Outdoor Allies: Steve Messer

Outdoor Alliance’s Outdoor Allies series features Steve Messer. Steve Messer is an avid trail user, mountain biker, and advocate for trails and public lands. He has served as president of the Concerned Off-Road Bicyclists Association based in the greater Los Angeles area since 2013, and is a co-founder and current board president of the California Mountain Biking Coalition. He leads regular trail maintenance work in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, Angeles National Forest, and other local land managers. He is engaged in the San Gabriel Mountains Community Collaborative, chairing its Trails and Recreation Committee. CORBA’s Youth Adventures program takes at-risk youth on guided, interpretive mountain bike rides. Steve led trail restoration efforts in the wake of the 2009 Station Fire, and has continued those efforts in the wakes of the Woolsey, Sand, Lake, and Bobcat fires in Southern California. He has helped build bridges between the mountain biking community and the broader conservation community in more than two decades of advocacy.

What do you like to do outside and how did you first get connected with the outdoors? 

My earliest years were in the Northern Beaches of Sydney, Australia. We were at the beach, surfing, and exploring tidepools and the estuaries a short walk from home. My family would often hike a track to a local waterfall and swimming hole for our family picnics starting as soon as I could walk. Later, my family moved out to the bush, where we were surrounded by a nature reserve on an 18-acre undeveloped property. I had both a horse and a dirt bike. I built my first trails on that property to get down to the creek running through it. Trails have always been my passion. In the late 1970s, I was modifying cruise bikes, putting motorcycle parts on them to ride in the dirt. I moved to California in 1984 and first saw a mountain bike in 1985 in a local bike shop. I saved up some money and bought it a few weeks later. I’ve been riding trails ever since. 

CORBA—Concerned Off-Road Bicyclists Association was founded very early in the history of mountain biking. What was that time like?

CORBA was formed in 1987 in response to land managers’ closure of all trails to bikes. The agencies didn’t know who to speak to about this new (at the time) trail user group. In 1988, CORBA joined with five other California organizations to form the International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA). CORBA’s founders developed standards for trails that were furthered through IMBA and spread across the country. We also started the first volunteer Mountain Bike Patrol in 1989 as a way to demonstrate that mountain bikers could be a valuable, contributing part of the trail user community. It’s still running today, with about 100 volunteer patrollers putting in tens of thousands of volunteer hours per year. CORBA’s Youth Adventures program has taken city kids out mountain biking since 1993. CORBA was inducted into the Mountain Biking Hall of Fame in 2013 in recognition of our pioneering work on advocacy.
I was just a member of CORBA early on. In the 1990s, I was working as a whitewater rafting guide, and it wasn’t until I winded down my raft guiding career, opening up my weekends so I could get involved in trail stewardship as a CORBA volunteer in the early 2000s. 

Tell us about your work with the California Mountain Biking Coalition (CAMTB).

CAMTB began with five clubs in California in 2019. We are the first 501c4 that’s existed in mountain biking advocacy realm. We formed to bridge the regional/statewide gap between local (CORBA) and national advocacy (IMBA), and to provide support to and coordination among our 31 member organizations. As a C4, we endorsed candidates in the last election and are hoping to sponsor our first piece of legislation next session. We have a separate 501c3 California Trails Foundation, the fiscal sponsor of CAMTB’s charitable programs, which is about 95% of our work. 

What are the big advocacy issues and projects you are focused on right now? 

Steve with the Outdoor Alliance team at Rep. Chu’s office in D.C. in October

With CORBA, we are working on the trail master plan for the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, which has been a 20-plus year project. Earlier this year, it was announced the planning effort was being shelved after 20 years of work on it, meaning our campaign will now need to adjust to a more piecemealed approach to planning for new trails and access. It was dropped due to federal changes in NEPA that limit the number of pages allowed in environmental documents.  In the long run, page limits and expedited timeframes can be good, but we don’t want to see that at the expense of public input and actual protections for the environment. 

With CAMTB, we are working on AB1567, a bond measure that would provide state funds for trails and create a trails conservancy within the California Natural Resources Agency, among other things. If the legislation passes, it gets the bond measure on to the 2024 November ballot, where we’ll have to educate the electorate on it’s importance and positive impacts to get it across the finish line. We’re also excited to see some state legislation we worked on signed by the governor that will improve our ability to work with State Parks and underserved communities, like CORBA’s Youth Adventures program. 

Mountain bike advocates strike me as a special type—they are usually more informed about public land policy and land management issues than the average outdoor enthusiast, and they are also often deeply involved in stewardship work. What are some of the best and hardest parts about advocacy for and with the mountain bike community? 

Mountain bikers, from the beginning, had to fight for and earn their access to trails. We were a new user group on trail networks, and we had to earn respect and show we could be a responsible addition to the trail community. We took on trail stewardship, designing, building, and maintaining trails. Mountain bikers have become the thought-leaders in sustainable trail design out of necessity. We had to learn how to build more sustainable trails that can withstand increased use. Trail standards and techniques developed by mountain bikers have benefited the entire trail community, as well as the land managers who manage our public lands and trails. 

One of the challenges with mountain biking advocacy is that there are so many mountain biking disciplines with different needs. Bikepacking, gravel riding, downhill, cross country, backcountry, freeride, just to name some. It can be a challenge to unite those diverse interests within the advocacy fold. As with most user groups, it’s a very small percentage of the community that causes the most problems. We also have an image problem. Most depictions of mountain biking are of more extreme aspects like downhill racing and freeride, while the vast majority of mountain bikers just enjoy being immersed in nature while getting some leisurely exercise and fun on their bikes. 

Lightning round:

Favorite close to home spot: San Gabriel mountains

Most used piece of gear: my camera! (it accompanies me on every outdoor excursion)

Another advocate you admire: Jim Haseneur (one of the founders of CORBA and IMBA)