Special ep: Orogenesis Dispatches, part two
Spin Cycle
Escape Collective
4.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 23 September 2025
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Josh Weinberg recently checked in with Kurt Refsnider, a bikepacker attempting the first full ride of the Orogenesis Trail. At roughly 5,000 miles, the route begins at the Canada–US border and travels through Washington, Oregon, and California to the Mexico border, then onto the Baja Divide.
At the time of recording, Kurt was in Paisley, Oregon, about 1,100 miles in, nearing California and the halfway point through the U.S. section.Kurt details how challenging the ride through Washington was, with nearly 120,000 feet of climbing and descending over rugged moto trails and non-motorized singletrack near Mount St. Helens. He faced detours due to land closures, and construction added to the difficulty.
Once in Oregon, Kurt has primarily followed the Oregon Timber Trail. Using elevation gain as a metric for daily effort, he explains how climbing has taken priority over daily mileage, aiming for 7,000 to 8,000 feet of climbing per day.He also dives into gear maintenance and resupply strategies, which have been tough, with dust wearing down his suspension and brake pads, and unpredictable provision availability. He’s already swapped out some wear items and explains how opting for battery packs over a dynamo hub for power has worked out.Along the way, Kurt has been fueled by strong community support.
Folks following along are tracking his progress, offering lodging, bringing food, and sharing real-time trail conditions. Looking ahead, he faces a tough, deadfall-heavy section in southern Oregon. Once he crosses into California, he’ll encounter faster ATV trails before taking a rest near Quincy and heading into long singletrack sections through Truckee and Tahoe, where we plan to catch up with him again.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to another special edition of the Escape Collective Spin Cycle podcast. |
| 0:15.3 | This is the third installment of what we are calling the Orogenesis Dispatches with Kurt Ruff Snyder. |
| 0:24.9 | I am Josh Weinberg, an editor with Skip Collective. |
| 0:29.0 | And I've been talking with Kurt about a pretty big adventure that he has been on over the |
| 0:35.9 | past few weeks, setting out from the border of Washington State |
| 0:41.9 | and Canada and is on a mission to be the first one to ride a trail system called Orogenesis, |
| 0:49.4 | which runs from the Canadian border of the United States all the way down to the Mexico border through |
| 0:56.8 | Washington, Oregon, California, and then onto the Baja Divide Trail. So yeah, I'll kick it over to |
| 1:04.9 | Kurt. And Kurt, can you kind of give us a little bit more detail and insight on what you're doing and what your progress is so far. |
| 1:13.8 | Oh, actually, before you do that, though, I will just say that I would recommend if this is your |
| 1:18.8 | first time tuning in to this special series of podcast to listen to the first couple to get a |
| 1:25.8 | sense of why we're doing this, why Kurt's doing this, |
| 1:29.8 | and his progress so far. So I would search back for those Orogenesis dispatches, the first |
| 1:36.8 | kind of kickoff one that we did, and then we've done another one from the trail with Kurt |
| 1:41.1 | a few weeks ago. So with that, let us know what's going on, Kurt. |
| 1:45.7 | Oh, great to be back with you, Josh. I'm in the little tiny town of Paisley, Oregon right now. |
| 1:51.0 | It's down in the southern part of the state, population 250, I think, right here in this little |
| 1:55.7 | great basin community. And it's home to the annual mosquito festival, which I apparently missed by |
| 2:00.4 | like two weeks. Unfortunately, mosquitoes aren't too bad here anymore, but earlier in the year, apparently they're quite a theme locally. And I think Paisley is somewhere around like 1,100 miles or so into this, what, 5,000 mile route, but starting to get kind of close, it feels like, to halfway across the U.S. part of it. So it feels like big progress. And let's see. So last time we chatted, I was up in |
| 2:22.6 | Packwood, Washington, a similarly small community there in a very different feeling climate. |
| 2:28.9 | Since then, I wrapped up the southern part of Washington and the big, big chunk of Oregon getting just a few days |
| 2:35.9 | from California now. |
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