Winter Mountain Biking Around Grants Pass

During the winter, dedicated PNW mountain bikers accept riding in the cold and mud as the price of admission. But Grants Pass poses the question: what if they didn’t have to?

The answer: when snow and slop affect the rest of the region, it’s prime riding season here.

“One of the cool things about southern Oregon is that, in addition to summer, you have a really solid winter riding destination,” says Nick McDaniel, Outdoor Recreation Planner for the Medford District of the Bureau of Land Management, which administers, among other trail networks, the Mountain of the Rogue (MoTR) trail system, perhaps the region’s most well-known.

Halfway between foggy, sodden San Francisco and Seattle, in southern Oregon’s arid Rogue River Valley, Grants Pass boasts a Mediterranean climate, with mild winter temperatures and snow rarely reaching the valley floor. For riders in the region looking for a fair-weather fat-tire fix, it’s a great place to trade a poncho for a party shirt. 

“Something about our little microclimate keeps us protected here; we’ll have snow on the mountains around us, and you’ll get those snowy mountain views, but it’ll be dry down low,” says Larry Sussman, the president of the Southern Oregon Trails Alliance, which helps maintain trails throughout Grants Pass and the Applegate Valley. Sussman and his partner moved from the Reno-Tahoe area in large part because of the nearly year-round access to trails.

“Looking around at the mountains in every direction, you realize we are a mountain town, but we don’t get the mountain weather.”

Although the city’s century-old slogan, “It’s the Climate,” nods to the inviting weather, for mountain bikers, “It’s the Dirt” might be more relevant.

“The dirt is a huge contributor, because like a lot of the PNW we experience a lot of rainfall, but we have a lot of decomposed granite, which drains like crazy,” says Sussman. “You can go right after a rainstorm, and aside from a puddle or two, the trails are great.”

At MoTR, that dialed-in dirt has allowed builders to 13 miles of trail on the sunny slopes of Tin Pan Peak just outside the community of Rogue River, all of it built with bikes in mind and many of the trails directional and bike-only. With smooth, swoopy turns and low-angle pedaling, the Rat Pack and Darkside climb trails are a good transition to dirt for those accustomed to a season of indoor cycling, and the stacked-loop design means riders don’t have to commit to the full mountain to get full enjoyment of the trail system. But the doubles and dirt-wave berms on Breakdown and Freewheel will quickly shake off the winter cobwebs and replace them with whoops.

On the south side of town, over a dozen miles of buffed-out multi-use trails trace 400-acre Cathedral Hills Regional Recreation Area. Cloaked in oak and madrone, the primarily cross-country riding, from the three-mile Outback loop to the black-diamond Bridges descent, rolls fast and smooth nearly year-round. Likewise, the predominantly south-facing terrain of Bolt Mountain, south of Cathedral Hills, allows bikers to stretch their technical-riding muscles on a backcountry-like trail system less than twenty minutes from town.

Soon, the city will boast another destination trail system, on the steep, oak-shaded flanks of Dollar Mountain. When complete, the Dollar Mountain trail system will add more than twenty miles of non-motorized trail, including several miles of bikes-only singletrack, built by Ptarmigan Trails, the Port Orford-based trail construction company that machine-built MOTR’s flow. When the first batch of trails open in spring of 2025, the trail-building pedigree, near-downtown access, and spectacular scenery ensure Dollar Mountain immediately enters Oregon’s cold-weather canon.

“We have a high concentration of high-quality trails relative to the population,” says Sussman. “This is kind of a compact city, so it’s literally ten minutes from anywhere in town to the trailheads.”

That ease of access makes Grants Pass both a destination and waystation, whether it’s Ashland-area riders escaping snowbound trails or interstate-bound holiday travelers sneaking in a hot lap before Thanksgiving dinner gets cold.

At MoTR, “You see license plates from all up and down the west coast—B.C., California—because they’re coming through on the way to Whistler or Sea Otter,” says McDaniel.

“We do really have the best climate for riding,” says Sussman. “And coming from Reno-Tahoe, one of the most amazing places to ride a bike in the world, I’m still so grateful every day that we live here.”

With good winter weather and even better trails, Grants Pass welcomes winter-weary riders from up and down the West Coast —some of whom, after realizing they can in fact enjoy slop-free shredding during the snowy season, might find it hard to go back.