The Gateway Off-Road Cyclists was founded in 1998 by a handful of St. Charles area mountain bikers. GORC’s first project involved the design and construction of a bicycle/hiking trail in a new St. Charles County Park – Matson Hill. The club membership continues to grow and is the advocacy voice of mountain bikers representing the entire St. Louis metropolitan area in both Missouri and Illinois.
Gateway Off-Road Cyclists (GORC) is a 501(c)3 non-profit corporation dedicated to advocacy, design, construction, and maintenance of multi-use trails. As a club, we also have social activities such as group rides, trips, and events. Our club is run entirely by volunteers which means every dollar donated is put towards trail building or basic organizational costs such as tools, insurance and website maintenance.
GORC has official relationships with St. Louis County Parks, St. Charles County Parks, St. Charles City, Missouri State Parks, Missouri Department of Conservation, Southern Illinois University (Edwardsville), and the US Forest Service. Our involvement with all of these agencies includes trail design, construction and maintenance, technical consulting, leading volunteer trail building events, and providing volunteers for the events.
GORC has been responsible for over 94 miles of new multi-use trail construction on public land in the St. Louis area; maintenance trail events have touched over 163 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 34,000 volunteer hours. Our average 4-hour trail building event attendance is approximately 25 people and we have 20 to 25 building events per year.
Many GORC members have been trained extensively by the International Mountain Bike Association (IMBA) and contribute a great deal of experience in designing safe, sustainable, multi-use trail. IMBA’s design and construction standards include the latest techniques for avoiding and controlling erosion, which have been proven in the field year after year.
GORC is your single point resource from simple assistance with trail maintenance to 100% design and construction of new natural surface multi-use trails. Please Contact us for more information on how we can help you with your trails.
In striving to be an effective, respectable voice for local trail users, we stay active in our surrounding communities. When trail building events are announced by a land agency such as St. Charles County Parks or St. Louis County Parks, we show up and 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 Creve Coeur Park, Bluff View, Indian Camp Creek, Broemmeisiek or several trails at Greensfelder park. We’re continuously working on new projects and can always use help. If you’re interested in learning how to build/maintain trails, keeping trails open, and having fun, then we urge you to become a member.