“That one…I think…is going to be pretty painful, but try something new, something that scares me a little bit.”
Minturn, Colorado mountain biker Haley Dumke is rather stoked about competing at the 2026 GoPro Mountain Games in Vail in early June.
Dumke has risen in the ranks in both the Colorado mountain bike and gravel bike racing circuits in a short time.
Pedaling around on Lower Grouse Creek Trail in mid-May, she talked about her young mountain-biking career, becoming a Mountain Games Athlete and offered up some inspirational words for those looking to get their mountain bike on in the future further.
Dumke is starting off 2026’s racing season busy.
The sprite New York transplant signed up to compete in three races at this year’s Mountain Games – the XC Mountain Bike, the XC Short Track and the Road Bike Hill Climb.
“The cross-country mountain bike race is definitely my style of riding,” Dumke said. “We’ll ride a few laps of a course on Vail Mountain, which will include climbing on the fire roads and then descending on a few different sections of single-track.”
But Dumke had other things to say about the Short Track race.
“The Short Track race is a 20- to 30-minute very high-effort, fast lapped course where you are competing to do a number of laps in a certain amount of time,”she said. “That one…I think…is going to be pretty painful. I don’t typically ride such short high-energy, high-intensity rides, but it is such a great opportunity…but to just try something new, something that scares me a little bit, and put myself out there.”
Dumke has only been racing mountain bikes and gravel bikes professionally for two seasons, but before that, she road running before finding comfort on a saddle on dirt trails.
She moved to Colorado in her late 20s, saw people out on trail biking and decided borrowing a friend’s bike for a couple of rides would be a way to see if she liked it.
Needless to say, she did.
“It purely peaked my interest, and I decided I wanted to try it after a couple of years, I worked up the courage, and I was immediately hooked,” Dumke said.
Dumke said mountain biking has allowed her to experience places in the state and country she’d never seen before.
“The Mountain Games cross-country race was one of the first three mountain bike races I ever did here (in Colorado) a few years ago,” she said. “It just captivated me and I’ve been on this crazy ride ever since.”
Dumke said it was a great honor to become a member of the Mountain Games Athlete Team, which also was her first sponsor. Through hard work and grinds on the trails, Dumke gained more sponsors like Ibis Cycles and Pactimo over time as well.
Dumke also has crossed over into gravel races too.
She’ll be competing in the Bighorn Gravel June 20 in Gypsum, with 2026 being her fifth year competing in that race.
In September 2025, Dumke captured the overall Bighorn crown, which combines racers’ Bighorn Gravel and Bighorn Road times to determine the winner.
Dumke’s thoughts about what biking does for her
When Dumke started mountain biking, she was quickly enamored with how riding changed how she felt about herself.
Riding bikes is where she feels the most like herself. She said she feels like the strongest, most compassionate and most motivated version of herself when out pedaling on two wheels.
And when she is in that head space, Dumke said she’s a better friend, sister and co-worker to other people because riding led her to find her identity.
“One of the hardest and most rewarding things you can do is to challenge yourself, feel in your heart that there are no limits for you to try something new, to put all of your effort into something and truly just see how that makes you feel,” she said.
“It doesn’t have to be biking, it doesn’t have to be a sport. When you’re doing something for you that makes you feel like you, I think that’s the most impactful thing as women or anybody you can use to motivate you to be a good person.”
You can watch Dumke race in the the Lucid XC Short Track Friday, June 5, in the Lucid XC Mountain Bike race on Saturday, June 6, and the Road Bike Hill Climb Sunday, June 7.
For more information about or to register for events at the 2026 GoPro Mountain Games, visit the event’s site here.
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