We got up leisurely, rode a tiny bit of singletrack, then 15 miles of easy spinning along the shores of Hills Creek Lake. I couldn’t have planned a better recovery day!

Day 7 - 18 miles

Back in Oakridge we hit Manning’s Cafe for power breakfast, the hardware store for fuel and the bike shop for a few items, including a new chain for Paula’s bike. Then it was nap time. Followed closely by pizza time! Ray’s grocery has some great items for bike/back packers. Since neither of us had any sign of poison oak rash we were growing less paranoid about it, but we still took advantage of the “town day” to do a batch of laundry. Hanging out in rain gear when it’s 90 outside is big fun!

I pedaled over to the park at some point and saw all the tents for Mountain Bike Oregon. A different deal, that.

I also hit up the guys in the shop for some trail beta. We’re quickly becoming singletrack sluts, and neither of us were very excited about all the pavement awaiting us on the Aufderheide.

Turns out our negative thoughts were unwarranted. We loved the Aufderheide.

But first we tried an alternate route to Westfir. Shorter, but full of insultingly steep climbing — at least first thing in the morning. I was OK with it, but Paula was expressing her displeasure as the road continued to climb towards High Prairie.

My brain values “new” and exploration so highly that I didn’t care how much it climbed. It was cool to see more of Oakridge and to find a route to the trails that avoided busy highway 58. But I commiserated with Paula.

After the red covered bridge we rolled onto the North Fork Trail. This trail is infamous for gifting urushiol rash to many a Cream Puff racer, my pathetic self included. But boy was it fun to ride.

A little overgrown in places, but just what we were looking for — singletrack perfect for loaded touring.

We followed it for about 7 miles, past FR 1910, to FR 1912. I could see the trail continued, but we had been warned that it wasn’t finished beyond. After washing with Technu we crossed the bridge and began chasing down two fellow cyclists.

Not really. A middle aged couple was doing a day ride on the Aufderheide, with hybrid bikes and orange safety vests. This was a good sign for what we were both hoping — that this was a good cycling route.

Sure enough, with no residences, no ranches, just campground and trails, the Aufderheide scenic byway was pretty empty. Maybe one car per half hour kind of empty. It felt like an extra wide bike path at times.

No cars meant we could ride safely next to each other and, gasp, talk! Can road riding be this good? We had some really great conversation, covering a wide range of topics. So much so that this became one of the best days on the trip. When you’ve been with someone for some time (and you both have a lot going on) it can sometimes be hard to find time to sit down and have long, involved conversations. Have I mentioned that I love bike touring? I also know how lucky I am to have someone to share awesome trips like these with. So many lucky stars that I stopped counting…

At 55-65 miles (depending on which road sign you believe) the Aufderheide is nothing to sneeze at, and there is a healthy climb in the middle. Time to switch river drainages from Willamette to Mackenzie!

We stopped in the middle and had a hot lunch - macaroni and oatmeal. Then more pedaling.

When we hit the dam on Cougar Reservoir I pulled out the phone to call my brother and Misty. They were en route to meet us at Belknap Hot Springs. My brother had just returned from several trips, and this was the first time he was around and able to meet up. We had a wonderful evening, eating tasty food, soaking in the springs and hanging out with Al and Misty.

We stayed down the road at Harbick’s Country Inn. Run by an enthusiastic mountain biker, they were very friendly to cyclists (the ACA northern tier route also goes right by their place).

Day 8 - 68 miles

My friend Mark Flint has called the Mackenzie River Trail the best trail in Federation Space. Though there may be something better in Romulan Space, that’s still a pretty strong statement. We were excited to test it.

5 miles pavement brought us to the start of the trail. 5 seconds in I already liked it. Flat, smooth and swoopy. Repeat for mile after mile and you have yourself a good ride.

It was the weekend, so there was some traffic going the other direction (this trail is often shuttled). It was no big deal, except for the nose-to-nose encounter Paula had with a group of guys cookin’ it and pushing each other down the trail. Not a smart thing to be doing on a Saturday — not everyone shuttles the trail and there are hikers out there too! (To their credit, they apologized for going so fast and almost hitting her).

The miles floated by for me, but Paula was getting tired. I was feeling top; she was run down–the difference between a cyclist and runner after 300 miles of singletrack touring.

Near Trail Bridge Reservoir the trail gets a little bit technical and has some exposure. Paula didn’t trust herself to ride semi-dangerous stuff, saying she felt unsteady. Same with one of the shuttlers we ran into on this portion, who could only utter, “I’m hitting the wall, man!” as we passed. From then on, of course, at every little uphill either Paula or I would turn to each other and say “Oh, man I’m hitting the wall!”

As we had been riding I realized that the best plan was to just ride Mackenzie out and back. I had a route over the divide towards Bend. But we had already agreed that anything above 4500′ was out due to Mosquitoes. We could head that way but there was no way to get back without going by Waldo Lake or other Mosquito hell areas.

So I suggested we set up camp near the lake and Paula could take a rest while I rode the rest of Mackenzie. It sounded like a good plan. We found a secluded site, just far enough from the mayhem and noise of the car camping area, and once again next to a rushing stream.

I set off unloaded, with a box full of matches to burn. I had really been enjoying the mellow touring pace we had settled into. It’s nice to see that side of life. But I’ll always have an interest in riding hard and pushing myself.

With limited daylight and plenty of unknown miles yet to cover, this was the perfect opportunity.

I knew about the technical lava rock at the top. But the techy climbing before the blue pool (above) was a complete surprise. I ran into quite a few groups of MTBers thoroughly flustered and demoralized by this surprise section. I was just as surprised as they were, though pleasantly so.

Middle ring hammering brought some good heat to my body. And for some distance the river disappeared, which seemed quite strange. I had grown used to the constant companionship of whichever river we were following.

Not long after I began to hear water again, getting louder and louder. The temperature dropped, thankfully. I began to put it together. There must be a waterfall coming up, and from the sound of it, it’s huge!

Koosah falls, followed by Sahalie Falls. Both very impressive! I continued climbing steeply, reveling in the challenging trail.

When I came to Clear Lake my legs were getting pretty torched, so I took the easier direction (west side) first, for a little recovery. Whew, it was super easy! And views of the lake were awesome.

It was surprising how much the trail wandered around the north side, and I was getting anxious to start heading back to camp (suddenly I was without tent/bag and freedom to stop anywhere on the trail!). Soon enough I was battling it out in the lava rock and laughing each time I’d get jammed. It was disappointing when I came to the paved portion! Paved singletrack, with tight switchbacks! How funny.

I’ll never forget one particular moment on the way down. Yeah, I knew about the waterfalls this time, but nothing could prepare me for the sensation of swooping through the trees, paralleling the rushing river, only to have the river suddenly disappear in front of me, off the edge of the world. One switchback brought me right next to the falls, mid-air, followed by another affording a clear view of the entire drop. It felt like I was the waterfall.

Of course the trail was easier and faster on the way down. After the blue pool I ran into Paula, pushing her bike through the techy stuff. The blue pool sounded cool on the map, so she was riding out to check it out. I didn’t really recommend it, because of how technical it was, but we sat there a while and debated about it. Finally we realized there wasn’t much daylight, and sure enough even without going to the pool we barely made it back before dark.

Day 9 - 45 miles

We really enjoyed our last night camping. We ate like kings — double portions of pasta (dinner) and hot chocolate (morning). Since we were heading back there was no reason to conserve and no reason to get up early. Sleeping in until 9am is a true sign of a good night camping.

I have to admit that all the swoopy smooth trail was getting just a tiny bit tedious by the end of yesterday’s out and back ride. I was happy that we were camping midway on the trail. By the time morning rolled around again I was super psyched to ride as much singletrack as was left.

At some point I stopped to fiddle with something and Paula got a ways ahead of me. She came upon two guys riding with their dog. Not particularly riding fast, she passed one and crept up on the second. At the top of the next hill he turned around and saw her coming.

At that point the race was on. Head down, pedaling for all he’s worth. Buddy and dog in tow, trying to keep pace. After a few minutes the guy behind starts yelling, “Dude! Slow down! You’re killing him [the dog], he can’t keep up!”.

Sometimes you can’t be 100% sure if someone is racing you out on the trail, but there was little doubt here.

He lets her go at the next bridge, stopping to tend to the dog. The second guy then takes the chase position, again doing everything he can to not let Paula out of sight. I rolled up on them at this point and had to hold back the laughter as I watched this guy trying to chase Paula down.

The rest of the trail was less eventful. Pleasant encounters with many a cyclist, including many riding up the trail. We popped out at the Ranger Station to check the bus schedule. There’s only one bus, and it’s at 6pm, so we had some time to kill.

Back to Takoda’s for another huge meal, I started scheming to ride a trail the Inn’s proprietor had raved about: King Castle. He said he shuttled a group of women from CA the other day and they proclaimed it to be one of the best downhills ever.

I’d never heard of it, and couldn’t really tell which trail it was on the map, so I went back to talk to the super enthusiastic innkeeper. Cool guy — he gave me solid info and even offered to shuttle me up the trail. After riding the three major river trails in Oregon without a shuttle you’d think I might take him up on the offer. But I hadn’t shuttled yet, so why start now?

The climb was no big deal, if a little on the hot side. I turned left and climbed the singletrack a little further, to ensure an honest 2000′ climb. From what I saw on the singletrack on the way up, the way down was going to be a blast.

No question, it was. I found it about twice as fun as Alpine trail, though circumstances may have had something to do with that.

I rode back to Paula, napping by the river, and we picked up our belongings for one more ice cream gorging before waiting for the bus.

Yes, it’s true, the city of Eugene runs a regular old city bus all the way out to the Mackenzie Ranger station — some 50 miles away from town. Guess what the fare is? $1.50. This is such an awesome service that we could hardly say no to it.

A purist might have ridden back to my brother’s house, completing the loop, and I had a rough route in mind. But that route had a lot of pavement on it, and only a few miles of trail (Fall Creek). That combined with the Paula still being tired and our limited time to spend with Al and Misty and it was a no brainer.

the lev on the bus

I thought it was a very unique way to end the trip. I installed my headphones into my ears and let the tunes roll as I played through all the good memories of the trip while someone else took care of the driving, and petrol took care of the horsepower rather than my legs. The air conditioning was blasting, and the big windows gave ample viewing opportunities. Quite a few people use this bus, such that the bike racks were both full when the bus picked us up, and many people got on at later stops. What a novel concept — not using the personal automobile as the enabler for recreation.

The bus dropped us off in downtown Eugene. A few miles ride through town brought us back to my brother’s house and the completion of the “loop.”

Day 10 - 38 miles

Total stats:

410 miles
40,000 feet of climbing
8mph average speed (!)
>60% singletrack

And we just happened to be in the perfect place — the top of the widely lauded North Umpqua Trail. No long drive, no messy shuttle logistics, no delays. Just wake up and roll out the door. The rhythm and flow of a bikepacking trip is hard to beat.

I rode over to the lodge wearing my Walmart camo gloves. While we gorged ourselves once again on the best bacon on planet earth (the guys at the lodge said they tried a half dozen bacon suppliers before choosing this one) a lady showed up with my lost gloves in hand. She said that her kids had “found” them. Translation - they stole them. I give her credit for being brave enough to return them. I thanked her and noticed there was something inside — a Lemolo Lodge rock bag, likely stolen from the store.

It was time for Dread and Terror. I bought a map of the Umpqua Trail from the lodge, and it described this segment as “expert.”

It was technical at times, with some healthy exposure. But we were five days into a bikepacking trip. Riding singletrack is what we do. Pretty soon we started catching other cyclists, much to our surprise.

By the third group I was thinking, “what is this, the most popular trail in the world?”

I wasn’t one to argue. Dodging trees, waterfalls every half mile, dripping moss, rocky outcroppings, technical climb challenges. It was more Oregon than I thought Oregon could be.

By the fourth group we realized we were cutting through an organized group ride.

So here’s Paula, with 150 miles in her running trained legs, camping gear on her bike, and she’s passing people and cleaning sections they are walking. We didn’t tell them that she’s really not a mountain biker, but a few of the guys soon realized they were seriously getting ‘chicked.’ (They had started a little lower on the trail than us, and had shuttled it).

Paula’s pretty competitive, and given the hard nature of the trail the ‘competition’ was in cleaning sections, not racing. It was fun to watch her really nail some sections that I thought for sure she’d walk. I was a little worried she’d overdo it and risk a crash, but that never happened.

I’d been telling her all along how great she was doing, and how she’d really adjusted to the loaded 29er. But she never believed me. Until now.

What a trail. Our favorite day of the whole trip.

Paula snapped her chain on one climb, which meant we kept bumping into more of the tour group. At the next road crossing they had a sag stop where they invited us to take a seat and eat some grub. Cool group of people having a heck of a trip along the Umpqua.

We eventually rolled on down the trail, missing some of the trail after being misdirected by some supremely stoned hippies.

Later segments of the Umpqua were faster and more flowing. What a day of descending! (All our climbing was hard earned through previous fart-mosquito efforts). Even though we’d earned every last foot of descending, it still felt like cheating.

The Deer Leap segment was a nice change, taking us away from the river on more of a “mountain” trail than a “river” trail.

Not that we minded being close to the river…

with so many interesting things to see…

… and duck under.

I love how time becomes irrelevant out on the bike. It’s a continuous thing, yet we humans have tried to define and discretize it. With no destination other than our tent, the coming of night was not something of concern, it was just something that happens.

When it started getting dark, we started looking for a clear area to camp. We found one next to the river, complete with fire ring. We actually lit a fire since we were low on fuel. Instead Paula improvised a hobo stove with the large rocks of the ring. It was slow, but good enough to boil water for tasty alfredo pasta.

Right at dark two riders came to pick up their shuttle vehicle near our campsite. They were guides from the tour group, out scouting the trail. They told us that the Tioga section was indeed closed and had crews working on it. They also incorrectly told us there was no bridge at Steamboat, much to my dismay (Lemolo’s store didn’t have much for the bikepacker, and we were running a little low on food).

Day 5 - 38 miles

The ease of yesterday’s singeltrack descending extravaganza had lulled us into false sense of how the rest of the Umpqua Trail would roll. Right out of camp on the Marsters segment we were reminded that sometimes you have to earn your fun.

An old burn area was littered with downed trees. More a pain for loaded bikes, we got frustrated by a few of the big ones. Why? Because it was harder than before and my expectations had been colored. We reminded ourselves how easy things had been, and how impressive it was that we’d ridden 100+ miles of heavily forested singletrack and were only now hopping over logs.

Kinda puts things in perspective. Several dozen trees down, oh boo hoo!

Fun riding in between the down trees and killer views of the emerald green river.

Paula snapped her chain again. I had already used our powerlink on the last break, but somehow I was able to get the pin back in without shortening the chain at all. I told Paula to expect it to break again on the next hard effort, but it ended up making it all the way back to Oakridge!

Eventually we rolled right next to the river and started seeing folks standing in the river getting their fly fishin’ on. We must be nearing Steamboat, supposedly one of the best spots to fish in the world. At one of our frequent technu wash / water purifying stops I pulled out the map and tried once more to ascertain if there was a bridge or not. If not, we’d have to ride ~5 miles past it and backtrack on the highway.

There was a circle and number covering the spot on the map that would show a bridge or road connection. The map really wasn’t set up for bikepacking the trail — no info on services or connections along the way. But in the trailhead directions I noted talk of a trailhead. I was still suspicious since the map had previously considered a junction with a closed-to-vehicles 2-track to be a trailhead.

Sure enough, we were soon riding across the bridge that didn’t exist according to the guides from Moab. A short chat with a local fly fisherman revealed that the lodge was left on the highway, and that they did indeed serve lunch!

Score! We thought Lemolo’s food was going to be impossible to top, but Steamboat’s meal gets the award for best food of the trip. Despite being afternoon, Paula ordered a huge breakfast plate, and I went with the burger on homemade bun. The homemade strawberry rhubarb jam put the meal off the charts.

Now, our bellies were full but our feed bags were not. A few small baskets behind the counter held candy bars, but that was the only food to be found in the place! The hostess offered to sell us some fruit and bags of chips out of the kitchen. It seemed like enough, especially since we had changed our route.

Since Tioga was closed, there wasn’t much point in continuing on the last 14 miles of the Umpqua trail. We were reluctant to leave the trail, but the lack of food at Steamboat meant we needed to take a more direct route to a known food source — Oakridge.

I pulled out the maps and spied a more or less direct route that would minimize the road time and, as a bonus, allow us 6 or 7 miles on the most excellent Middle Fork Trail. We could have spent 30-40 more miles on paved roads to pick up a few miles of trail in Brice Creek, but it seemed like a no brainer at the time, especially with our food situation.

So we pedaled north along Steamboat Creek, at first on pavement, then dirt. A few miles up we were looking for a spot to pump water. We happened to stop right at Steamboat falls, a popular spot full of swimming holes and rock. Perfect spot to relax and cool off during the heat of the afternoon.

We were introduced a strange Oregon phenomenon: unused paved roads. The Steamboat road was a very pleasant ride, and we didn’t see a single car after the falls. Not a bad way to travel

I set my bike up in “road” mode, moving as much weight as I could to the bike. Thanks to Eric’s Epic Designs seatpack, I was able to do this quite effectively (big thumbs up for this bag!).

the lev, in “road” mode

The top came sooner than we expected. As we descended the world dropped out from below us. Massive logging areas gave us huge views of the Willamette River valley, and all the terrain we had covered in the last few days.

In 5 short hours from leaving the Umpqua Trail, we were back on singletrack again, hooting and hollering down the Middle Fork Trail. We found it twice as fun the second time, possibly due to descending rather than climbing it, but I think it had more to do with the rhythm of the trip. There’s always a learning curve and an adjustment period at the start of every trip. That was behind us; the trails were now our oyster.

We ate our candy bar dinner just outside Sand Prairie campground. I’ve eaten worse out on the bike, that’s for sure.

Around our campsite hung Blair Witch style little dudes. Probably someone wanting to “reserve” this site by scaring people away. With 200 miles in our legs and the sound of the rushing river, there could have been twenty specters dancing around our camp — we wouldn’t have noticed.

Day 6 - 53 miles.

Part three, coming up — we take a town day in Oakridge, then it’s on to the Mackenzie River!

We crammed an incredible amount of visiting and catching up into a short few days. We stayed up late, ate good food and generally had a blast with Alan and Misty.

It didn’t leave a lot of time to plan the singletrack tour. A late night chat with Scott Taylor yielded a few insights, but we ended up spending more time talking about the Cream Puff than routes.

Still, our bikes arrived by DHL, safe and sound. The plan was to leave the next day.

I made some sense of the mess of GPS tracks, with the help of TopoFusion’s network feature, and uploaded as much as I could. I was apprehensive about leaving so under-researched. I’ve learned to throw caution to the wind (a little bit) in this regard, but this was a trip with Paula and I really didn’t want things to get out of hand.

The unknowns and obstacles were fresh in my mind as we made final preparations. My experience on this route consisted of racing the CCP and driving to Oakridge. I’d never carried a tent, stove or dealt with poison oak on a bikepacking trip. This was Paula’s first singletrack tour and though she blazed through the divide in 2004, this was mountain biking. I also knew that she can’t survive mosquitoes very long.

And I didn’t have a good idea of where we were going. It’s hard to research 400 miles worth of trail, and this was a route I was inventing rather than following (e.g. AZT, CT, GDMBR).

Paula had even less of an idea of what she was getting into. But her attitude and determination was impressive. She always had a positive answer to any concern. If it had been up to me, we would have waited a day.

But we were pretty much ready, and gear-wise prepared for just about anything. With a stack of maps and the freedom to go anywhere and do anything what can go wrong?

We left my brother’s house and pedaled along Amazon Creek, heading for our first trail. It’s a classic that I’ve ridden many times–Ridgeline. The only local Eugene ride, it’s short but good. Fun switchbacks under heavy shade, but halfway up Paula’s rear tire went flat.

I had intended to swap her AZ-pierced slime tubes for regular ones, but she insisted she wanted some flat protection. A fresh slime tube would have been better than one full of thorns!

A couple pump and go sessions were fruitless. We changed it at the Fox Hollow trailhead, and feeling the 14 ounce heft of the dead tube, we stashed it under a rock (I retrieved it after the trip).

Contouring and dodging trees I heard exclamations of joy behind me. We were already having more fun in the first 5 miles than we did in the first 500 on the divide.

“I’m glad you like it, ’cause I think there’s going to many a mile like that on this trip…”

At Dillard road we turned right, blasting downhill towards the freeway. What followed was a piece-meal of paved roads paralleling highway 58, with a few sections on it. We rode past farms, xmas tree plots and the Willamette River. I made a few on-the-ground route decisions to stay off the highway, including one on a dirt road that brought us right into someone’s yard. Doh!

Pleasant riding, but just as the pave was getting old we spied a sign, “Elijah Bristow State Park.”

I’d never heard of it, and no one had mentioned it. The brochure suggested we could skip the next few miles of pavement in favor of “trail.” The only problem was that the map itself described the trails as “soggy” and had a warning about them. Not exactly a good sign, given that no cyclists seemed to know about it or ride it.

What did we have to lose? We cruised down the first bit of singletrack into the trees. After a few consultations of the map we found our way to the soggy trail. There was a tiny little bog that required a dismount and a hop to cross, but otherwise it was an awesome break from the road, and took us right where we wanted to go.

I spied the “Dexter Dam” on the GPS, and a lower traffic road on the other side of the reservoir / river. I could tell the dirt road we were on carried high traffic, so I figured there might be a way across.

I forgot about the popularity of a little past time called fishin’. There was no way across (unless you can climb barb wire), so we backtracked and reluctantly joined the highway for one last stretch.

A white covered bridge brought us to the town of Lowell, where we consumed our first of many treats featuring ice cream sandwiched between two cookies. A little more road brought us to the top of the next reservoir, which we’d follow for the rest of the day.

The North Shore trail held some very fun riding, but also pretty thick overgrowth and plenty of spider webs. I was torn between the fun I was having and the poison oak paranoia running rampant in my head. (We would later learn that this is one of the worst trails for poison oak)

Leaves of three, let them be! I brushed so many different kinds of plants that had 3 leaves that I stopped paying attention. I worried more about blackberry — a deep cut could spell doom in poison oak country.

When we hit the campground we jumped in the lake with Technu in hand. We both agreed we’d have enough oak paranoia for one day, so we decided to take the road (turns out the trail ends here anyway). We queried the camp host about free spots to camp down the road, and he clued us into a gravel pile we could camp behind about 4 miles away. Too many bugs and loud campers at the pay-to-camp site.

Two kids on BMX bikes met us going the other way on the road.

“There’s nothing fun that way, turn around!” they said.

“There will be, eventually…” was my reply.

The gravel site worked well except that we couldn’t get our tent stakes into the ground, and our tent is not free standing. We improvised a few rocks and used our bikes as tie downs. First usage of the stove worked well, though my fuel consumption guesses were not even close. We also forgot to bring a utensil of any kind, so we stirred our tasty dehydrated burrito mix with the end of a toothbrush and ate with our fingers. There are worse things to forget.

Day 1 - 43 miles

We were testing new Big Agnes sleep pads. I dare say this first night was the best camp sleep we’ve ever had, including car camping. Thermarests are off the case, for good! We slept several hours past sunrise, and awoke refreshed.

I made some oatmeal, then we were off to climb School Gulch to join the “Eugene to Crest” trail. The first thousand feet were on a two track (closed to vehicles by a washout). Singletrack on Winberry Divide was a bit of a rude awakening. We pushed our bikes here more than any other day of the trip.

And really it wasn’t that much. Just too steep, but easy going as far as bike pushing goes. Still both Paula and I had matches to burn, so we weren’t going to walk if we didn’t have to.

We bumped into Scott Taylor and friend, post-riding the Cream Puff course (which we were now riding backwards). It was fun to see them and chat a bit, and it also meant they had cleared the spider webs on the trail ahead!

We were pleasantly surprised to find the singletrack on Tire Mountain to be much more rideable. This was good, because we had another 2000 feet to climb, all on singletrack.

For crispy Arizonians, the deep forests of Oregon are like a different planet. We’d keep stopping to admire some crazy plant, something foreign like a banana slug (above), or the ever present moss and lichen.

Where there’s no trees there are views, but the trail turns into micro-track. Paula was still getting used to the loaded bike and the narrow trail had her head a bit.

Eventually it was time to head down, with 3000 feet of hard earned elevation to descend on the “crown jewel” of Oakridge singletrack - the Alpine Trail.

It’s a blast, just a little too steep for good flow, but maybe my standards are too high. I had neglected to ship the adapter to add air to Paula’s fork (to compensate for the extra gear she was carrying), so on the steep downhills she was riding in a compromised position. This made the downhill sketchier than it needed to be, but she handled it well.

I had some flashbacks of the CCP, and maybe that colored my experience (I suffered badly on the third descent of Alpine during the race). Not complaining at all — I’d ride it again in a heartbeat, but it just doesn’t live up to the “crown jewel” hype.

We crossed the classic red covered bridge in Westfir, headed for FOOD in Oakridge. It was late in the afternoon and hot. We’d only covered 30 miles, but a tough 30. Paula was focused on hitting 40 miles, so her mind was fixed on continuing on.

As we pedaled a few easy miles into town I subtly hinted that it would be a good idea to stop and get a room. There’s no reason to kill it and be tired for the rest of the trip. After the hints failed I finally had to argue convincingly, which worked. She admitted it didn’t make sense, but she’s just used to full bore effort. This is supposed to be a vacation, remember! We’d just done a ride that many wouldn’t even consider doing, unloaded! We shouldn’t feel bad about not riding until the sun goes down!

There was a free concert in town, so as we made our way down the main drag every motel was full. The second to last motel offered to let us call the last one to save us the ride. They had one room left, and in the time it took to ride over there someone came looking for a room. Good thing we called!

I rode Paula’s bike to the shop, where Mackenzie and the crew of Willamette Mtn Mercantile were kind enough to open up a new Marzocchi adapter so I could add air to her fork. I took care of a few other things on her bike and got some more trail beta before heading back to relax in the room.

Day 2, 30 miles but 6000′+ climbing.

We were worried about traffic and heat on the 12 mile paved ride out to the Middle Fork Trail. So we foolishly got an early start. Traffic was nil, and heat wasn’t an issue all day (they have these things in Oregon called trees–it’s a novel concept).

The lack of signage on the Middle Fork Trail was a little frustrating. Since the road parallels it, my GPS track couldn’t really tell me where the trail starts. Peeking into Sand Prairie campground yielded no trail signs, but I decided to take a spin around camp anyway. Sure enough, the trail starts at the far end, and we were good to go.

There are a couple tricky spots right off the bat, and Paula fumbled around a bit. She was tired from yesterday’s effort (remember, she’s not a cyclist!) and the road ride out had been pretty tortuous for her. She told me later that she was mostly frustrated because she knew she should be enjoying the trail, since it was right at her level, but she wasn’t.

I had been incorrectly using my Epic Designs seat bag, and was having problems with it rubbing and catching when I hit big bumps or jumps. So I stopped to fiddle with it, quickly realizing the problem, but not before deciding to adjust the angle of my saddle.

Big mistake. The saddle bolts are ones you really need to get tight or you’ll find yourself with a bouncing saddle. Right as I was about to crank down on the seat I thought, “Let’s see, this is our only 5mm allen wrench, hmmm…”

A second later it snapped. Shit.

The seat was fairly secure, but we were now missing the most useful tool a cyclist can carry. I figured we’d run into more cyclists on this trail (it was the weekend) and perhaps I could trade multi-tools with them or buy a 5mm wrench.

A minute later I saw two riders, but by some twist of fate, they weren’t on the same trail as us! I wasn’t about to yell through the forest at someone enjoying their ride, and I figured we’d see more.

A few miles in we got into the thick of the trail — some very nice sections. Paula found her groove and even commented, “why would someone shuttle this? I’d rather ride up than down! Look how much coasting you get to do on the way up.”

She was right, it was a nice way to travel. We saw two more cyclists, but neither of them carried any tools (!). Mainly I wanted to borrow a 5mm to crank down some more on the seat.

We kept rolling, enjoying a pleasant day along the rolling river. I could get used to this. As we slowly gained elevation the sudden and simultaneous appearance of downed trees and mosquitoes had us questioning whether we wanted to stay on the trail. But we kept going on past Indigo Springs. Eventually we passed a connector trail leading back to the road and thought for a second about taking it. Paula said we should stick with the trail, so we rolled on.

Two more downed trees forced us to slow down and allowed the bugs to catch up. “This is no good.” Paula doesn’t like mosquitoes, because they really like her.

We turned around and headed back to the deserted road. I didn’t know which road to take now, so I suggested a nap in a bug free area. I studied maps while Paula got a little rest. It was a gamble — one road was the major travel route and was more likely to be clear of snow and trees. But it went by Timpanogas Lake, famed for its thick mosquitoes. The other was more unknown and climbed higher.

I chose the higher “grade” road, thinking it would be an easier climb.

It wasn’t. It was paved for a while, but so steep that we quickly realized that the mosquitoes could keep up with us. Paula started hammering to get away from her current swarm. We called these burst efforts “mosquito intervals” or “mosquito-leks”, finally settling on “fart-mosquitoes” (fartlek is a running interval term). We made quick work of the climb this way, but dug deep into energy stores.

Now above 5000 feet the road signs pointed us higher, but I spied a lesser contouring road on the GPS. It panned out and saved a few hundred feet of climbing (which sounds like nothing right now, sitting in my comfortable home, but out there, at the time, it meant everything).

As we rejoined the major road, snow appeared and the bugs grew thick. We were at the turnoff for Timponagos lake when Paula said, “I’m done, we need to stop for the night.”

Oh boy! If I can just get the tent set up, we should be OK. I thought there’d be a water pump at the lake, so we rolled into the developed campground. Paula did circles around the campground while I fumbled around with the tent. Every time I’d bend over I’d get swarmed so bad that I could hardly see what I was doing.

I pulled the plug on this idea. Even getting a mile from the lake would be worth it. I packed back up and noted that the pump was shut off. As we passed the Middle Fork trail I told Paula to continue while I pumped water from the river. Swarmed again.

I had hoped we’d make it to Lemolo Lake, on the other side of the divide, where we’d be lower and hopefully out of the bugs. I hadn’t planned on getting shut down by the fart-mosquito intervals and steepness of the road.

But we found a small spot to pitch the tent, again with Paula riding up and back on the road while I got things setup. She made a mad dash for the tent while I suited up in full rain gear to cook dinner.

It was alright, and pretty amazing to see the swarm constantly near the mesh door of the tent, just waiting for Paula to get out. By morning she was counting big bites and the total was somewhere near 30. In contrast and despite spending a lot more time stationary and outside the tent, I struggled to find 2 or 3 bites on me.

Day 3 - 50 miles, 7000′ climbing

Good camp sleep followed by a reluctance to face the bugs again meant a late start. We made a plan for how to pack things up as quickly as possible, with the tent being the last thing to take down as Paula headed off down the road.

I told her to circle at any intersections since I wouldn’t know which way to go until I got there. I found her about a couple miles later, but I was overheating big time (does it ever get cold here?!) in my rain gear, so I stopped to pull it off. I was amazed to find no bugs at this slightly breezy spot.

I’m not really sure why this stop took so long, but it took longer than I anticipated. The result was that I fell a little further behind Paula.

Not a good thing — she wasn’t there at the next intersection and I had a moment’s panic. I looked at the less traveled road and was pretty sure I couldn’t see a tire track. I figured I’d see her track soon on the main road.

But as I rolled down, I didn’t see it. Damn this gravel road! For the previous 2 miles I could always see it, but now it was invisible. I thought she might have been riding back and forth on the secondary road and might have just missed me. So I turned around.

This time I made sure no tires went that way, and yelled her name. She must have taken the main road. I pedaled with haste back down the road.

I ran into her going the other way, and she had cracked. She had told me earlier that she could handle about 30 bites before she went berserk, and she was now going berserk! Crying and hysteric, she couldn’t understand what had taken me so long, and eventually said “I just want to go home! Get me out of here!”

She had stopped to take her jacket off and had been swarmed. That combined with me not being there and having to backtrack or worry she’d gone the wrong way sent her over the edge.

She calmed down once I was there, though, and we kept rolling over the divide into the Umpqua drainage. I had a pretty good idea that there was a lodge at Lemolo Lake, and hoped we could stay there, taking an easy day and sleeping out of the bugs.

In the pre-trip scramble I’d somehow forgotten to upload my set of waypoints that included the location of Lemolo Lake’s lodge/store. I had a guess as to which side of the lake it was on, but was hoping for signs to confirm my memory.

First we had a few confusing intersections to navigate, and stopping to pull out the maps and inspect the GPS for elevation contours wasn’t really an option. Going downhill at the present junction doesn’t necessarily yield the path of least resistance, but in this case a hasty decision to give us coasting did pay off. After descending a while I spied a singletrack on the right side of the road. It was the North Umpqua Trail! Sweet!

I didn’t try to talk Paula into it, happy to b-line it to the lodge. But she wanted to roll singletrack rather than road, so we hit it.

Good thing. It was easy, contouring, and very, very fun. The bugs decreased as we cruised down the valley. But soon we were passing the Lake (visible only on the GPS, not from the woods of the trail). And we’d passed no connecting trails to drop us back to the road.

There was no telling when the next access point would be (impossible to tell from the map), so we picked up our bikes and bushwacked a short distance down to the road. A road sign told us that the lodge was only a mile away. Woohoo!

We walked into the lodge like zombies and ordered the biggest breakfast we could dream of. Quentin cooked us the best bacon I’ve ever had and some pretty mean french toast on homemade bread. We got their “overflow” room and proceeded to nap the rest of the afternoon away.

We then took “chomper”, the resident lodge dog, for a walk along the lake, ate another meal and began the search for my lost gloves. I had planned to ride the 8 mile singletrack loop around the lake in the evening, but when I suited up I realized I didn’t have my gloves.

I inquired at the lodge and was happy to hear from the hostess, “yeah, I saw them by the tree and put them….right….here….”.

But they weren’t there. “That’s weird, someone must have taken them.”

One of the other employees overheard and offered to set me up with his walmart “work” gloves which were very close to what I ride with anyway. Super nice guy, he went and grabbed them so I could go spin around the lake.

They were awesome, all camo’d out. I wish I’d taken a picture of them. But I was focused more on the views from the lake and the nice sunset.

There were some fun sections on this generally flat trail, but the downed trees were trouble — mosquitoes would swarm, forcing another mosquito interval session.

A great evening, and a fun chance to ride footloose and fancy free without camping gear. We had such an awesome stay at Lemolo — a great family run place with everything the touring cyclist needs to relax and recover. Scott (the dad) even took a grinder to my shattered 5mm allen, thus resurrecting it.

Boy, this is getting long. Next installment it’s on to the epic Umpqua Trail and a totally awesome day for Paula, a complete reversal from mosquito hell.

We wrapped up our Oregon singletrack tour. I think it exceeded any and all expectations.

410 miles
40,000 feet of climbing
8mph average speed (!)
>60% singletrack

Trails covered (in order): Ridgeline, Elijah Bristow “soggy” trail, North Shore, North Shore Tie, Winberry Divide, Tire Mtn, Alpine, Middle Fork Willamette (~20 miles), Lemolo Lake Trail, North Umpqua Trail (~60+ miles), Middle Fork again, North Fork Trail, Aufderheide (paved but it felt like a bike path), Mackenzie River Trail (~50+ miles out and back), King Castle.

Oregon, this time of year, is so ideally suited to singletrack touring. Oh, let me count the ways.

1) Endless singletrack. The core of our route was the three river trails: Middle Fork Willamette, North Umpqua and the Mackenzie.
2) Plentiful daylight - dusk til 10pm. Big thumbs up!
3) Warm nights = super comfy camping
4) Shade means it never really gets hot, even on paved roads
5) Car free backroads to connect the singletrack
6) Lack of hike-a-bike, even with camping gear we didn’t have any extended bike pushin’
7) Water, water everywhere! I never carried more than 100 ounces.
8- No storms - not a drop of rain.

The downsides are:

1) Buggies. They prevented us from hitting the higher elevation stuff, and we needed a tent even at lower elevation.
2) Poison Oak. We rode a few of the “worst” trails for it, but frequent Technu washings seems to have done the trick. Neither of us had even a hint of rash. So, basically, it wasn’t a problem.

This was the most comfortable singletrack trip I’ve ever done for many reasons. Sure, I was carrying a tent and stove for the first time, but the trails were so sweet, so rideable and the conditions so ideal that it really was a dream trip.

Paula was awesome. The first big trail day was a hard one, and she’s never singletrack toured. We did a ride that people don’t even do unloaded, but she hung in there and by the time we were on the Umpqua she had a great rhythm going. I was really impressed, especially when she was cleaning sections on the “Dread and Terror” (that’s the real name) segment of the trail when other unloaded and shuttled riders were walking.

This country doesn’t have the call of adventure that the GET or AZT trails have. But the adventure was in putting together our route and connecting things in a way no one really has before. We bought several maps along the way and “made up” some sections as we went. And the result was always good. I don’t think there were any wrong choices to make out there. The roads are pleasant, the trails incredible, and the camping was always super enjoyable.

Looking back through the pictures it almost was like a dream — was I really there? Sign of a good trip, for sure.

We’re in Oregon for a bit longer. I’ll work on the full report and plow through the rest of the photos when back in AZ.

The next ride, more or less

Paula and I are flying to Oregon, shipping our bikes, then heading out on the trail for two weeks.

There’s no shortage of high caliber trails in the Cascades. The general idea is to hit some subset of: North Umpqua Trail, Middle Fork Willamette, Alpine, Eugene to Crest, Waldo Lake, Phil’s / Mrazek, Mackenzie River Trail.

Pretty much every trail I’ve ever heard of in Oregon.

I got a massive collection of GPS tracks, some maps, and some idea of how to piece all this together. But we have no set agenda, no pace to set.

We’re going pretty lightweight, but we do have a tent of sorts and a pop can stove. No racks — this is a singletrack tour after all.

There are a few possible show stoppers: poison oak, mosquitoes and snow being the big three. I’m sure we’ll run into all three in some quantity. I had a systemic reaction to poison oak on a previous visit, so I’ll be extra careful, use technu and try to wash off whenever possible.

After Climb or Die I’m now really feeling the heat, so I’m very much looking forward to trees, shade and cool temps.