The cycling business has profited immensely from encouraging us cyclists to think in terms of grams when it comes to bike parts. (Exactly how big is a gram anyway? Could you feel one if I dropped it in your hand?) However, a recent article in a bicycle trade paper suggests that shops should begin promoting bike touring since the mountain bike boom appears to be dying. There’s just a tiny problem with this strategy. You don’t weigh a loaded, touring bike in grams, you weigh it in pounds – lots of them!
Anyway, that’s been my sad excuse for sticking to day rides for the last 30 years. Oh, I’ve ridden in remote places like the Alvord Desert and Leslie Gulch, but there’s always been a car lurking in the background. Three factors came together this July to lure me onto a solo, unsupported tour across Oregon. It was the month of my 50th birthday, I was starting to “collect” rusty bike frames at a frightening rate, and my climbing partner Tom was planning to go to Wyoming and climb the 13,700′ Grand Teton.
I couldn’t see going that far and coming straight back, so I spent a frantic last week assembling a touring bike from used components. A quick ride around the block and it was time to load it in Tom’s pick-up along with ice axes, crampons and ropes. The Tetons are unlike anything in the Cascades, the climb was sufficiently eventful, and after 24 hours without sleep, we arrived back at the trailhead, still on schedule.
We drove across Idaho and at 3 PM, much the worst for wear I faced up to the task of unloading my bike, strapping on the load and watching Tom on his way back to a busy week. I was in Huntington, one of Oregon’s lesser-known settlements, next to the Snake River on the eastern border. I waited for a while as rain poured down and thunder echoed around the brown hills. When it eased to light showers, I pedaled off onto a BLM Scenic Byway that promised an exciting first day of loaded touring.
The last time I had ridden off for a whole week of cycling had been some 30 years before, when the English youth hostel system had relieved me of the need for all but the minimum of luggage – a saddlebag. Now I was in an entirely different situation, on a 40 mile, gravel road along Oregon’s isolated, eastern border with no facilities whatsoever.
I rattled over the first of many, cattle grids and soon caught my first glimpse of the Snake River, surrounded by high, dry hills, like those in the eastern gorge. The surface was well maintained and I had no trouble on high pressure, narrow tires…….. until the hills appeared. Even a riverside road has to climb occasionally, and mine began to rise above the reservoir with a vengeance. That was why I had brought a 24 X 28 gear with me!
There were occasional cabins along the water, but none of them looked very permanent or particularly lived in. I even found a signpost after a couple of hours, although it suggested I was going slower than I had imagined. Around sunset, I passed a public camp-site, but the sound of generators and the site of satellite dishes didn’t suit my taste and I carried on. I was still looking for a quiet spot when the road started uphill. This time it wasn’t just a bump, but the route out of the valley.
I decided this was actually “a good thing” since I could do part of the climb now and save the rest for tomorrow. I stopped at the next stream crossing and found a flat spot under a tree. It was a damp night in my borrowed bivvy bag, but I slept like a log. The hill was still there the next day and I had to scrape wet clay from off my shoe cleats before I could even start riding.
My tires left a clear line in the wet road, a sure sign that I was going to have work hard. I stayed in that lowest gear for a very long time, eventually realizing it was time for a new concept for me: a rest stop. When I re-started, I had to roll back downhill just to get my feet back in again.
After an hour of hard labor, the Wallowa mountains and the town of Richland appeared in the distance, looking like the Promised Land, its barns and silos gleaming in the distance. I had to control my speed on the long downhill because there were sections of washboard waiting to catch me unawares. Finally, that blessed moment when you reach the blacktop again is one to remember. Suddenly the constant, crunching noise is replaced by a low hum and the bike seems to leap ahead in response. But I soon eased back, realizing that there were more hills ahead.
The next was the steady, slow grade up to the Oregon Trail Museum overlooking Baker at 3,680′. It took most of the day to get there, following the Powder River upstream. It was only 40, rainy miles, but a long way. Then a quick downhill to the prairie and over the freeway. I couldn’t think of anything to buy – that I wanted to carry – so I carried on out of town for six, perfectly flat miles of river bottom.
Then the climbing commenced again. I managed to stay motivated, looking for the perfect camp site until I reached the shores of the Philips Reservoir. I followed an abandoned road away from the lake until I was surrounded by pine trees with only a slight noise from traffic. I cooked soup on my solid fuel stove and watched the stars overhead. Bats flew overhead, making louder noises than I thought they were capable of.
The climb into the Blue Mountains continued the next morning, but I was feeling stronger, fit enough to take a detour 4 miles up to Sumpter! All the way from Baker, I had been following the route of the Sumpter Valley Railroad, now I could see the restored track beside the road, the last five miles. The engines only steam up on weekends, but the gold rush town of Sumpter was crowded anyway – with numerous motor homes packing the side streets, everyone preparing for the popular Fourth of July flea market.
Sumpter has a third, civic project underway – the restoration of one of the largest gold dredges remaining in the lower 48 states. Half a century after the last, dripping bucketload of gravel was scraped from the valley floor, the dredge sits quietly in its last pond, next to the railroad terminal. The 1240 ton vessel ran around the clock from 1935-54, scarring the valley with 6 miles of arid tailings. It should be open to the public by next year.
I was pleased I’d made the effort to visit this fascinating spot, but the Blue Mountain crossing still awaited me. Even my state highway map detailed three 5,000′ passes before I reached the John Day Valley. After I’d ticked off the first, the Larch Summit, I rolled down onto an unspoiled, high flatland. On my left I saw a sign and turned down a gravel road to eat lunch beside an old corral, surrounded by the remains of the ghost town of Whitney. A loose, corrugated roof creaked and blew in the wind. It looked like the set for the next “spaghetti western.”
Slowly, I worked my up to the Dixie Pass at 5279′, then began a fabulous runout down into the fertile, John Day Valley. This was the geographic goal of my journey and I gratefully parked my bike against a downtown wall, where I met the only, long-distance cyclist I spoke to during the week – Ian from Seattle who was riding to Salt Lake City on a heavily-laden mountain bike.
I was now on the official Cross America Route and hoped to find some specific, “biker” accommodations. Actually, I had previously visited the municipal camp site and museum nearby; I pedaled slowly over there and found the perfect camp site for $2, with my own picnic table beside a rushing stream. Now I was determined to enjoy the valley after some hard riding. I began with a tour of the pioneer cemetary, then a pizza and local beer at the town’s only restaurant.
The next day it was only 13, easy miles to John Day, the center of valley life. My first stop was the Kam Wah Chung Museum, an unassuming, windowless building that contains the most amazing, historical collection I’ve ever beheld. I parked my bike and peered in the darkened interior. Inside, it was as if time has stood still. Not in the 1950s, when the Chinese owner retired from his oriental, medical practice, but in the 1880s, when there was a thriving Chinese community.
Calendars, trade goods and a complete herbal, apothecary crowded my senses, producing a real “time warp.”This experience was so rewarding, I decided to do a little more sightseeing in the area, pushing a mile south to reach Canyon City, the county seat. A couple of wagons parked outside a barn-like building beside the main road caught my eye. I had discovered the Ox Bow Trade Company, a remarkable store, museum and workshop, building, selling and exhibiting horse-drawn wagons. I learned the difference between a
“buggy” and a “surrey” – since forgotten. These antique vehicles were completely hand-built by craftsmen who moved on with the times to become bicycle builders.
Another 30, rolling miles brought me to Dayville, where the Presyterian Church offers lodging to all cyclists. Here I met several generations of a family that has farmed here since the wagon trains came through. There was a Fourth of July parade the next day, but I was already anticipating a less conventional event – the Rainbow Gathering!
It would mean forgoing my planned backroads route through Fossil, but that looked pretty inhospitable when I reached the crossroads in the John Day Picture Gorge. “Fossil isn’t going anywhere,” I told myself, and continued west to Mitchell, over a 4,300′ hill that looked way bigger than that. I dropped 2,000′ down to Mitchell, and collapsed in the park, conscious of the small stream of decorated vehicles stopping for supplies on their way to the gathering.
I would certainly have to go myself, but there remained the small matter of another 2,000′ climb into the Ochoco Mountains. It was afternoon and the sun was stoking the temperature in the valley. I waded into the stream, soaked my shirt, and set off. In ten minutes I was bone dry, and wished I was wearing cotton instead of super-efficient synthetics. With progress painfully slow, I crawled toward the pine forest on the hill tops, passing a couple of VW buses cooling their engines in the shade.
On a heavily graveled side road, I gratefully accepted a ride in a bigger van with a bunch of drunken, aging dropouts, and eventually reached ground zero. I rode on past lots crowded with converted buses and exhausted walkers until I found myself at the ehart of the event. For a mile in every direction there were tents of every color and shape. Hidden in the trees were ingenious camp kitchens centered around carefully-constructed clay ovens. I was (apparently) one of possibly two cyclists who had ridden into the heart of the counter culture.
I have told friends “It was like Woodstock, but without any music.” That’s flippant, but true. For there was never anything actually happening. Of the thousands of people I passed at the site, no one so much as commented on the fact that I had obviously ridden there, while they had all driven. After a day, I was ready to carry on, along the eastern edge of the Cascades, then over Mount Hood. It was Sunday and Hwy 26 was as busy as a freeway, seemingly crowded with every R.V. in Oregon.
The climb to Government Camp was tolerable, but I was determined to get “off the beaten track” one more time. I dropped down through the Still Creek campground, circled Trillium Lake and finally located the Still Creek Road, an obscure alternative down to Zig Zag. I realized by then that I was in no state to negotiate a 12-mile descent on a washed-out, dirt road. But I did it anyway, survived another hour on Hwy 26 then happily turned off to Boring and the Springwater Corridor, my “private” backroad home. As I sped down the old trolley line I barely noticed that my bike weighed pounds, lots of them, not grams.