Local group wants to build motorcycle track at Virtue Flat

Virtue Flat’s already a great place to ride a motorcycle.

Clay Berthelsen is convinced it could be better.

Berthelsen, 21, who lives in Baker City, is one of the founders of Virtue Flats Riders.

(There is some disagreement, even among cartographers, about “Flat” and “Flats”; Berthelsen’s club prefers the plural version.)

The fledgling group’s goal is to build a motorcross track at Virtue, the BLM-managed off-road vehicle area just south of Highway 86 about six miles east of Baker City.

“I think Virtue Flat is pretty awesome,” said Berthelsen, who figures he was 5 or 6 when he first rode a dirt bike at the 3,500-acre area that the BLM set aside for off-highway vehicles more than 20 years ago.

“There’s terrain there for everybody, from easy to advanced,” he said. “Hill climbs, jumps, rock crawling.”

What’s not there, though, is a dedicated track for motorcycles.

Berthelsen has been meeting with BLM officials to discuss possible designs and locations for a track.

He hopes the agency will apply for a state off-highway vehicle grant that would help pay for the track, which could be built as soon as 2011.

But although Berthelsen’s favorite way to get around Virtue Flat is on his motorcycle, his vision for the new club is considerably broader.

“We’re also talking about a track for four-wheelers, and I’d love to build something out there for mountain bikes,” he said. “I’m just trying to reach as many people as possible.”

Berthelsen’s even offering free pizza to spice up the deal.

That’s on the menu for the meeting the Virtue Flats Riders have scheduled for Tuesday, Sept. 7 at 6:30 p.m. at the Baker County Library, 2400 Resort St.

The club also has a Web site: www.virtueflats.wordpress.com

Berthelsen hopes to meet people who have ideas not only about the proposed motorcycle track, but about other improvements that BLM could make at Virtue Flat.

The agency has done quite a lot there already this summer.

In June the BLM built a new parking lot near the main staging area just off Ruckles Creek Road.

The agency received a $34,624 grant from the same state OHV program that Berthelsen hopes to tap for a motorcycle track.

In fact it was a newspaper story about that project that spurred Berthelsen to form his club.

BLM officials said in the article that they were interested in building a motorcycle track, but that there wasn’t a local club promoting the idea.

Now there is.

“I figured it was the perfect time to start a club,” Berthelsen said.

Virtue Flat is one of a handful of publicly owned recreation areas in Oregon that are open to motorcycles, four-wheel ATVs, mountain bikes, four-wheel drive rigs, hikers and horseback riders.

Despite its name, the area’s terrain is, in the main, undulating (the flat part of Virtue Flat is south of the OHV area).

It’s open sagebrush country, with only a few juniper trees, and the ground is generally dirt, sand or gravel.

The rockier sections are along stream beds (which are dry most of the year); these are popular places for one of the newer forms of recreation at Virtue Flat: rock crawling.

That involves drivers of modified four-by-fours, in most cases Jeeps, navigating the roughest, rockiest trails they can find. The most-used rock-crawling routes are in the eastern half of Virtue Flat.