbike only.

They can do an awesome job with the trail machine when fixing or redoing trails that have been trashed or abused, however it can almost become a mini freeway system. I cannot think of any that are super technical or extremely challenging once they have been hit by the trail machine. All of the tight, challenging or techincal trails around here atleast, have been done the old fashioned way, by hand and tire.

There are still many miles of tight single track that I hope will never see improvement. You know the kind that you don't show to just anyone.;)

Thanks for the info HDXR4!

That is what we were concerned about. We have a lot of trails in Northern Idaho that have been done by trail machine and they are basically quad trails.

Batey is not and abused system, it has a few creek crossing bridges that need to be repaired but we have volunteered to take care of those.

Most people just don't understand that the tight twisty singletrack is what we want. Looks like we will have to really fight on this one!

One word of caution when going to East Fork Rock. Bring plenty, and I do mean plenty of water. Also, watch yourself around those blind corners and be conscience that most if not all the mapped trails are two way trails. You can go fast, just be aware that you will encounter incoming quads and dirtbikers. Show proper trail ediquate as well, as in holding up how many fingers as there are people behind you.

I'm not trying to patronize you by any means. I went to East Fork Rock last Memorial day weekend and severed my top triple clamp in half because of a guy who came flying around a blind corner and hit me head on, dirtbike to dirtbike. He had an idiot up ahead he was riding with that didn't give me any sign whatsoever of how many riders were behind him. Both were going way too fast for these trails and were very inconsiderate of the "tread lightly" motto that I abide by. I had a seven mile ride back to camp in the rain.

Besides that, its one of the greatest places I've ever been to. If there is one trail you are going to go up on, the East Butte Lookout trail is by far the best. Actaully, go visit all of the lookouts if you have the time, they are simply amazing with the view they give you, take lots of pictures.