Timberline Adventures Cycling and Hiking Vacations

About Timberline Adventures

For whatever reason, it has become customary, each year, for us to take a moment to share a few of our own reflections upon the past as well as our hopes and dreams for the future.

This adventure began for us almost 29 years ago as the product of our own bike ride across the continent. For us, it was an incredibly memorable experience, one never to be forgotten and likely never to be repeated. The euphoric hangover from that ride propelled us to launch our little “ma and pa” enterprise that we called, in those days, Timberline Bicycle Tours.
When you do a seriously long bike ride, expect to become infected. You have the bug and it is with you forever. In the beginning, it was Ramblers (9-day rides), followed by Classics (10-day sorties), always well beyond the parameters of everyone else’s 6 day, 5 night formats. And then came the Odysseys—rides from Missoula to Jasper, Seattle to San Francisco, Chicago to Chicago around Lake Michigan, Lewis & Clark in 2004 from Wood River, IL, to Astoria, OR, and Chasing the Great Divide in 2007, 40 days and almost 150,000-feet of vertical, criss-crossing the Continental Divide from the Mexican Border to Jasper, AB. Even our hikers have shared our affliction as we continue to hike the full length of England’s magnificent 105-mile Cotswold Way
But for us, all of these ultra adventures notwithstanding, the truly ultra, ultra adventure remained. Sooner or later, we knew that Timberline, as an organization, needed to ride across the North American Continent. In the season ahead, once and for all (and never again!), we’ll do it in the context of Odyssey 2010: Sea-to-Shining-Sea.

In so many ways that extend well beyond Sea-to-Shining-Sea, we believe the coming season well may be our most exciting year to date. We’ve taken last year’s Odyssey, Volcanoes of the Cascades, and created two new back-to-back rides in the Pacific Northwest—Volcanoes North and South. We’ll also tour western Colorado’s amazing wine country and challenge two of the great climbs in the west—the Grand Mesa and Colorado National Monument—in the context of Vines and Vistas. New Hikes also have been created in Joshua Tree, Mt. Rainier and Guadalupe National Parks, and we’ll hike England’s Cotswold Way one final time.

As we look to the future, our philosophy that has evolved over the past quarter-century remains unchanged. It has always been, and always will be, our hope that the content of our programs and the experiences that all of you share with us will define who and what we are as an organization.
We cling to the belief that our audience is one that loves to cycle and hike as much as we do and that they plan their cycling and hiking vacations to do those sort of things. For all of these reasons, we’re content to permit our programs and the experiences that we share to speak for us, and we’ll trust to your judgment as to whether or not ours is a program for you.

The content of our programs provides only a portion of our profile as an organization. From Day 1 to the present, we always have been and always will be Carol and Dick, “ma and pa,” along with our kids, both real and presumptive (our family of tour leaders) until they outgrow us. It’s us you’re talking to on the phone during the off-season; and it’s us out there on the road and trail cycling and hiking with you—whining with you in the headwinds, the rain, and, yes, in the snow, and sharing the joy, exhilaration and utter sense of accomplishment that is a part of every aspect of our program.
In other words, don’t ever look to us to boast about how many computers we have accumulated in our office, or how many reservationists and specialists we have added to our staff—it’s just not going to happen here and it never will be the means by which we measure our success. For us, we’ll only measure our success by the quality of your experience that you’ve shared with us.
For better or worse, that’s who we are. We’re cyclists and hikers to the core. We’re also westerners, first and last; the West today, as in the past and as it will be in the future, is our primary focus, even if we push the eastern boundary a bit at times. And we truly believe that you’ve never really experienced an area until you’ve experienced the joy and pride of doing so as the product of your own power and spirit. The cyclist and hiker alike, not only sees the breathtaking beauty of a region; each also feels the land, senses the crispness of the air, the sound of rushing waters, the scent of alpine flora. The West is our home and we feel that this land is special—its undulating terrain, its majestic grandeur, the challenge of its mountains and the incomparable peace and solitude of its isolated valleys. Accept our invitation to share with us the beauty of this land and the incomparable experiences and excitement in the season ahead.

Carol & Dick Gottsegen

E-Mail: timber@earthnet.net