Gabe Howe and Austin Klopstein move a rack of T-shirts at the Siskiyou Outdoor Store in downtown Ashland Friday.

The Siskiyou Mountain Club is preparing for the grand opening of its new outdoor store in Ashland, hoping to become a source of knowledge and carefully curated backwoods gear with a goal to sustain far-flung trails for years to come.

“Every dime goes to trails,” said Gabe Howe, executive director of the nonprofit Siskiyou Mountain Club.

The club’s new store — the Siskiyou Outdoor Store, 33 N. Third St., Ashland — opens Thursday, April 13. Business hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

The store will offer backpacking set-ups, maps, compasses, fuels and cooking apparatus all chosen through outdoors experience.

“We’ll have the provisions anyone needs for an overnight backpacking trip for a minimalist camper. What I think is really cool is that the stuff we’ll have is the stuff the staff has come to recommend, and they spend hundreds of hours in the backcountry every year,” he said.

Howe also wants future customers to expect good service from staff knowledgeable enough to offer advice for anything from an overnight backpacking trip to a morning hike.

The store is intended to provide a long-term source of sustainable funding for the club’s work, especially to match grants with its largest partner, the U.S Forest Service.

Wildfires have steadily eaten up more and more of Forest Service budgets, leaving recreation funds worse for wear, Howe said. The club has been maintaining an increasing number of trails through collaborating and gaining grants as a partner of the Forest Service.

Shifts in funding have started to pull the club from its backcountry roots to maintenance for what Howe referred to as “front country trails,” like the famous Pacific Crest Trail.

“We have 404 miles of trails that we promise to maintain each mile every three years,” Howe said.

Since its founding in 2010, the Siskiyou Mountain Club has maintained backwoods trails in southwestern Oregon, Northern California, across the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, Klamath National Forest, Six Rivers National Forest and Umpqua National Forest.

“We’ve been working like a spider weaving its web, starting in the center of the most damaged, most hard-to-reach trails and working our way outward,” Howe said.

The store is intended to offer not only gear and advice, but a social and educational facet, too.

Just before the pandemic, the club was planning new ways to offer group hikes and clinics for learning skills, Howe said. Through the store, the group can begin to pick up those offerings again.

Club members will be able to order gear over the phone, but due to arrangements made with the gear suppliers, no online orders will be available at this time. Members and students will also receive a 5% discount, according to the club’s website

“I feel for our members in Crescent City and places like that, but who knows, if this is successful, we may just pop up another one of these,” he said.

To become a SMC member or learn more about the Siskiyou Mountain Club, see https://siskiyoumountainclub.org/