It’s supposed to feel like summer camp — rooted in playfulness and empowerment — at Singletrack Addict, a new local female-focused mountain biking community and coaching business.

Co-owners Jen Sawyer and Jill Douglas created the business to provide positive experiences for women in recreation spaces. Sawyer started dreaming up the business a few years ago and called on Douglas, her longtime friend with a background in guiding and outdoor education, to help make it happen.

Sawyer became part of the Ouray community in 2019 after spending what was supposed to be one night in the city — and turned into six years — after retiring from a military career. Within a year of that visit she bought a home and opened up an art studio in town. While settling into Ouray she was still recovering from cancer treatment and wrestling with the return to her outdoor hobbies like mountain biking. With some encouragement from a mutual friend — also one of Douglas’ regular riding partners — Sawyer got back into the saddle in 2021 and attended her first all-female riders clinic in Sedona in 2022. That event opened up a whole new world of mountain biking.

“My riding skills shot through the roof. And it was empowering mentally, physically, it was just probably one of the best weekends of my life, and got me back on track,” Sawyer said. “And at the end of that camp, I started thinking, ‘I want to bring this to other women.’” Douglas, 44, is also a longtime mountain biker who experienced a similar awakening during her first all-women’s outdoor classes.

Until January, Douglas worked for REI’s outdoor excursion program, including leading female-only backpacking, mountain biking and rock climbing trips. That program was canceled this year.

“I got to do those trips and those classes, and man, like, what a huge difference. You just take the opposite sex out of the equation, and you have it just as women-only. It’s magical, it’s like going to summer camp,” Douglas said.

After attending the Sedona clinic, Sawyer decided to kick the idea of creating a female-focused biking business into full gear after selling her pottery studio in Ouray. Like the studio, she imagined a business that would go beyond the physical act of biking itself, and creating a living community.

She embarked on a road trip last year — traveling from Montana to British Columbia — to learn from other businesses how to best coach and empower female and femme riders, or anyone who identifies with the female gender.

“I didn’t really have a good idea of where it was going to lead. It was kind of an exploratory thing,” Sawyer said.

She volunteered at dozens of clinics, which helped her achieve her coaching certification in Whistler, Canada in September.

“I really picked up the coaching lingo and the method for teaching to women … in a way that women really will grasp it,” Sawyer said.

She returned from the trip resolved to form a business named for a hashtag she’d used in nearly all of her Instagram photos. Most mountain bike routes are “singletrack,” meaning they’re only wide enough for one bike at a time. She reached out to Douglas after hearing about the REI layoffs to see if she wanted in. The two quickly became business partners and Douglas relocated to Ouray within a couple of months.

Before their big launch in May, the two returned to an all-women’s clinic in Sedona, the same one where it all began for Sawyer. For the first time she attended as a full-time coach, receiving an official jersey. Douglas joined her as a volunteer, part of her journey to refresh her coaching certification.

Classes and community Singletrack Addict aims to empower women and femme people through technical skills and build a community through partnerships and a blend of group rides and social events.

Sawyer said just like skiing, the sport is rooted in fundamental body positioning on the equipment — something often incorrectly taught to women.

“Men have a different center of mass, they have differ- ent strengths in different muscles,” she said.

Both women will also teach mechanic clinics to coach women on how their bikes work and how to repair and tune them. Douglas worked as a bike technician for years and Sawyer spent a month during her roadtrip last year at the United Bicycle Institute in Ashland, Oregon, becoming a certified suspension technician and wheel builder.

Singletrack’s season is kicking off with a free mechanic clinic — focused on roadside repairs — and social hour at the Colorado Boy Depot in Ridgway on May 13 from 6 to 7 p.m.

Following that is a calendar of clinics and group rides running May through October.

The flagship standing event is “Tata Tuesdays” which is a free weekly women’s group ride at the Ridgway Area Trails.

Sawyer said the group ride is run at a social pace, meaning no one is left behind. And afterwards, there’s an all-gender social event at Colorado Boy Depot where riders can mingle, all part of Sawyer’s plan to build community.

Sawyer and Douglas will teach about five fundamentals and skills clinics per month at beginner and intermediate levels. Those three-hour classes run at $145 each, but Sawyer said Singletrack Addict is mimicking local female-owned guiding company Moxie’s pay-what-youmay model, meaning they’re charging for classes and clinics on a sliding scale.

Sawyer said though they’re focused on women and femme people, they’re open to working with all types of people and helping customers create an experience that may not already be offered.

“We really want to bring mountain biking to the forefront in Ridgway. And we want to build that community, not just as women mountain bikers, but of all mountain bikers,” Sawyer said.

For more information, visit singletrackaddict. bike/about.