As I mentioned a couple weeks ago when I rode in the Twin Lakes area, I'm trying to get out and ride some of the trails in the Mt. Hood area that would become off-limits under Senator Wyden's Mt. Hood Wilderness Bill. The bill does a good job of preserving access to most of the popular bike trails around Hood, and many of the ones that would be closed are not ridden very often anyway. The ones in this weekend's travelogue definitely don't get ridden much - and you're about to see why.
(By the way, I'm including exact trail and road numbers for the information of those who are following Wyden's bill and trying to keep track of the trails involved).
My objective is just a couple miles of east of Twin Lakes. First I decide to try to ride Crane Prairie Trail #464 from the bottom end. I find the trailhead just off road 4870, which is marked but doesn't look much used. The trail starts as a doubletrack, which (at least according to the Green Trails map) is supposed to quickly branch off into a singletrack that runs for several miles along Boulder Creek, passing through Crane Prairie on its way up to a high ridge overlooking Badger Lake and the Badger Creek Wilderness. I explore several doubletrack spurs that end in either old clearcut brush or a new logging operation that is currently underway, but I am unable to find the real trail.
Next, I drive over to a nearby ridge and try to pick up either trail #472 (Hidden Meadows) or #473 (Forest Creek), both of which start at the same trailhead next to where road 4880 crosses Swamp Creek, and then follow low ridges on opposite sides of the creek for about 4 miles, meeting again at Bonney Meadows. Looks like a great loop trip - well, at least on paper.
There is no trailhead marker, although I find what appear to be the actual trailhead and both trails. The trails follow the contours indicated on the map quite precisely, so I'm pretty sure I'm in the right place. Where it's in good shape, the trail looks like this:
But about 1/2 mile in it becomes more and more overgrown, and I give up. Besides, but this point my legs are pretty scraped up from brushwacking.
Next attempt: White River Trail #538. This is a 4-5 mile maintained trail, built for X-C skiing but open to bikes. It starts from a spur off the Barlow Road and tops out at White River Sno-Park on highway 35. I've already scoped out the upper trailhead and located the trail there. Looks good. I head to the bottom to catch it from the other end - if all goes well, I can ride up to the pass, hit a short connector trail and blast back down to the car on Barlow Road. The trail is very promising at first:
I find smooth, needle-covered singletrack through beautiful forest with lots of trailside stumps cut low to allow for aerobic maneuvers by riders who are so inclined. There are some truly huge cedars and Doug firs along the trail, marking this as classic old-growth forest. Then 1.5 miles in I come to a trail junction. The trail to the left stays in the forest, and since it is blazed with the same tree markers as the previous section, I stay on it. But due to the amount of blowdown it becomes clear it hasn't been maintained in years:
So I backtrack and hit the other fork, which crosses a bridge and exits the forest onto the mile-wide White River floodplain. This appears to be the trail, as there are a few other bike tracks here, and there are periodic poles in the ground to mark the way:
The trail is still hard to follow, alternating between scrub forest, rock gardens and stretches of glacial silt sand. The White River is subject to catastrophic flooding in winter storms, occasionally even washing out the highway. It regularly rearranges its floodplain, making bridges like this irrelevant:
I also cross a couple of poisoned-looking creeks, of the weird coloration you sometimes see in mining areas. I grew up in iron country, and the rust color in this water doesn't look to me like it's coming from iron. I make sure Richie doesn't drink any of this:
At least Mt. Hood is occasionally visible through the trees:
After 3 miles on the floodplain, I get close enough to the top to hear the traffic on highway 35. But my time is running short, and I come to a major stream ford that I don't feel like bothering with. Time to turn around:
I think I ended up riding about 12 miles today, but if I'd had a decent trail I easily could have ridden 20+ miles in the amount of time it took. Not that I'm complaining - the reason I like mountain biking in the first place is that it's a wonderful way to explore the woods, and it wouldn't be right if there wasn't some adventure to it sometime. Still, even though trails I've tried to explore this weekend are on the chopping block, I won't miss 'em.
Next outing will be in the Roaring River area, which is more promising.
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