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Dirt Corps co-founders Dan Saimo and Matt Patterson, interviewed by Ryan Finnegan at the Snoqualmie Woodman Lodge, Thursday, February 3rd, 2011.
The year is 1998 and the Grundig UCI World Cup DH Race has its first and only stop at Snoqualmie Pass, Washington. It was Steve Peat’s first win on the circuit. His GT team-mate Mike King had successfully transitioned from the BMX world to DH and there was a woman rider in a silver skin suit that was killing it in the Dark Forest, putting most of the men to shame. “I remember that event like it was yesterday” recalls Dan Saimo, “The course had some of the most technically challenging terrain that I had ever seen and it totally blew my mind. I was hooked. The Pass was a short drive from Seattle and I dreamed that someday I would be able to afford a DH bike and go big like these World Cup competitors”. A few short years later, the lift access at the Pass was closed and a period of darkness fell upon the DH scene in the Northwest. The hardcore riders hung in there like a hearty forest fungus that lives year round – but for the average Northwest weekend gravity warrior, the dream of local uplift gravity access was dead.
Matt Patterson was born and raised in NZ but was now living in Snoqualmie for whitewater kayaking; the life changing event of discovering downhill MTB came a few years later. In 2001, he was coaxed into a trip to Whistler Bike Park by a buddy, Mike McLaughlin. Mike was like, ‘Matt, you’re a crazy Kiwi. I’ve got extra gear, and you need to try this’, so I piled into his truck one weekend and by the end of the day, I was ready to sell my kayak gear and get a big-bike”, recalls Matt. “Back then the park was much smaller and far less well known, and my goal was to bring that style of riding back with me to our neck of the woods here in Snoqualmie”.
Fast forward five years… Dan had moved to Snoqualmie with the goal of connecting the Tiger Trails to the newly developed Snoqualmie Ridge. “I had been working on trails for a few years, now being inspired by local builder legend, Tom Myers who I had run into out at the Tape Worm trails. I learned the basics from him and his posse but it was all mostly XC at the time. Tom was building trails with a loose group of riders / builders that had ties with the guys that eventually formed the legendary High Life Crew led by Eric Brown.” In the Snoqualmie woods, Dan met up with Thom Iverson – another local legend that at the time worked at Philips and would work on the local trail network during his lunch hour. “Thom was a crafty veteran of the early trails that imparted an amazing base of knowledge on the basics – flow, hidden entrances, exits, looking for unique features to activate, maintenance and the politics of building.”
One fine day during the late spring of 2003, Matt and his buddy Dan Bogh were out on a recon mission deep in the Snoqualmie woods. “I remember stumbling upon a huge pile of randomly piled wood. My gut reaction was to build a giant roller up and over a nearby old growth cedar stump”. What they had stumbled upon were the bones of Mugatu – a long elevated bridge that was built by Dan Saimo and Terry Haggard to get riders across a boggy section of trail. The local land managers had recently “decommissioned” the structure and piled all the wood into a nice big stack. “The Drying Rack was the first ever attempt at building a wooden structure, and upon its completion, it revealed itself to be unrideable.” Matt muses, “so we just figured that we’d come back for the wood when it was dry”.
Soon after that, Dan and Matt met up on a nearby trail. “The first time Matt and I met out riding, I was hauling some lumber and roofing shingles in my Burley bike trailer. I think that Matt thought I was towing my kid around the Blue Bucket trail or something,the way he was looking at me”, Dan recalls. We exchanged contact info and soon afterward the Snoqualmie wolf pack grew. “Two things that I remember about Matt when meeting him was his fearless approach to riding” recalls Dan. “He would hit anything, anytime, anywhere. The other thing was his energy and stoke on building. He would be one there first thing in the morning and the last to leave whatever we were working on at the time.” From that point on, we began a mad quest to build as much as possible out in our local woods. We built out an extended network of trails tying together existing paths and clearing new ones where needed. The early years were all about just building, failing, learning from mistakes and moving on. “I remember distinctly when cedar planking was introduced into our build arsenal,” muses Matt. “I’d seen cedar used up on the North Shore, and some dudes on the NSMB.com forums described how to split it right so I thought I’d give ‘er a go… Here we were, dumpster diving for perhaps the crappiest materials for exterior application, and there was cedar lying on the ground right next to where we were building for so long!”
It didn’t take long before more riders in Snoqualmie started coming out of the woodwork. Eventually the Kloster Brothers, Tyler and Bryce and Justin Rose joined the Dirt Corps ranks. “Matt and I were a bit suspicious of Tyler and Bryce in the beginning. We were worried that they were spies sent in from a faction of the BBTC to monitor our progress and report back to their leaders” says Dan. “It took us awhile to figure out that we were just being paranoid as usual.” By this time in early 2004, the Snoqualmie Ridge Crew (SRC) was established and a flurry of build activity began. Much of the classic trails and features of Exit 25 took shape during the next couple of years – R-Line, Blue Bucket and S-Line – along with the underground BENT series.
In late 2005, after racing with a local team for a year, Dan and Matt founded the Dirt Corps with Tyler, Bryce and Justin. The team they were with at the time had no interest in trail building. “It was a core competency for Dan and myself and we were having a tough time selling it to the guys that were running the team”. We wanted to focus on riding, racing AND building. We had a couple of group meetings and hammered out a name, mission statement and some basic guiding principles. The name Dirt Corps and the tagline Semper Dirticus (always dirty) is based on the United State Marine Corps and their motto – Semper Fi (always faithful). “The Marine Corps is known for getting shit done. You know if they’re on the way, things are going to get sorted properly. Early on, the collective Dirt Corps members had this vision of employing a large group of skilled and dedicated builders to a wide range of mountain biking related projects”. Dan put his design and brand building background into it and created the initial identity system and branding guidelines. The Dirt Corps Founder Star is composed of five chevron elements with each chevron representing one of the original founders. The five chevrons face the center of the element representing a unified vision and solidarity of thought. The star is a symbol of excellence, hope and strength in numbers.
In late 2005, we met the Transition founders, Kevin and Kyle, at Interbike. We had heard about these guys as they started out building bikes near us. Their first design, the Preston was named for a little town 2 miles from Snoqualmie. We promised to re-connect when we all returned home to Seattle. In early 2006, we went on a group ride up in Canada at Vedder. Fifteen year old junior prodigy, Brian Guse was with us at the time, hitting huge gaps and impressing us all with his bike handling skills. From that point on, we became their grassroots Seattle team as by then they had moved to Ferndale to be closer to Canadian terrain and to reap the benefits of trail laden Bellingham. On the same trip, we also connected with legendary ripper Brad Walton who created our first team uniforms. “I think I still owe him money for those…” remembers Dan.
“From there, things really took off” recalls Matt. “We had a solid couple years of growth and built up a medium sized following that we call The Troops. These are the riders that just want to volunteer on projects and don’t have the time or resources to make a full commitment to the Corps. We were able to attract a core group of sponsors that we still work with today. Builders were starting to come into prominence as the North Shore scene had been gaining attention and public riding areas were starting to gain momentum”. The Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance (formerly BBTC) was undergoing a transition within their ranks to focus a bit more on the Freeride scene and creating access for that type of riding. Their big project at the time – The Colonnade – was well underway and the Dirt Corps had just finishing the first phase of a small community bike park for the City of Snoqualmie. Around this time, the DNR finally got around to decommissioning S-Line – a trail that the Kloster Brothers had designed and built with the help of the Corps after losing R-Line to the Snoqualmie Ridge development. The threat of losing S-Line had been there for a while, but now it was actually happening. “It was a pretty crushing blow for us” recalls Dan,.“ We had just finished up with BENT 3 and were coming off a really great season of racing and building. The only bit of brightness in an otherwise gloomy situation is that the DNR allowed us to take all of the cedar slats that we had cut to use in the woodwork on phase 2 of the Snoqualmie Bike Park. But other than that, morale was at an all-time low within the Dirt Corps. Justin Vander Pol, the then-executive director of Evergreen contacted us about building a signature Freeride line at the new Duthie Bike Park – the new big Evergreen project. We jumped on immediately with a vow to resurrect all the good things from S-Line and build new things that we couldn’t afford to build on our own. A new cycle of inspiration and creativity began as we started to draw up plans and execute them. At the same time that we were empowered with this new build mandate, we also received a gift from heaven in the form of Kat Sweet. Kat had been looking for a race team to join for awhile but still wanted to be actively involved in coaching. She had built a solid reputation in the mountain biking community for her work in the Cascade Bicycle Club and the fit was perfect. The president of Trek had called her out in a recent speech that he delivered in Seattle citing her as “a Rock Star within the world of mountain biking” for her community efforts and undying support for the sport. Things were really starting to click!
On the racing front, things had also started to pick-up in the results department. Around 2008, Matt and Brian Guse won the inaugural Fluidride Cup series in Cat 1 30-39 and Cat 1 JnrX respectively. Matt has since retained the series crown for 2 more seasons and in the process, stood on multiple National Champs and Crankworx podiums. W were setting our sites higher and our goal to be the premier Northwest Gravity-Oriented Cycling Team was being realized.
In late 2009 as the Dirt Corps were finishing up their project at Duthie and starting to think about the upcoming year, they received a call from Jon Kennedy wanting to know if we would like to meet a representative from Trek to “talk about the future “. Matt and I sensed that we were about to turn another big corner. Up until this point,we had never been approached by a company the size of Trek.” The rep, Kurt Fykerud unveiled a plan that he had been working on for the last five years that would help position Trek as a dominant partner in the Northwest scene. Financial support for projects like Duthie, Stevens Pass and projects yet to be named were a large part of what attracted us to the deal. This was an opportunity for us to go big and do some of the larger things that we had dreamed about since day one. It also marked the first time that we were able to successfully establish a relationship with a local bike store – Greggs Cycles. “This was huge for us as it relieved us from a ton of the logistical work that goes into running a large race team. It also gave us a solid base for help in our community outreach projects.” With the Trek sponsorship and Gregg’s affiliation in place, we were able to establish a Junior Development program. Our experience with previous junior efforts allowed us to scale up a program that supports a larger number of riders. We’re really excited about where this is going and the potential it represents to get riders involved at a very young age. We’re even received assistance from the Trek World Cup Team, sharing training advice and providing inspiration to keep the juniors focused and cranked during the off season. For 2011, we’ll field our first team pro rider, Arizona native Bob Stenson, fresh off a Cat 1 National DH Champs win and now living in the PNW for all that it has to offer – he is a downhiller looking to develop World Cup speed.
Thirteen years later and Steve Peat is still killing it. We’re much closer now to having lift assisted riding in our backyard with Stevens Pass getting the go-ahead to build their bike park and eventually, host events. And now there are more places than ever to ride here in the Northwest. Perhaps we’re a little closer to having that World Cup stop once again. If so, The Dirt Corps will be there with sharpened shovels, fast riders and plenty of energy to help git ‘er dun. Always filthy. Always faithful. Semper Dirticus!
