Morning settles quietly over the Columbia Gorge. The scent of pine lingers in the cool air as ribbons of singletrack disappear beneath the evergreen branches. Snow-capped volcanoes rise in the distance while sunlight filters through the trees. If you look closely, you will catch the dust beneath spinning tires. The landscape beckons adventure, but never promises certainty. Around every corner are loose rocks, tangled roots, unexpected climbs, and descents that ask one simple question: Will you trust yourself enough to keep going?
Bekah Rottenberg has made these trails her classrooms. They are where she teaches women to discover their confidence, children to become leaders, and where she helps fear slowly give way to courage.
Unlike many people who spend years dreaming of living in the Columbia Gorge, Bekah and her wife, Michelle, arrived with little more than faith that it would be a good place to begin their next adventure. Michelle had accepted a position as a veterinarian in The Dalles, while Bekah interviewed for a teaching position over the phone without ever seeing the community.
"We rolled up with a U-Haul, three chickens, and a bunch of bikes," Bekah laughs.
Today, the couple has built businesses rooted in service: Michelle caring for animals and the people who love them, and Bekah helping people discover strengths they never knew they possessed.
Bekah was raised in a small rural town along the Massachusetts–Vermont border and grew up playing soccer, hockey, and lacrosse. She attended Brown University, where she competed in Division I lacrosse. Athletics had always been part of her life. "I moved to Utah in 2004, and that's when I really started getting into mountain biking."
She stayed in Utah for about two years before she left to pursue a master's degree in agricultural education at the University of California, Davis. After she graduated, she remained in Davis and taught at a public charter school for about five years. Teaching biology, environmental science, zoology, and botany felt like a natural fit to her.
“Agriculture education is experiential learning, but it's still based in the classroom,” she says. “They would have projects around building bee boxes or bat boxes or develop a project where they were going to start a business and have to figure out all the economics of it."
When Bekah first made it to the Gorge, she was commuting to The Dalles to teach. She eventually got a job at Hood River Middle School. However, more than a decade into her teaching career, the school asked her to teach an additional section of math. To do so, she needed to pass a certification exam. She studied, hired a tutor, and completed every practice problem she could find, but she failed the exam.
Then she failed it again. And then she failed it a third time.
Unable to earn the certification, her position and her salary were reduced. Most people would have sat with the feeling of failure; however, Bekah felt it was the beginning.
"I didn't have a plan," she says. "But I had a passion."
That passion became Brave Endeavors. "If I had passed that math test," she reflects, "I wouldn't have started Brave Endeavors."
Today, Brave Endeavors is a confidence-building company rooted in mountain biking, strength training, and mindset coaching. It is built on the lesson Bekah learned firsthand: failure is not the opposite of success; it is often the path that leads to it.
Her business had not been open long before COVID-19. People were longing for movement, fresh air, and human connection. While gyms and indoor gathering spaces closed, the trails remained open. And so, women began showing up with bicycles.
Some came looking for exercise, others for friendship, and many came hoping to feel like themselves again. Bekah kept teaching as they laughed through mistakes and celebrated victories.
To call Bekah a mountain bike coach, however, only tells part of the story, because she isn't just teaching women how to ride. She's teaching them how to trust themselves. "Ride Brave" has become a phrase attached to her business philosophy. Whether someone is standing at the top of a steep descent, rebuilding after a setback, considering a new career, or simply trying something unfamiliar, Bekah encourages all of her clients to lean toward what makes them uncomfortable instead of away from it.
"So often," she says, "the thing we're most afraid of is exactly what deserves our attention."
She believes mountain biking offers a safe place for her clients to practice courage. Every rocky climb, intimidating corner, and technical obstacle becomes an opportunity to choose curiosity over fear.
"Brave Endeavors believes that mountain biking is an analogy for life. As we work through challenges and overcome obstacles on the bike, we're better equipped to work through challenges and overcome obstacles off the bike."
"What so many women say is that as they gain confidence on the bike, it carries over into their work life, into their home life, into their social life," Bekah says. "I've had women apply for jobs or start new businesses or stand up to a friend who was kind of bullying them around."
The mountain bike brought them to Brave Endeavors, and then they are taking the skills they learned to “Ride Brave” through life.
"Ride Brave is an opportunity to practice doing the thing that scares you."
Bekah is an advocate for mindset. She encourages riders to embrace the belief that abilities are developed through practice and to approach every challenge with curiosity. Because failure isn’t a mistake, it is evidence that learning is taking place. Every corner, climb, and obstacle becomes another opportunity to practice trust.
Bekah is a certified personal trainer. "If you have a body," she says, "you're an athlete."
Bekah's youth programs are built around four simple pillars. "There's journaling. I'm a huge fan of having some quiet time for the kids to reflect, to draw, to color, and to kind of make obvious this connection between building confidence on the bike and how it helps to be more confident off the bike. The journaling kind of helps tie that together."
She smiles as she explains that every part of the program is intentional. "The four pillars of the kid programs are small groups, journaling, deliberate confidence building, and fun," she says. "Because it's got to be fun."
That philosophy doesn't end when the youth programs are over. Her entrepreneurial heart has taken it even farther. "Another thing that I'm actually really psyched about with the kid programs is I've created a mentorship program where I host a coach-in-training camp every other year," she says. "I've started to train assistant coaches, and most of these kids have come up through my programs as athletes. Now they're learning to coach and mentor, and then they can work as an assistant coach, and hopefully be head coaches at some point."
She has a gift for creating spaces where women reconnect with themselves while discovering they are capable of far more than they ever imagined. And her work continues to expand through women's retreats, strength training, private coaching, and international mountain biking adventures.
Perhaps that's why the Columbia Gorge feels like the perfect home for Bekah's story. The trails here don't ask people to be fearless; they invite us to keep moving forward. One turn, one obstacle, and one small act of courage at a time.
And somewhere beneath the towering evergreens, another rider is discovering what Bekah has known all along: Everything waiting on the other side of fear is the person they are becoming.
To learn more about Brave Endeavors, visit www.BravEndeavors.com.
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