Stratton Matteson loved snow. As a child, he’d zip around his family’s Vermont neighborhood, on his bike, in the snow. He built miniature ski areas in his backyard complete with chairlifts, lodges and little Lego characters schussing his makeshift runs.
Flash forward several years and you might have spotted him climbing Bend’s Century Drive, on his bike, in the snow. He’d make the trek regularly, riding his bike, weighed down with gear, to a spot in the Three Sisters Wilderness, where he’d unload and hike until he reached the backcountry terrain he wanted to splitboard. He often camped so he could enjoy multiple days in the mountains. In fact, he logged 230 days of snow camping last year, his dad, George Wuerthner, told the Source. He’d then bike back to the Bend home he shared with his longtime partner, Madeline Wettig.
“He was obsessed with the snow and snowboarding,” says his mother, Malia Matteson, a Bend psychotherapist.
His passion was his undoing. Matteson, 28, was killed in an avalanche while splitboarding near Pemberton, British Columbia, on Feb. 24. His commitment to preserving the environment, so snow would continue to fall each year, is his legacy.
“He was a good kid. We miss him tremendously,” said George. “He was a real bright spot. He was very kind and dedicated and passionate, and he’d figured out how to live his life and best live his values. A lot of us ascribe to that kind of life and he managed to pull it off. My daughter’s the same way. They both have been able to do what they like to do and are passionate about. That, to me, is the most important thing.”
Stratton was so passionate about snow and protecting the environment, that several years ago, he decided to significantly reduce his carbon footprint by commuting solely by bike. He cycled to his backcountry adventures, sometimes pedaling hundreds of miles at a time, and commuted to client sites by bike. He ran Tangled Roots Restoration, his landscaping business that focused on using plants native to Central Oregon. His love of nature was evident to all who met him.
“We got to be really close. Once you start to get to know him, he really opens up his heart. He is such a warm and loving human,” said Dylan Poppe, 30, who began working for Stratton a year ago. “He was teaching me about all the native plants, and he also was mentoring me in splitboarding. I’m pretty new to that…He was the inspiration for it, because we’d see his posts, and I was, like, ‘Dang, that’s so sick.’”
Poppe and his wife, Coral, bought splitboards after watching Stratton’s online social-media posts and began teaching themselves the sport. When Poppe started working with Stratton in his landscaping business, they bonded over the sport and rode together.
“Those were some of the coolest and most memorable days in my whole entire life. He really showed me a lot about the mountains, and we generated a lot of stoke together. It was really fun,” said Poppe, who plans to continue operating Stratton’s landscaping business.
Stratton’s year of bike commuting turned into six, as he rode his bike everywhere, regardless of the distance or weather, to reduce his carbon footprint and do his part to protect the earth.
“I hope he would be remembered for being so passionate about it and incorporating active change into his own life, and doing it in a way that he found actually enjoyable,” said his sister, Summer Wuerthner, 31, a Bend photographer and owner of Scout Casting Agency. “I think that can be really inspiring to people. People can be avoidant of change and whatnot, especially, I think, when problems feel so big, like global warming or the Earth or the environment. But I think that if everyone can just do a little something to leave a better impact, and especially if you can find ways to do it that really bring you joy, that would be like living in his honor.”
Born in Eugene to George Wuerthner and Malia Matteson, at that time married graduate students at the University of Oregon, Stratton came by his love of the outdoors naturally, thanks to his parents. He went on his first backpacking trip just a few weeks after he was born.
“Almost immediately, from the time they were born, they were being immersed in wild places,” recalled George, a writer and photographer specializing in books about nature, the environment, and outdoor topics. “We took Stratton on his first backpack trip when he was probably two or three weeks old, up in the Olympic mountains of Washington. In those days, his sister was only like 2 ½ or three years old, so she had to walk because we were carrying Stratton. And then I had to carry everything, you know? From diapers to the tent to sleeping bags, clothes and so forth. I had huge packs.”
Stratton grew up in Vermont after the family moved there from Oregon to be closer to Malia’s kin. He and Summer learned to ski at Cochran Ski Area, in Richmond, Vermont, just down the road from the family’s home, and also zoomed down the hills at Bolton Valley Resort, which at the time offered the only night skiing in the area. They’d rack up more than 100 days of skiing each year. However, when Stratton was nine, an older cousin visiting from New York introduced him to snowboarding. He was hooked.
“That was it. He switched over and never looked back,” Wuerthner recalled, going on to explain that when Stratton turned 17, he began lobbying his dad to move back to Oregon, specifically to Bend, where he longed to pursue his snowboarding passion on the slopes at Mt. Bachelor. Wuerthner finally agreed. Summer was already living in Eugene, attending Lane Community College. She eventually moved to Bend in 2020, and then Malia, divorced from George for several years, moved to Bend three years ago to be closer to Stratton and Summer.
Once Stratton and his dad arrived in Bend, the teen wasted no time getting a taste of Central Oregon snow. He convinced his dad to drive him toward Mt. Bachelor when they first arrived in town, so he could fill several buckets full of snow.
“In my yard here in town, I have a slight hill, and he made this little patch of snow so he could run down on his snowboard, right there in the yard,” George recalls. “He was just really into snow.”
Stratton availed himself of every opportunity to be in the snow, regardless of the weather or his class schedule at Bend High School, where he first met Wettig and from which both graduated in 2015. They began dating after high school. Malia said that his sunny outlook on life made even the grayest days enticing to him, as did the opportunity to spread his message of conservation.
“He was always an optimist. Even if the conditions were terrible, and most of his friends would say it was a rotten time (to go out), he would always see the bright side of things and make the most of whatever the conditions were,” Malia said. “And for him, I think he felt like biking gave him more of a connection with the place and what it really entailed to carry out his sport, having every mile, from door to door, be human powered. It also opened him up to being more available and accessible to meeting people. He’d be riding his bike with all of his gear and people would drive by. Some would stop and ask him questions. It was an opportunity for him to talk about what he was doing and why.
“He was very committed to biking,” Malia added. “I feel like Stratton, maybe when we was younger, wouldn’t have said this, but I think at the time he passed, he would certainly agree that snowboarding was his spiritual practice, his way of feeling really alive and connected to the universe. And because he cared about it so much, and how he saw the earth was directly at risk from climate change because of the way we live our lives, he had this commitment. He wasn’t going to have zero impact, but he wanted to reduce his impact as much as he could.”
That meant many hours astride his bike. When headed to the mountains, his bike would be loaded down with gear. While working, he’d pull a large trailer filled with wheelbarrows and tools and was a strong proponent of using native plants in landscaping projects. He learned about botany and plants from his parents, and through his own studies, devoting himself to learning how best to use native plants to create aesthetically pleasing, wildlife-friendly spaces.
Roger Worthington, a Bend climate and asbestos lawyer, and owner of Worthy Brewing and Indie Hops, was a client of Matteson’s. He remembers the young man’s bright smile, even when exhausted from a day of challenging work and facing a long bike ride home.
“Stratton was one of a kind,” Worthington said. “He truly endeavored to practice what he preached. He did a lot of landscaping for me at my house on the west side. My enduring memory is Stratton, after a long day of pulling weeds and buckets, loading them up on a trailer attached to his bicycle to carry off the refuse for composting. He tried to live a carbon-neutral lifestyle and did everything possible to avoid burning fossil fuels.”
Stratton finally decided to consider using a faster mode of transportation, at least occasionally, to give him more opportunity to have more time with Wettig, friends, family and the broader Central Oregon community. He bought an electric car in 2024, a move that Malia said he made after much deliberation.
“His commitment to biking was exacting some wear and tear on his human relationships,” she said, explaining that he’d often leave in the very early hours of the morning to bike to wherever he’d go splitboarding, then spend the day (or several) hiking and boarding, before cycling back to Bend, oftentimes arriving late at night. At the time of his death, she said he was also interested in immersing himself more in Bend happenings. “I think he was trying out what it would be like to be in the community in town more, doing things locally. He said to me, ‘I’m going to try the townie program more.’”
A fixture on the slopes and in the terrain park at Mt. Bachelor, Stratton transitioned from snowboarding to splitboarding after a snowboarding accident “destroyed his left knee. The orthopedic surgeon didn’t know if he’d be able to walk again, much less snowboard,” Malia said.
Splitboarding combines aspects of snowboarding and cross-country skiing. A splitboard can be split apart, just like the name implies, and enables a boarder’s heels to move freely, like a cross-country ski, so you can climb hills. You can then connect the two halves of the splitboard and snowboard down hills. Stratton thought it’d be easier on his knee, plus, he’d already been “boot packing,” Malia said, so he could back-country snowboard. The injury, which “severed every tendon and ligament in his knee,” needed extensive rehab, but he found his way back to the snow.
“He didn’t let that slow him down, but he wanted to do something that was going to be a little easier on his knee,” Malia said. “Of course, with splitboarding, you have to earn every turn. You have to climb up to go down.”
He made some lengthy splitboarding treks, posting about them, and also memorialized a major one on film to emphasize how human-powered adventures can be epic but not impactful to the environment. “Sierra to Baker” was the result of a 2,000-mile, 100-day bike-to-board adventure that saw him cycling from the Sierra Nevadas to the northern Cascades, climbing and then descending, many of the peaks along the way. He was joined by friends for the trip, including his best friend, Alex Kollar, of Bend. Kollar died shortly after filming the movie, in October 2021, after drowning while kayaking on the Deschutes River.
“He and Alex were like birds of a feather,” George said. “They both had a lot of energy and were so cheerful and fun to be around.”
The movie was shown across the northwest and in December, played to a sold-out crowd at the Volcanic Theatre Pub in Bend.
“It was a great event because they just totally packed the place,” Malia said. “It was really sweet to see Stratton presenting this film to his hometown.”
There’s talk of entering the film in some festivals, to memorialize Stratton and his commitment to protecting the environment. It was also shown recently at Miller’s Landing Park after a bike ride in his honor.
His family is planning a public celebration of his life for June 6 at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship from 3 to 6pm. They’re also exploring ways in which to memorialize his adventure-filled life, possibly by creating a native-plant garden in Bend or helping to build a bike path that extends all the way to Mt. Bachelor “so people can safely ride their bikes up there, even in winter,” Malia said.
“A lot of people have asked us if there’s something they can donate to or support. We’re still envisioning what that might be,” she added. The family will spread his ashes “someplace that he would love” and will give some to his closest friends to “take them up to the top of mountains in different places and release them.”
The snow. The mountains. The earth. Stratton had a passion for all three, which his family believes is his lasting legacy.
“I think what he would like to be remembered for is that we can follow our passions and live lives of joy, and we can also live lighter at the same time,” Malia said, a sentiment that George echoed.
“He didn’t preach to people and say, ‘You should to this or you should do that.’ It was ‘I’m going to set an example for myself and you can do whatever you want. But here’s why I’m doing it and if it motivates you to make a few changes, then good.’ He didn’t believe in preaching to people. He just led by example,” George said. “He was into doing things from an individual point of view. He had a lifestyle he had adopted, particularly biking everywhere, that was his way to reduce his carbon footprint because he could see climate change wasn’t a hoax. He just tried to be a role model.”
Poppe said he plans to preserve Stratton’s legacy by continuing the native-plant landscaping business and spending as much time in the mountains as he can, all the while remembering Stratton’s positive and passionate way with the people and world around him.
“He had, like, this childlike innocence. Most people who are our age do not have that,” Poppe said. “He was joyful, and so knowledgeable and wise. He was wise beyond his years, and he just had such joy and stoke, and a good, good connection with his friends and his family and his community and the planet. He was such a happy person. He would want people to remember him by being happy and knowing that he fully lived his purpose and his journey, although it was cut short. He really inspired lots of people. What he did on this planet was nothing short of legendary.”
This article appears in the Source April 16, 2026.
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