It’s been a bit since my last post! I’ve spent the past two weeks in Oregon soaking up everything this state has to offer. I was in Portland (Oregon) for a few days hanging with friends, relaxing, and prepping my bike and gear for a big ride in the woods that I just got back from. I’m going to break the Oregon content up into two (or more?) posts because there’s so much to see and talk about.
Portland (Oregon)
For the first half of my time in Portland I stayed with my friend Matt, his fiancé Erin, Basil their dog and Ash the cat. All Basil wants to do is heard other dogs, and defend their house from intruders (me).
Matt’s neighborhood is full of gorgeous flowers, it seems like practically everyone had something beautiful growing in their front yard.
Matt works at Nike who coincidentally had their company-wide field day a couple days after I got to town. It was a wild event on their huge campus with over 10,000 attendees. There were multiple sport events including an invitational employee track meet where someone ran a 3:59 mile 🤯
The big ride!
Here’s (one of) the main events for this trip! A bikepacking trip through the mountains in Oregon from Bend to just outside Portland. I did this ride with Jan & Landis, two good friends from Portland (Maine) who have lots of experience living off of a bike and riding on rough trails. Even with all that experience this route threw some new and challenging things at us, and was overall a super fun and rewarding experience.
Here’s the map of our route, with our camp spots each day marked out. For the last 3 nights we did a big loop with 3 more friends who drove up from Portland to meet us. This route combines a handful of established off-road bike routes to create something that worked for us. All credit to Jan & Landis for coming up with this route & plan. I’d estimate about 25% of the ride was on single track trails, and about 5-10% was on paved roads, with the rest being double track/gravel/forest roads.
One question we kept getting early on in our trip was “how far are you going?”, and truth be told we didn’t really know how long the route was. It ended up being around 340 miles and somewhere around 30k feet of elevation gain. Each day was between 30-50 miles of riding, which isn’t too much by bike riding standards but the elevation and terrain made them all full days.
We were all super excited to get going on day 1. The weather apps were giving us this symbol featuring every possible weather condition,
and the apps were absolutely right. Cold temps at higher elevations meant we had to nix our initial plan to camp up high and instead keep riding farther on the route to camp at a lower elevation.
I was also battling the tail end of a cold which combined with allergies and made these first few days a bit more difficult.
Jan and Landis’ enthusiasm kept my spirits up, combined with absolutely stunning scenery right out of the gate. As we climbed into the mountains on day 1 we passed a series of gorgeous waterfalls.
Jan showing Tony the Octopus a waterfall.
The trail conditions on this first day, and really the whole trip, blew away our expectations. The trails were definitely challenging, but they were a far cry from the rooty rocky trails we were used to in the northeast.
As we reached the top of our climb for the day we entered a burn zone where a forest fire came through about 10 years ago. This was a surreal landscape to bike through, especially in the alternating sunny then snowy conditions.
Starting day 2 on forestry roads..
…then some rougher steep trails.
Jan w/Mount Washington (Oregon) in the background
We descended a long a section of the Santiam wagon road, an old migratory/trading path for settlers. This “road” was sketchy on bicycles, I have no idea how people took wagons up and down it.
We popped into in a campground mid-morning that had fresh baked goods!
Riding with a cold was starting to catch up to me, so I skipped a large technical trail section and opted for a smooth road that led to the hot springs we were staying at on night 3. Jan and Landis showed up a few hours later soaking wet, muddy, and with big smiles.
This is where I’ll end this first update. At this point we’re at the 3rd camp spot on the map above. There’s lots more to share, but I’ve got to go catch a train!