Special ep: Orogenesis Dispatches, part one
Spin Cycle
Escape Collective
4.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 4 September 2025
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this first dispatch from the field, Josh Weinberg talks to Kurt Refsnider, who is attempting to ride the entire Orogenesis Trail from the Canadian border through Washington, Oregon, and California to Mexico via the Baja Divide.
On day 12 of his journey, Kurt shares his progress, which entails riding over 500 miles into Washington with nearly 85,000 feet of climbing, much of it on challenging single-track and moto trails.
Kurt also discusses the physical and mental demands of this particular trail thus far. He compares the experience to other long-distance trails, such as the Colorado Trail and the Tour Divide, with an emphasis on how rugged and demanding Orogenesis is. Reflecting on the balance between effort and reward, Kurt also touches on the performance of his equipment, camping conditions, and the encouragement he receives from local riders and towns.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello everyone. Welcome back to another special edition of the Spin Cycle podcast. This is part of our Orogenesis Dispatch series with Kurt Refsnider. I am Josh Weinberg with Escape Collective. |
| 0:22.5 | Here with Kurt again to talk about his project to ride all of the Orogenesis Trail, which |
| 0:29.6 | starts at the border of Washington and Canada and goes all the way down through Washington, Oregon, |
| 0:37.4 | California, and continues |
| 0:39.4 | on to Mexico on the Baja Divide Trail. So Kurt's been out on the trail for about 11 days now, |
| 0:45.0 | and he is in getting through Washington and the southern part of the state, just to zoom out a little |
| 0:50.9 | bit. If you're just tuning in for the first time to this dispatch, |
| 0:54.9 | we do have a first episode where we talk to Kurt about what the Orogenesis Trail is and the project |
| 1:01.3 | to probably be the first one to ride the whole thing. There's also an entry on escapcollective.com |
| 1:07.9 | where Kurt goes into that as well with some writing and some photography. |
| 1:13.1 | So I would suggest maybe not making this your first podcast, uh, listen, but maybe it was |
| 1:19.1 | the first one, diving into an article on the site and then coming back to this one and |
| 1:23.2 | checking it with Kurt as he shares this progress so far. |
| 1:28.0 | So I'll hand it over to you, Kurt, and you can give us kind of an update on how things have |
| 1:32.4 | been out there in the trail, what you've seen, and like how it maybe compares to your |
| 1:37.4 | mental image of how this point in time would be when you thought about it a month ago. |
| 1:56.0 | Oh, man. Well, good to be back, Josh. Hey, everyone. Yeah, so I'm in the little town of Packwood right now, taking a rest day and was making it kind of making a push to get down here by this weekend. |
| 2:07.4 | There's an Oro Genesis event, an overnider with a bunch of folks heading out tomorrow and then a kind of community gathering slideshow type thing here on Sunday evening to celebrate |
| 2:20.2 | the launch of the first official piece of the route to be publicly launched, which starts here |
| 2:25.2 | and extends down to the Oregon border. So there's a gathering of Origenesis stoke here in town |
| 2:31.3 | this weekend made it here in time to be part of that, which is awesome. |
| 2:35.2 | But yeah, so this is, I think, day 12 since I left the Canadian border. |
... |
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