Some of you may recall the BOB trailer off-road camping report I posted on the General board back in February. This is the same trail I did on that trip.
I've already done most of this trail on my mountain bike, but there's a gap of a few miles I haven't done, including several miles where the trail is unmaintained, has numerous major washouts and may or not be passable. The south end of the trail - theoretically - connects with a riverside access road that extends south from the rafter town of Maupin and connects with a state highway. I could make a loop trip out of this. It would involve 40 miles of gravel road and rail-trail and 50 miles of pavement. The mountain bike is not the right tool for the job. Time to throw a real challenge at the cyclocross bike I bought a year ago.
I'm going to start near the point labeled "Sherar" in the lower left corner of this map and follow the river (marked by the Wasco-Sherman county line) to its confluence with the Columbia near the top of the map. From there I'll head southeast up Fulton Canyon to Locust Grove, South to Moro on a road not shown on the map, South to Grass Valley on the shoulder of US 97, and back down into the Deschutes canyon on SR 216. Whew!
5:30 am, Saturday. I'm camped at Deschutes State park on the Columbia and Deschutes rivers. This is going to be about the midpoint of my trip, so I stash my lunch and a tire pump in the tent and head out. Should be a perfect day - mid-seventies in the forecast. Any earlier in the season, and it would be too hot in the canyon ... any later, and it would be too cold and blustery up on the plateau. The disadvantage of having perfect weather is that I only have 11 hours of daylight. Better get my ass moving.
7:30 am. I'm on the bike, heading down the river access road. Very heavily washboarded, but doable. I make it 14 miles to the end of the road in just over an hour. Not bad.
Now the "trail" begins. I plunge into the unmaintained section of the trail proper. In places, it is rideable:
In other parts, it is not:
I've attempted this before. A couple of years ago I tried to do this with my mountain bike, but was not prepared to carry my bike long distances, and turned back after getting less than a mile in.
It gets much worse than shown in that last photo. The railroad grade is built up about 100 feet from the river level, but over the next few miles I encounter six separate places where old trestles have been washed out. Each time I must climb down off the grade, often scrambling over scree and talus (bike shoes do not do well in this situation!), and back up the other side, with the bike slung over my shoulder. Thank God I've got the cyclocross bike this time. I've removed one of the bottle cages and taped foam pipe wrap around the top tube. That helps, but the bike starts hurting my shoulder and lower back ... still, it's a hell of a lot better than carrying the mountain bike.
Even on the railroad grade, I'm pushing or carrying the bike more than I'm riding it. In many places I'm picking my way across rockpiles that have accumulated over the years on the railbed. In other places I'm crashing through overgrown sagebrush.
I've estimated this unmaintained section of the trail as 3 miles, and I've planned my 11 hours of daylight carefully, allowing for 60 to 90 minutes to get through this part. I'm wrong. It's over 5 miles and takes just over 2 hours.
11 am. I emerge onto the far end of the maintained trail, my arms littered with scrapes, scuffs, bruises and even a couple of chainring punctures. I'd deliberately planned this trip so that I could bail out and backtrack if it doesn't look like I'll have enough daylight. Ha! There's no way I'm backtracking those last 5 miles! Committed, I hop on the bike. Nice to actually be on it after those last couple of hours.
So how does this relate to singlespeeding? Well, here's a close-up of my experimental drivetrain:
(that objectionable derailleur has since been removed from the bike, BTW).
Besides trying to finally tackle this trail, one of my objectives on this trip is to get a better idea of what gear ratios I want on my bike (2001 Bianchi Volpe 'crosser). For this trip I've configured it so I can try out a whole bunch of different ratios (fortunately I have horizontal dropouts). With a 48-link chain and the sprockets I've put on my freehub, I can?run 38:16 (2.4/65"), 38:18 (2.1/57"), 38:20 (1.9/51") or 28:30 (0.9/24"). I find the 57" gear about right for most of the gravel roads and rail-trail and the 51" tallish but usable for the more singletrackey parts. the 24" mechanical gear is way to low for anything I encounter on this trip and I don't end up using it at all - although I do use Shiggy's "24 inch" gear a lot.
I make decent time now that I'm back on something rideable. I wasn't sure how the 'cross bike would do, but it's just fine. There are a few rocky parts of this rail-trail (actually rockier than it looks in this photo):
But most of it's a bit smoother than that.
27 miles into my trip I run across the Harris Ranch, an old abandoned homestead:
At this point I'm only 11 miles from the official trailhead, and I start encountering other trail users. None of them have any idea what I'm up to.
Back in the late 19th century there was a competition to see who could be first to provide rail service to Bend and Central Oregon. Crews from competing rail companies furiously worked their way up both sides of the Deschutes, and both lines opened the same year. One of the rail lines went defunct years ago and was converted to the trail I'm riding now, but the tracks on the other side now belong to BNSF, and see a few trains a day:
1:30 pm. I roll into my campsite at the state park, an hour behind schedule. I take a few minutes to savor a killer burrito and pump the tires up to 80 psi for the pavement ahead. Here's a pic of the rivers' confluence - the state park is in the foreground:
I also have another gearing trick up my sleeve. While I'm stopped for lunch I add 3 links to my chain (thank goodness for PowerLinks). This gives me 3 different, road-oriented gear ratios to choose from: 48:18 (2.7/72"), 48:20 (2.4/65") and 38:30 (1.3/34").
I use the 65" gear for most of today's road riding, but I'm really glad I have the 34". Because a couple of miles out of the campground, I start the climb up Fulton Canyon. The first mile isn't too bad, but then it steepens considerably. I end up climbing about a thousand feet in two miles. Fortunately there's a substantial stream flowing along the edge of the road, cooling me considerably. Even so, the 6-10% grade makes 75 degrees feel like 90.
I emerge from the canyon out onto the rolling wheat fields. I'm still going uphill for quite a few more miles, but not steeply. Looking back towards the Columbia River, with Washington's Columbia Hills in the background:
Looking forward, wheat fields as far as the eye can see:
The hill in the foreground doesn't look like much, but it was enough for me to reach 41 mph. On knobby cyclocross tires. Coasting. Nice.
A few miles more and I arrive in Moro. I stop at the store for some ice cream and a refill of the water bottles. Today's entire ride has been in Sherman County, and Moro is the county seat. One bank, a feed store, a NAPA store, a general store, a nice park and historical museum, a courthouse. That's about it. Oh, but they do have a bike lane. I bet I'm the only person to use it today:
The next 10 miles to Grass Valley (more ice cream! and fried chicken!? are along US 97, and I'm not looking forward to this part. The shoulder is 4 feet wide, and 97 typically carries a lot of truck traffic. Not my favorite kind of road riding. But I make good time and truck traffic is eerily absent (lingering effects of the Longshoremen's strike?)
I roll out of Grass Valley at 5:30. I've made up much of the time I lost before, but I'm still not quite going to make it back to the car before dark. Fortunately I've brought some lighting in case this happened.
22 more miles of rollers and downhill (and one incident of getting chased by a dog) and I'll nearly be back to the car. SR 216 is a very quiet road and the state has miraculously chosen to pave it with asphalt, not chip seal. I have a tailwind, a smooth road, and good fuel in the belly. I am flying. The 65" gear isn't tall enough even for the uphill rollers. I stop and switch to the 72", the same gear I commute on. That's the stuff. I stop at an intersection for a minute to watch the full moon rise in the East:
Just before I begin my descent into the canyon, I watch the sun set to the West. I've pasted two shots together here for a composite view. Mt. Jefferson and Ollalie Butte are on the left side of the pic, and Mt. Hood is to the right:
Finally it's time to drop back down into the Deschutes River Canyon. Not quite dark out, but too dark for photos. REALLY too bad, because this side canyon I'm riding down is far more spectacular than any of the pics I've posted in this writeup. The descent is exhilarating, all the more so because my lights aren't that bright (didn't feel like hauling my 2 lb TurboCat with me!) and I've got to keep the speed down to 30 mph or so. I'm definitely going to include this descent in a future road ride. Once that's done I've got 3 more miles of gravel (in the 65" gear) and I'm back at the car. 7:15 pm, not quite 12 hours after I left.
Whew! 'Puter shows 89.6 miles, and 8 hours (which probably includes nearly an hour of PUSHING the bike!), for an "average" speed of 11 mph. Now THAT was an incredible adventure.
I've also gotten a long way towards figuring out what gear ratios I want on my 3-speed cyclocross bike. But that'll be another post.
Return to top of page | Home