A Weekend Bike Adventure – Where Challenge and Fun Intersect
Up for Adventure
It has been an unseasonably warm and dry October out in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) this year. With our days getting shorter, and the rainy season not quite here but still looming around the corner, how could we we say no when our friends Bruce and Vince invited us to join them on an overnighter out to Larch Mountain? (Larch Mountain is a locally recognized mountain among Portland area outdoor enthusiast that is about a third of the height of the nearby famous Mt Hood (Wy’east). Fun fact the waters from Oregon’s famous Multnomah Falls come from an underground spring on Larch Mountain!).
I was especially interested in joining this adventure as this would be Andrew and my first time participating in dispersed camping on public lands. Thus far Andrew and I had always opted for the luxuries of official campgrounds; we really love that bathroom access. But, we do have a sketch of an idea for our next intended bike tour and it is likely to take us into some more remote areas where those campgrounds and their “luxuries” won’t be an option. So, I was eager to knock out our first dispersed camping night, and with the added comfort of companions who knew what they were doing!
Leaving the City
The first half of the ride out simply involved us getting out of Portland. In general, we were heading east, but A&I ended up adding several miles by detouring pretty far south to meet up with Bruce and Vince. Overall we road about 40 miles each way, but it could have been a lot shorter had we chosen a more direct route. Good thing we like riding our bikes. It was nice riding in different parts of the city that we haven’t really bothered to explore yet. More importantly, it was nice not having to think about or plan out the route since we were just following Bruce. I suppose we put a lot of faith in him! He did take us on a very enjoyable route avoiding major roads, and pairing the route with some nice trails. A good portion of our ride was spent on the paved Springwater Corridor and Gresham/Fairview Trails as well as a couple unpaved trails. Along one of the trails we even got to feast upon some wild apples! And by feast I mean attempt to find ripe ones within reach that hadn’t already been found by other critters, so really we all basically only had one tiny apple each. Luckily we also had homemade apple hand pies that Bruce’s wife had made!
Treats First, Work After
As soon as the suggestion for an ice cream stop was raised there was no turning back. So the four of us moseyed our way to Sugarpine Drive-in, “Oregon’s Premier Destination Drive-In Restaurant” located just off the Historic Columbia River Highway. Being a perfect weather Saturday the place was buzzing with activity, but the food, ambiance, and of course ice cream was worth the wait – and we probably needed the break anyways.
After lunch was the hard part. The thing about camping on a mountain is that you generally have to CLIMB to get to your campsite. Details I must have overlooked in my eagerness. Luckily we weren’t climbing all 4000ft of Larch Mountain, but we definitely went far enough up it to feel the burn (those next day downhills were pretty sweet though). I’m not gonna lie there were a lot of breaks instigated by me, and at least one particularly brutal stretch I had to push Pablo* up the hill. We did get to enjoy some adorable friendly snorting pigs trotting along the road though – don’t see that every day do you?
*Pablo is the name of my bike
The Obstacles
Being a dispersed campsite I won’t go into too much detail about its location – got to hoard its awesomeness for ourselves and keep its majesty you know? But I will tell you, to get to our desired campsite we had to do a little off roading on a small dirt trail. We attempted to ride the trail at first, but it did eventually prove to be too steep for me, so I decided to flex some more of my walking muscles instead. It didn’t take long for everyone to find themselves off of their bikes as well though because we came across at least 8 downed trees blocking our way! And PNW trees are BIG. Did I mention a hiker passed us going the other way and didn’t even think to warn us of our impending obstacles? Some of these trees were hard to climb over even without a bike!
The first couple trees were easy enough to duck under or lift our bikes over individually, but there was one particularly nasty section that gave us pause. We parked the bikes and hiked on foot down to the stream to get a better idea of what we were up against before actually committing ourselves. We decided the worst of it was where we had left our bikes, and thanks to the sunk cost fallacy – we decided we may as well carry on because none of us wanted to go BACK over the trees we had already gone through. We also knew that the trail continues past our intended campsite to another road so we decided it’d be easier to leave the next day that way if today we pressed on rather than turn back. So we bucket brigaded all our bags and bikes past the worst of the fallen trees that were up to our waists and carried on.
In addition to all of the tree climbing we did have a stream to ford as well (but at least we had already known about that particular challenge ahead of time). Conveniently, there were enough logs laid out making it a fairly straight forward crossing. I guess some logs are good logs! After the stream we were all able to hop back on our bikes and actually ride for the last stretch, because the trail was smooth sailing-err riding-to our campsite from there.
The Campsite
All of our efforts were rewarded as we rolled into a lovely hidden campsite with just enough time to set up before dark. We all found places to pitch our tents and enjoy supper together. We stayed up chatting well past dark – although in reality it probably wasn’t really “staying up late” as it does get dark pretty early. Andrew and I were extra lazy this trip and found some dehydrated meals in our pantry to bring along – so no real cooking or dishes!
Andrew and I had way overprepared for what we thought would be a cold evening. Somehow the temperatures stayed pleasant all throughout the night – I’m pretty sure I’ve been waking up colder back home with our windows left open than I did camping in the woods at a higher elevation – how that works out is beyond me.
The Wrap Up
We had a pretty lazy morning waking up with the sun and easing our way into the day. Of course we practiced good Leave No Trace Principles and packed up everything we brought. A&I finally ‘got to’ use our 3 year-old-never-before-used trowel that we had dragged all the way down the Pacific Coast the previous year.
Day two’s ride was pretty straight forward, with only 2 downed trees to climb over to get out of the woods by continuing on the trail past our campsite. The morning ride flew by, quite literally – okay not literally-literally, but figuratively-literally. We were going fast. (My max speed was 33mph – but I do have a healthy relationship with my brakes, so that was plenty fast for me). Since it was on our way home anyways, we opted for a photo op and snack break at the scenic Women’s Forum.
The rest of the ride was pretty uneventful, some of the gang opted to head directly home after we made it into the traffic filled streets of the suburbs, but A&I decided to take the easier mental route by going several miles out of our way on the Springwater Trail. What an adventure!
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