September 24 2025
Giving Back and Riding Responsibly in La Ventana, Mexico
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By Chris Winter, owner of Big Mountain Bike Adventures. Photos by Leslie Kehmeier.
At Big Mountain Bike Adventures, we believe in giving back to the places that welcome us to ride. Since our start in 2002, we’ve made it a priority to support the communities where we ride—especially in developing destinations. From working with local businesses, hiring local guides, and ensuring our operations are sustainable, our goal has always been to leave a positive impact wherever our wheels take us.
One of our recent initiatives brings us to La Ventana, Mexico, a small but growing mountain bike destination known for its fun and flowy trails and tight-knit riding community. We’ve always been impressed with La Vesta (the La Ventana El Sargento Trail Association), which has developed and maintains a fantastic trail network with over 70 km of singletrack winding through beautiful desert vegetation, ancient exposed reefs, and stunning cardón cactus forests—home to the tallest cacti in the world. What’s most impressive about La Vesta is that they’ve built programs to get local youth out on bikes with weekly coaching and a fun pump track.
Supporting La Vesta’s Youth Program
La Vesta has a ‘library’ of about twenty bikes that youth can use for their weekly rides. Ermanno Strepparola, an Italian who splits his time between Seattle and La Ventana and serves as the club president, mentioned before our March trip in 2024 that most of these bikes were heavily used and that the youth could benefit from better equipment. We wanted to help.
We reached out to our friends at Trek Bikes, who generously donated two Trek Roscoe 6 hardtail bikes and shipped them to the local bike shop. These bikes will help inspire the next generation of mountain bikers while ensuring they have quality equipment to explore their backyard.
Connecting Riders with Communities
Riding in beautiful destinations like La Ventana is a privilege, and we believe in making sure that our presence benefits the local community. Over the years, we’ve worked to integrate responsible tourism into our operations by:
- Partnering with Local Businesses: From hiring expert local guides and support staff to choosing family-run accommodations, local cafes, restaurants, and bike shops, we make sure that our trips contribute directly to the economy.
- Supporting Trail Associations: Trails don’t build or maintain themselves. Organizations like La Vesta work tirelessly to create and protect the trail networks we enjoy, ensuring they remain accessible for locals and visitors alike.
- Encouraging Sustainable Travel: We continually assess ways to minimize our footprint and improve the sustainability of our trips.
Sharing the Stoke
To celebrate the bike donation, Big Mountain Bike Adventures’ guides Elladee Brown and Kelli Sherbinin from Vancouver joined local guides Diego Marquez and Valeria Prieto on one of the weekly youth rides. They spent the day sharing riding tips, encouraging the young shredders, and spreading the stoke for the sport that has given us so much. The event was beautifully captured by photographer Leslie Kehmeier.
Ride, Respect, Give Back
We’re always looking for ways to give back and evolve our approach to responsible tourism. Supporting La Vesta and the local youth in La Ventana is just one example of how we’re working to make a difference. Whether it’s through supporting local businesses, maintaining trails, or making connections with the communities we visit, our mission remains the same: to ensure that the places we ride receive more than they give.
If you’re planning a trip to La Ventana, consider supporting La Vesta or other local initiatives that help keep this incredible destination thriving. Better yet, join us on our Electric Baja trip, an eMTB adventure that includes some of the best trails in this region. Because when we ride responsibly, we help build a future where both the trails and the communities around them continue to flourish.
