Brave Endeavors is on a mission to help you ride with more confidence and more fun.
Brave Endeavors believes mountain biking is an analogy for life: as we improve on the bike, we improve in our lives.
Brave Endeavors values empowering women and girls to challenge the status quo.
Equity Matters. Brave Endeavors is actively working towards providing MTB opportunities to populations traditionally under-represented on mountain bikes. You can help. Find out more here.
Based in Hood River, OR Brave Endeavors provides MTB clinics for kids and adults, as well as on line strength training specific for mountain bikers. Mindset is at the forefront of all Brave Endeavors programs and we actively foster a growth mindset in our students.
Women First Programming. The majority of Brave Endeavors programs are coed. However, our programming is geared towards women. Just the way women have been thriving in a “man’s world” for centuries, men will benefit from our offerings. But we design and coach to prioritize women’s needs over men’s.
Bekah Rottenberg
Bekah Rottenberg is the founder and head coach of Brave Endeavors. Bekah’s unique approach to coaching is steeped in her 12+ years as a classroom educator. It’s never just about the bike or the weights. Be it mountain bike skills with kids or adults, or strength training, every session starts with mindset and involves thought questions or analogies related to how mountain biking and strength training can improve multiple aspects of your life.
Bekah is a professional mountain bike instructor (PMBI certified) as well as a NASM certified personal trainer. She is also a Patagonia MTB Ambassador. She raced enduro at the professional level between 2014-2018 before retiring to focus on coaching and strength training.
When you sign up for a Brave Endeavors program you will be challenged mentally and physically. Mindset, curiosity, and meticulous attention to curriculum delivery coalesce on the trail and in a gym-like setting to ultimately help you Be. More. Brave. Bekah lives in Hood River, OR with her wife, dog Moxi, and 4 chickens. email: bekah@bravendeavors.com
Kim Cross
Kim join’s the Brave Endeavors team! Wheelies and Jedi mind-tricks are two of Kim's favorite coaching tools. Because she has learned that skill-building is a non-linear journey, and the most important "muscle" you can strengthen is your brain. As a certified mountain-bike instructor (ICP Level 2) and the head coach of a high-school mountain bike team, Kim knows that the skills and confidence you build on a mountain-bike translate into real-life momentum. Her favorite student is her mom, who learned to mountain bike at age 69 and rolled the beginner dirt jump line at 80.
A national champion water skier, Kim has competed in more than 10 sports, nationally or internationally in four. When she's not dirt-jumping with her son or being mistaken for a teenage boy at the bike park, she's a New York Times best-selling author and freelance writer with bylines in Outside, Bicycling, the New York Times and Best American Sports Writing. Find her at kimhcross.com or @kimhcross
Annick Chalier
Annick Chalier is a longtime Pacific Northwesterner, calling the gorge home since 2019. She has a passion for all things cycling and has been a mountain biker since 2013. She's raced road bikes professionally, raced cyclocross across the west coast, and dabbled in some endurance mountain bike racing. Through the years of training for racing, mountain biking has always remained a counterbalance to the structured intervals... a way to be creative in and connect with nature, dance down the trail hootin' and hollerin' with friends, and find distance from the outside world by being entirely focused on the moment with the bike.
After becoming a snowboard instructor at Mount Hood Meadows, assisting with several mountain bike clinics, and having experienced the benefit of receiving mountain bike instruction at several camps and lessons, Annick became a PMBIA Level 1 certified mountain bike coach in 2021. She loves the process of helping others unlock capabilities they didn't realize they had within themselves. The confidence that inspires is infectiously powerful and can transform a person's life. Annick is thrilled to be coaching with Brave Endeavors since 2022!!
Megan Barton
Megan, her husband and three children relocated from Northwest Arkansas in 2008 and landed in the gorge area by chance. Although an avid ultra runner and occasional road cyclist, she had never mountain biked until 2014. A steep, but obsessive learning curve brought her opportunities to volunteer and than coach with the Trek Dirt Series as a PMBIA certified coach. She has also had some had some success with cyclocross racing, mountain bike racing, and gravel racing. Her new obsessions are bikepacking and packrafting. When dirt is replaced by snow, Megan enjoys backcountry and nordic sking and serves as a volunteer nordic patroller with Mt. Hood Ski Patrol. Megan works full time as a Family Nurse Practitioner in Hood River and enjoys serving her community.
Jennifer Phillips
Jennifer Phillips is a lifelong Oregonian who believes that life is to be spent outdoors with nature whether its gardening, mushroom hunting, rafting, or fishing. Jennifer started as a runner, triathlete and raced cyclocross until she found mountain biking and hung up her skinny bikes.
Coach Jenn received her coaching ICP level 1 certification the Spring of 2022 and has been volunteer coaching with NWTA, Betties 360, The Sun Program, and every other volunteer coaching opportunity to come her way. Jenn was Assistant Coach to Bekah and Annick for several seasons with Brave Endeavors and fell in love with coaching kids and leading them through the process of challenges, rewards, and perseverance through skills focus and mindset. She deeply believes that getting kids on bikes is a positive experience that translates to being successful in all aspects of life.