The Gateway Off-Road Cyclists Organization

Founded in 1998 by St. Charles area mountain bikers to help facilitate design and construction of a bicycle/hiking trail in a new County Park, the club has grown to the entire St. Louis metropolitan area in both Missouri and Illinois.

The Club:

Gateway Off-Road Cyclists (GORC) is a 501(c)3 non-profit corporation dedicated to advocacy, design, construction, and maintenance of multi-use trails. We are the St. Louis area’s only official International Mountain Bicycle Association (IMBA) affiliate club. As a club, we also have social activities such as group rides, trips, and events. A newsletter (“Trailhead”) is published and contains articles on travel, workdays, advocacy, and equipment.

Advocacy:

GORC has established official relationships with St. Louis County Parks, St. Charles County Parks, Missouri State Parks, Missouri Conservation Department, and the US Forest Service. With all of the above organizations, GORC functions include: Trail Design, Trail Construction, Trail Maintenance, Technical Consulting, Leading Volunteer Workdays, and Providing Volunteers for Workdays.

Trail Work:

GORC, by the Winter of 2006, has been responsible for over 25 miles of new multi-use trail construction on public land in the St. Louis area; maintenance workdays have touched over 150 miles of trail in Eastern Missouri. In all cases, the trails were designed by GORC members, approved by the Park/Land Manager, and built with 100% volunteer labor. These efforts account for over 15,000 volunteer hours. Our average 4-hour workday attendance is approximately 25 people and we have 8 to 10 workdays per year.

Several members of GORC have been extensively trained by the International Mountain Bike Association (IMBA) and have a great deal of experience in designing safe, sustainable, multi-use trail. IMBA’s design and construction standards encompass the latest techniques in erosion avoidance and control, and have been proven in the field year after year. More information on IMBA can be found at www.imba.com.

How Does GORC Help Me?

GORC is your single point resource for everything from simple assistance with trail maintenance, to 100% design and construction of new natural surface trails. Please call or e-mail for more information on how GORC can help with your trails.

To be an effective, respectable, political voice we stay active in our surrounding communities. When trail workdays are announced by St. Charles County Parks or St. Louis County Parks we show up to help out. This not only allows us to directly improve a trail or repair a damaged one, but it shows the Park Departments that mountain bikers care about the trails they use and back it up with voluntary manual labor.

You may have ridden one of the fairly new trails we helped build such as Klondike Park, or Greensfelder Park's Dogwood trail). We're always working on new projects and can use the help. If you're interested in keeping trails open, having fun, and learning how to build/maintain trails then we urge you to become a member.