During spring, the calendar of biking events is pretty stacked. My BFF, the Honorable Right Reverend Steven T. Carver, Extraordinaire (Steve Carver) and Irina Carver had a “beh-beh“ last year, so I thought to myself, “Self? (That’s what I call myself) Let’s go to Salem, Oregon, to visit them’nz guys. And while we’re at it, give that Odyssey of the VOG thing a whirl.” (As advertised, the baby Elouise Carver is legitimately the cutest child ever to crawl the earth.)

Day 1

Bright and early on May 28, 2022, race day, my wife, Lynn Short, drove me to the VOG start area. The clouds had yet to uncork the torrents of rain promised by the miserable forecast. So I was free to load Hagar the Horrible (my bike) with all the necessary boat anchors and bench vises I’d need for the ride.

A gaggle of riders gathered at the grange in the farmlands west of Salem to kick this thing off. (Trackleaders states it was 20 riders, but it looked like more than 30 riders to me.) I engaged in the obligatory rider schmoozing and handed out of Gravel Braintrust stickers before the race began.

The rather horrible rain forecast had not delivered yet. The pre-ride preparations weren’t hurried, and I didn’t do something dumb like ride off without rain gear or food for the entire day. There was a coffee sponsor with a table set up, so this day was off to a great start.

The proverbial gun went off and the hammer group went down the road, while I rode at a more restrained pace – not that I could have kept up even if I wasn’t loaded a little heavy.

It was pretty impressive how light almost everyone was packed. I assumed there were at least a few riders subscribing to the “ride hard to stay warm” tactic. Which is a terrible idea when there are plenty of 10+ mile descents that I know I’ll be descending in the cold, cold rain.

I brought all the rain gear, 4 pairs of gloves, and a 17° sleeping bag with a bivy sack with an inflatable Barney pad. I had a delusional idea that I might ride this thing straight through without stopping, but I also wanted to be prepared in case I did stop. If I lay down, I want to be comfortable.

Yes, this is a race, but it’s also a vacation, and I’m getting a solid 8 hours of sleep if I stop.

I fell in early with a few riders, among them was a local dude by the name of Roman. We were both on Team K-Lite, and by that I mean that we were both wearing K-Lite cycling caps that we hadn’t ordered from Jefe Bikes, the US. K-Lite distributor,  but received anyway, and that’s definite grounds for being BFFs in ultra bikepacking circles.

Mountains & Valleys

I rode the first climb with Trish – her husband, Ben, is one of the organizers of the VOG – so she had some solid route intel. Ketl Rodakowski came rolling up deep into the steep part of the climb – the same Ketl from Olympia who made elk bibmbap after the Evergreen Grinder and duck egg omelettes after Cascadia Super Gravel. This was my first time actually riding with him.

We were waiting for Charlie Kramer to come blazing past us – apparently Charlie didn’t quite have his bike packed when the ride started. But he’s one seriously strong dude, so we didn’t think it would be too long before we saw him.

You learn different things about a friend when you hang out with them on a bike ride as opposed to their kitchen. So after rolling along the ridge for a while, we hit the first big descent, and that’s where I learned that Ketl descends like a goddamn maniac. Of course, I do too, so down the mountain we went, hooting and hollering the whole way.

The road surface was pretty far from smooth, and we passed a few more sensible riders like they were going backwards as well as a few others fixing flat tires. Sadly, such races aren’t won by bombing down the descents, but they are definitely made more fun that way.

We continued riding together up the next valley until we could kid ourselves no longer that the mist we’d been riding through hadn’t become rain and would stay that way for the foreseeable future. We stopped to dig out rain gear; I got going first and rode on figuring I’d see them later when Charlie caught up.

Keep in mind the epiphany I had 2 weeks ago that I’ve never been on a ride with Charlie that wasn’t the hardest, gnarliest thing I’ve done all year. That 100 mile snow drag from 2 weeks back would be hard to surpass, but given the grim weather forecast for the VOG, it was a definite possibility to keep this streak going.

Somewhere in that valley I passed Joe Bush who was installing a tube. Later on the next steep climb, I met a young dude named Sam who was riding a sweet classic cyclocross bike with 35 mm tires that looked more like 23s. He’s a much stronger rider, so he passed me anytime the road smoothed out.

The route, as I may have mentioned, was rather consistently chunky, so we leap frogged each other frequently and carried on a good conversation.

I wondered how many spare brake pads Sam had brought for his cantilever brakes. Those brakes can’t be beaten in dry conditions, but the pads melt off rather quickly in the rain. Throw gravel and grit into the mix and those suckers vanish almost instantly.

We rode into Black Rock mountain bike park at some point, one of my haunts back in my Portland days. I lived in Oregon for 13 years, so unexpected familiar places would become a theme on the VOG. 

After Falls City

Later, on a climb out of Falls City, a dude riding a sweet titanium gravel bike – made by a small-frame builder and bike shop in Seattle, ironically named Good Weather – slowed down to ride with me and wait for his buddy Joe to catch up after his flat tire incident. I’ll call him “GW,” because I never caught his name.

We got to chatting and G-dub was swerving all over the road to maintain my snail’s pace, while I was plowing straight up the mountain. He asked how the hell I was doing this, and I hadn’t really thought about it until that moment.

I was riding a Chamois Hagar (pronounced “Shammy”) by Evil Bikes. The name is a play on the chamois butt pad in the seat of a pair of bike shorts and Sammy Hagar, the iconic hair metal butt-rocker from the 80s.

The bike has some weird shit going on in terms of its geometry that has earned it a reputation among its critics who have never ridden it as “un-turnable.” Conversely, it should also have this other problem called “wheel-flop,” which basically means that if you point the bike uphill the front wheel will flop to the left or the right depending upon the angle of the grade.

So, those Horrible Chamois Hagars have earned their unrideable reputation through ignorance. To be fair, if you’re throwing down 5 Gs on a gravel bike, very few folks will choose a bike that’s far outside the norm almost to the point of absurdity. Also, most gravel riders don’t require the kind of trail ripping from a bike that I generally get into.

I own 3 gravel bikes, which includes an Open UP and a Salsa Cutthroat. These are 3 very different bikes, but Hagar the Horrible is the best handler of them all. Anyway, I don’t mean to imply that G-dub’s Good Weather was wheel-flopping, he was clearly riding a little too slowly for his gearing.

Oregon Coast Range

The route continued over another mountain, and down and up a couple more long valleys following crystal clear creeks and rivers shaded by the dense mossy and intensely green forest of the Oregon Coast Range.

At one point I had been walking for a long time out of a steep, steep valley when a dude in a jeep who’d passed me at the bottom of the climb stopped on his way back down to ask if I knew where the Valley of the Giants was. It’s an old-growth forest for which the VOG is named.

Me: “I have no idea, but apparently it’s somewhere in the next… [checks bike computer] 280 miles.”

I paused to grab a PBJ at the top of the climb and take in the view of a great green misty valley with glimpses of the gravel road I’d be descending. Half of this valley had been clear cut, so presumably this was not the Valley of the Giants I was looking upon.

I’d been riding solo for a long time when I was walking up the next big steep climb and began catching glimpses of G-dub’s yellow rain jacket ahead on the next switchback. I did not expect to see him so close by. I perked up at the prospect of descending the next hill with him, but as I approached the summit, my Wahoo bike computer died.

Why they don’t put a battery indicator on the navigation screen or have a pop-up warning when it’s about to die is beyond me. They thought of a lot of other crap. I plugged it into the cache battery and prayed for that thing to reboot quickly.

Wahoo will recover the ride info when the battery dies, but it takes about 15 minutes. I canceled that shit because now there was cold whipping wind added to the dumping buckets of rain and I was cooling off fast.

I didn’t dare navigate blind down that mountain because logging roads fan out in all directions at every intersection out there. Nor did I want to dig my phone out, buried in a pack in its waterproof case, and navigate one handed. I’ve really gotta get a phone mount for the bars. 

Grand Ronde

It was a fast 8 mile descent, the Wahoo died again, but I got it going again very quickly and soon I was at the bottom entering the town of Grand Ronde for our first resupply at the 97-mile mark.

I caught up with Sam right as the sun came out, we were both mystified by this strange new sensation called warmth. Sam’s brakes made a terrible sound as we pulled into the gas station. His brakes were completely gone and he very wisely hadn’t brought any spare brake pads.

A friend was there to pick him up within a half hour, and the rest of us felt just a little bit envious. I’ve had a bit of practice at cold weather gas station resupply over this never-ending winter, which can be confusing and time-consuming – you’re not necessarily hungry for what you need, and it’s easy to stand around shivering and burning the hell out of your tongue on hot things from the microwave.

But I was on my A-game and didn’t waste any time getting hot water from the coffee station into my hydro vest, filling electrolyte bottles and getting a bunch of food. G-dub was shivering and eyeballing my rain gear as I prepared to shove off – his buddy Joe had arrived by then.

Things were looking up as I rode off into the next valley. The sun wasn’t out anymore, but I was warm and drying out, having peeled off a couple rain suit layers. I hit the next mountain and climbed in relative comfort for several hours. But in the scheme of things, it wasn’t long before a light mist turned into torrential rain and cold whipping wind.

Another Summit & Town of Hebo

It was dark when I hit the summit where a fast 11-mile paved descent was waiting to chill me to the bone before dropping me into the tiny town of Hebo.

I’d first encountered Hebo in the summer of 1996 on my first Oregonian bike trip. The band I’d been playing with was camping on the coast waiting for a gig at the Grand Theater in Salem, Oregon, the next night. That was a splendid opportunity for an overnight bike trip, and for a 25-year-old Colorado boy (I’m 50 now) with no rain gear to learn about Oregon rain. I won’t bore you here with the weirdness that went down in the bar/restaurant where I went for cover, but I definitely bored Sam. It looks like the old place has long since shut down.

It wasn’t far from there to Pacific City where I decided “Dammit, I’m getting a room!”

A couple miles out of town a dude on a motorcycle passed by, and I wondered how his rain game was going. My own wasn’t going so well, my hands and feet were numb, and my core was on the edge of cold. But I had warmed up a bit since Hebo.

A mile out of town I passed some rental cabins that looked interesting, but one glance at the office told me no one would be answering that phone anytime soon. I pulled up to the gas station in town, quickly grabbing my electrolyte bottles off the bike.

I stepped out of the way as the aforementioned dude on the motorcycle came out. We said hello to each other, and in that time the folks in the gas station had locked the door. Apparently they wanted to go sleep somewhere tonight, too.

Trail Magic

Still reluctant to dig out my phone, I asked the dude on the motorcycle if there were any hotels close by. We chatted for a minute, and Adrian (that was his name), said, “Follow me, I’ve got the perfect place for you. We’ve gotta get you out of the cold!” I followed him back the way I had come about a mile, which took some time because Adrian had to stop and say hello to everyone who was outside. And now suddenly the place was crawling with people.

Eventually Adrian led me to the previously-ridden-by-and-fantasized-about cabins. They had been purchased the day before, and he was staying in one until next week when remodeling or more likely demolition – would begin.

He opened a room for me and I pitched my camp on a floor that surpassed the gravel parking lot for filth. But the shower was hot, the heater cranked like you wouldn’t believe, so it didn’t matter that there were no towels.

Some self-supported bikepacking purists might cry foul about receiving outside assistance. But this, my friends, was “trail magic,” and that shit is fair game! 

I slept the sleep of the dead for a solid 8 hours. I didn’t set an alarm – I didn’t care how many riders passed me with an early morning departure. I was rested, my stuff was dry, and miraculously it wasn’t raining, except in 5-minute intervals after leaving town.

I hit the “sorry closed” gas station for breakfast and caught a glimpse of G-dub packing his bike. “Sweet! Those guys got a room last night too!” Well, they got the back of someone’s SUV. Trail magic, you’ve gotta love it!

Odyssey Day 2

I had 222 more miles left to go, having bitten off probably 128 yesterday.

I stopped by the iconic beach at Cape Kiwanda, still not digging my phone out for a picture, and on up the road I pedaled – applying and removing the rain jacket as necessary.

I passed the exit to Cape Lookout. That was where I’d gotten drenched by my first Oregon rain all those years ago, when I was half the age and more than twice as dumb as I am now. I sometimes wish I knew now what I didn’t know then and only thought I knew later.

Tillamook

A quick 60 miles later, and I was in Tillamook for my last resupply. I can still see the bag of cheese curds and jerky I didn’t get at the gas station, thinking I would stop on my way out of town at the Tillamook Creamery for some of their delightful squeaky cheese curds.

But when I saw the line from a walk-up window that stretched all the way down to the Mexican border, I decided to go curdless. The global pandemic and Memorial Day weekend had dashed my hopes for cheese curds on the rocks.

There would be no more resupply on this strange wet odyssey until 20 miles from the finish. by then I would not stop in DuBois. And I would only weep openly at the smell of pizza.

More Valleys

Another green valley, another gigantic climb – this time with no rain at the top. Somewhere in there I met a couple day riders from Portland on gravel bikes. Yet another dopamine bump!

The next humongous climb had rain waiting for me at the top. By this time I had perfected my technique of layering up and eating something before I was finished climbing, so I would be good and warm for the descent.

The next valley through the ATV park had some delightful creeks with swimming holes that were calling for me to return in the dog days of summer for a dip.

Staying Warm

I ran out of daylight on the next climb and it seemed as though the rain was here to stay. I was wearing my warm layer under the rain jacket, and my hands warmed up in the wetsuit gloves I’d been wearing in the rain.

Normally you have to pee in wetsuit gloves for them to keep your hands warm – as I learned in my bygone days, not as a surfer, per se, but as someone who surfed occasionally. Half of the surfers in Oregon pee in their wetsuits to stay warm, the other half lie about it.

But there I was with warm hands in pee-free neoprene gloves. My feet were another story. They probably smelled worse than pee at this point, but were pretty far from warm.

I rolled along the ridge next to Barney Lake, thinking more than once that this would be an excellent place to “Barney.” Barney is an old Colorado raft guide term for camping, named after one guide’s van that he called Barney – “Hey, I’m gonna go Barney out, I’ll see you in the morning.” 

“Barney” eventually became a term for any place that you sleep, as well as a verb. I hope it catches on in the bikepacking world. Tell your friends.

No More Rain

As if by magic, I rode out of the rain toward the bottom of that mountain descent and found myself climbing steep farm roads in dusty ball bearing gravel outside of…well, I had no idea where the hell I was.

I did notice that I was going farther and farther north. I knew full well that the end of this loop was far to the south, and I was dangerously close to breaking my cardinal rule of ultra cycling: do not let yourself think for a moment that you should be somewhere other than where you are, or going some direction other than the one the GPS breadcrumb trail is taking you.

But soon I was zooming on a paved road around a lake that was hauntingly familiar. But it couldn’t be – that lake is all the way up by Portland for crying out loud. The memory gave me a good little dopamine bump though, and I carried on.

Another rider soon came zooming up behind me – it was Joe. He’d lost track of G-dub somewhere on the last rainy descent, and they were both wondering if the other had crashed. I rode with Joe into the tiny town of Argent where Joe and G-dub planned to meet up and “Barney out” in a baseball field until morning.

Onward to Yamhill

I rode on to Yamhill for water, on the way, Jason Pevey, a dude I’d met when Ketl and I were riding together, passed me, confirming that that giant lake was, in fact, Hagg Lake. “Goddammit, that was a day ride when I lived in Portland!!”

Then I began to relive the memories of taking our friend Serge on a ride out there, telling him it would be a 20-mile ride if we took the MAX train to the end of the line. It was 55 miles, and Serge was pretty cracked. Carver and I took turns pushing him up the hills on the last half of the ride. Wow, Lynn was on that ride too! Serge would later become more of a proper cyclist than I ever would.

I coasted on that dopamine bump into Yamhill where I refilled my water from a church hose nozzle hidden in the bushes. That dopamine bump carried me over a few small gravel climbs into the hills west of McMinnville where it was suddenly daytime again.

Nestucca Pass and River valley

But it didn’t quite carry over the next big ball buster of a paved climb over the impossibly tall Nestucca Pass, to an equally impossibly long, beautiful and cold descent down the Nestucca River valley. When that valley and its heart rending greenery finally came to an end, I headed up the last major climb, that proved to be one serious muddy crank bender.

At this point I was getting hungry while at the same time not wanting to eat. My stomach wasn’t feeling weird, it’s just that I wanted to destroy some Thai food with a clean slate when this thing was over. I wasn’t feeling bonky, but I was still a little far out to ride it in on fumes, so I mixed up a bottle of Hammer Recoverite and drank that down.

At some interminable point, the rolling ridge traverse ended and presented me with my final big descent, on pavement no less! I was pulling Gs around a turn at 44 mph near the bottom when I saw Seth – yes, VOG organizer Seth – parked in the perfect spot with an ain’t-no-messin’-around DSLR camera snapping pictures of me turning the bike that cannot be turned. 

That hill down, there was one more small bump in the elevation profile to climb over. There was a sign at the bottom that said the hill was a mile long.

Ginger Hill

“Hey, that’s Ginger Hill!” Ginger Hill is a steep mile long hill back in Pennsyltucky that I often rode up, and especially down, on my BMX bike when I was a kid. Turns out that’s still a pretty big hill.

The top of that hill eventually came, and I rolled into the final town of Sheridan with a tailwind. The siren song of a grocery store during business hours had a strong pull, but not even the smell of the pizza place could pull me out of my home stretch revery. Although it did make me cry some salty joyful tears at a volume that, no doubt, had a few of the townsfolk questioning the sanity of this filthy guy on the bike passing through.

Almost to the finish

11 miles from the finish I saw another biker coming my way. When I saw that it was Lynn sneaking out to ride me in, the flood gates let loose and I sobbed in her arms. That’s kind of why I do this stuff – I can let myself feel my feelings in a way that’s difficult to access under normal circumstances.

We rode along holding hands, when a drone came buzzing overhead. Seth was at it again! I can’t wait to see the documentary this guy puts together!

3 miles from the finish, Roman came out to ride me in. He had scratched out the first night, realizing he’d packed for much nicer weather than we got. It was his first ultra, and I have no doubt he’ll be back for more.

Odyssey Completed

Back at the grange, Roman handed me a lager of some kind that knocked my wet smelly fetid socks off. Oh, those cold horror show feet! 

The Thai food I’d been dreaming about for the previous 3 hours had become a reality as well as a sweet, sweet slumber after a 30-hour slog and my biggest day of climbing ever.

Big thanks to Seth DuBois and Ben Handrich for putting this thing together, and all their friends who helped. Thanks to Joshua Kyle Hess at Mojo Cyclery for getting Hagar the Horrible running smooth. And big smooches to Lynder-Hözen Riding Through the Land for dragging me down there and back again for one big VOGging odyssey!

Justin Short rides year-round and writes the Everyday Cyclist column, where he shares advice, recommendations, funny anecdotes about his biking adventures, and stories about the Inland Northwest biking community.

The post Surviving the Odyssey of the VOG Bikepacking Race appeared first on Out There Venture.

On the flipside, Winter Blues can strike when the fog rolls in, or when rain falls on our precious snow and then immediately freezes, wrecking our favorite ski runs, fat bike, and snowshoe trails. In the same way that reduced exposure to sunlight can aggravate symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder, reduced exposure to Hero Dirt, Cadillac Gravel, and clear roads and bike paths can wreak havoc on our very will to turn pedals.

For many of us, turning pedals is a form of 2-wheeled therapy, and when the supply gets cut off by Old Man Winter, it can be hard to cope with the stress of everyday life. So, what can we do?

A few hearty souls go out and brave the elements no matter how bad the weather gets, such as Hammer Nutrition sponsored athlete Patty Jo Struve who regularly competes in 100 kilometer and 100-mile fat bike races in the dead of winter.

Indoor smart trainer platforms such as Zwift (a cycling and running virtual training app) and Peloton are helping the more proactive riders keep fitness up during the winter months. As local Team ODZ endurance rider Thee Mow puts it, “There’s definitely something surreal about 4 a.m. suffering on Zwift, realizing you didn’t wake up in a bivy, you don’t have to clean your chain, oh, and you’re not racing the Cross-Washington Mountain Bike Route yet.”

The most drastic remedy to the Winter Blues isn’t available to all of us every year; I call it “Hero Dirt on Demand.” Also known as leaving the snowy Inland Northwest for a change in terrain.

Mountain bikers will take weekend road trips to rip west side trails such as Galbraith Mountain in Bellingham, Wash. Spokane MTB riders Frank Benish and Melinda Dupree, among others, made the epic mid-December journey to Arizona for the Dusk Till Dawn Mountain Bike Race. I drooled over their social media posts, wondering if my own far flung winter adventure plans would be cancelled by a new pandemic variant or a snowpocalypse.

In early February, I very luckily found myself dragging a bike through sand in sweltering 84-degree heat in the Everglades when a friend in Coeur d’Alene texted to remind me that I was riding in probably the only part of the country where it wasn’t currently snowing.

On February 5, I lined up at the start of the Huracan 300, a 362-mile adventure bikepacking race around central Florida, with what seemed to be hundreds of riders, but probably more like 100, from all over the East Coast, a few from Arizona, Utah and Hawaii, and one goofball from Spokane.

The route traverses at least a half dozen swamps and Florida’s high mountain peaks, the most punishing of which I discovered were absurdly long, flat-as-a-pancake stretches of barely rideable sand.

In Florida, sand is elevation. Let us not forget the 100+ miles of fun flowy singletrack mountain bike trails and several hours worth of bushwhacking through thick, scratchy palmetto scrub underbrush. Oh yes, and a waist-deep river crossing where some nice kayakers were happy to warn me about the 10 foot alligator swimming upstream.

This 45-hour odyssey on two wheels should keep me smiling until well after the peanut butter freeze/thaw cycle is finished in our beloved Inland Northwest.

Originally published as “Smashing the Winter Blues” for the Everyday Cyclist in the March-April 2022 issue.

Justin M. Short will be licking his numerous wounds as the weather and riding conditions improve at home in Spokane, but for some strange reason he’s already talking about racing the Huracan 300 again next year.

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Occasionally when I kicked up my speed a notch, diving in and out of washes, my breathing would drown out the dull roar of distant, jam-packed freeways, and I would forget there was a city there at all. I was racing daylight to complete one short section of the 315-mile Maricopa Trail before departing the desert for another year.

For the past two years in November, we’ve been escaping the cold gloom of one of our least favorite months by exploring the trails around Phoenix out of our VanDoIt adventure van. Living at campgrounds with easy trail access makes daily bike rides, hikes, and runs easy. It’s how we got introduced to the miracle that is the Maricopa Trail too.

The route encircles Phoenix and connects many of Maricopa County’s awesome regional parks with a mix of singletrack, existing pathways, and other ridable and hikeable right of ways. As of yet I’ve only traversed a few dozen miles of the trail in different parks, but its mere existence inspired me to begin researching a bikepacking trip of the whole trail. It also got me thinking there’s no reason my hometown shouldn’t have a trail like this.

Spokane already has an amazing system of parks and natural areas with trails that form a partial ring around the city: Riverside, Little Spokane River, Mount Spokane, Antoine, the Centennial Trail, Liberty Lake, Mica, Iller, Glenrose, the Bluff, High Bridge, Indian Canyon, Palisades, and back to Riverside.

There are a few substantial gaps in trails and public lands between those existing parks and trail systems, but the potential for land purchases, easements, and road-side pathways to improve those connections in the coming decades is totally doable.

There is also plenty of infrastructure for local and visiting long-distance hikers and mountain bikers who would want to take such a trail on, including three public campgrounds, a rental cabin, a KOA, and hotels galore, plus plenty of stores, pubs, and restaurants.

The Maricopa Trail effort got started 25 years ago, and it’s still a work in progress but is largely completed. With Spokane’s much smaller population, more open space (at least for now), and amazing community of public land conservation organizations, agencies, and trail builders, I bet a similar Spokane Trail could materialize even quicker.

I can already imagine bikepacking the Spokane Trail and getting lost in the rhythmic flow of well-built singletrack surrounded by towering firs, breathing in the sweet scent of mock orange or maybe pine. Relishing the quiet and solitude and smiling when I remember how close I am to the city and how far from it all I feel.

The post Imagine Bikepacking a New “Spokane Trail” appeared first on Out There Venture.

The closer we get to ski season, the stronger is the pull of a favorable forecast coinciding with free time for a turn of the pedals. Obedient to the call of good autumn weather, I recently rode out of Harrison, Idaho, up the Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes, greeted by e-bikers smiling ear to ear. Even the fish swimming about in the creeks along the path seemed to agree that this was a fine day to be out.

I only made it 50 miles before the call of the sleeping bag dragged me to a halt in Wallace, Idaho.

The next day promised to be as lovely as the first, and I would need all the sleep I could get if I wanted to finish the remaining 200+ miles of my intended route. There was a huckleberry milkshake with my name on it in St. Regis, Montana, and I was determined to get to it by the most interesting route I could find before milkshake season closed out. (Does milkshake season “close”?)

And “interesting” was just what I got the next morning before dawn when the route turned north from Mullan, Idaho, up the Idaho Centennial Trail.

I step-step-DRAG, step-step-DRAGGED myself up to a 6,500-foot ridge that overlooked Lookout Pass on I-90 and the ski hill next to the pass. Farther up the ridge was a breathtaking view of Upper Glidden Lake, a spot I’m definitely eyeballing for the dog days of summer in 2022.

After a quick gas station hotdog in Thompson Falls, Montana, I headed over the next mountain to St. Regis and the aforementioned milkshake. It was a comparatively gentle climb on Cadillac gravel (luxuriously smooth) up to 5,000 feet, with some rather inviting campgrounds on both sides of the mountain.

With the milkshake down the hatch, I embarked upon the Route of the Olympian, a truly delightful rail trail that is often overlooked because it lives in the shadow of the Hiawatha.

The big tunnel of the Hiawatha was closed for the season by a castle gate built to withstand an attack from an army of mountain trolls, so I took the bypass that climbs up to the elevation of Mount Spokane.

A bright and shining moon peeked over a mountainous horizon, guiding my way, though I skipped the rest of the Hiawatha on account of the lions, tigers, and bears (moose, more likely) that my imagination placed in each of the remaining tunnels. Along the highway to St. Maries, I gazed by moonlight upon all the swimming holes that my wife and I had jumped in on a much warmer ride in years gone by.

What I thought was the final push for the finish turned into a quandary about why the sun was rising in the west, ending this late season ramble a little later than I’d anticipated.

But I eventually got there. I think.

Originally published as “Shoulder Season Rambles” in the November-December 2021 issue.

Justin M. Short’s rambles will continue into the snowy months; however, he’s justifiably concerned about sub-freezing temperatures on The Big Lonely, a 350-mile bikepacking race out of Bend, Oregon, that he may or may not have finished by the time you read this.

Find more bikepacking stories in the OTO archives.

To read more of Justin M. Short’s amusing essays, visit the Everyday Cyclist column.

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You need to be in shape to ride and/or push 30-70 mile days, depending on how long you take to do the trip, on a loaded bike with lots of climbing. You also need to be completely self-reliant, carrying tools, several days of extra food, and a large water capacity.

If I ride this route again, I will find another more interesting way to skip the Sheldon NWR section. Relentless wind was our nemesis and slowed us down enough that we ended up taking a day longer to finish.

To better your chances of completing the ride, make sure your bikes are in great shape and well maintained, as a mechanical you can’t fix on the trail will send you home early.

Finally, to really enjoy this amazingly beautiful place, take your time and budget a few layover days for hikes, hot spring soaks, and exploring the sites along the way. To plan a safe trip, do your research at Bikepacking.com and other online sources.

Read Derrick Knowles’ Big Country experience in his story “9 Days on Oregon’s Big Country Bikepacking Route” from the July-August 2021 issue.

The post Oregon’s Big Country Route Considerations appeared first on Out There Venture.

The 357-mile ride with 18,350 feet of climbing through the mountainous desert terrain of extreme southeast Oregon and northern Nevada was pioneered by Bikepacking.com contributor Gabriel Amadeus around 2016.

The route crosses three mountain ranges, the Alvord Desert, and three national wildlife refuges. It also stops by five different hot springs and a funky desert town on the Oregon and Nevada state line.

Three of us set off from Spokane in early June 2021 with a vanload of mountain bikes and bikepacking gear headed to the tiny outpost of Frenchglen, Oregon.

The following morning, after donating blood for several hours to highly aggressive mosquitos, we set off with way too much camera gear, an obscene amount of wine and other luxuries, and only a vague notion of the challenges and surprises ahead.

Day 1: Malheur National Wildlife Refuge to Steens Mountain

After a late afternoon start to avoid the 90-degree afternoon heat, we pedaled through the roadside wetlands of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and then up into the mountains.

We arrived at our first camp after dark partway up the shoulder of Steens Mountain.

Day 2: Up and Over Steens

After watering up at a spring, we climbed slowly over rocky ranch roads, following our Ride with GPS route map up faint tracks through wildflowers and sage that at times looked abandoned. Despite the hot temps, the wind gusted and storm clouds threatened rain.

We finally crested the shoulder of Steens Mountain into a wonderland canyon with aspen and a rushing creek. Plunging down the steep, technical doubletrack, my front brake failed. I doubled down on my rear brake, pausing from time to let it cool.

Near the bottom, we reached our second camp next to a beautiful little creek and a giant juniper tree.

Day 3: Across the Alvord Desert, Up Big Sand Gap, & On to Willow Hot Springs

We woke much earlier than expected, thanks to an insane wind storm that blew one of our tents down around 1 a.m. The 25-35 mph winds howled all night, and with only a few hours of sleep, we set off at 6:30 a.m. for a roughly 25-mile ride to Alvord Hot Springs.

We weren’t super stoked for a hot soak in the 95-degree sunshine, but after loading up on drinks from the small store, we spent several hours sitting in the only sliver of shade in the roofless hot springs shack. We still had over 30 miles to ride that day, including the 8-mile crossing of the baking Alvord Desert.

Once on the other side of the dry lakebed, we faced several miles of bike pushing through sand of aptly-named Big Sand Gap, followed by mile after mile of rolling ranch roads and opening and closing countless cattle gates.

Just before sundown, after crossing the only paved road of the day, we rolled into the primitive campground at Willow Hot Springs.

Day 4: The Trout Creek Mountains

Day four was all about the Trout Creek Mountains, an incredibly remote Great Basin mountain range along the Oregon/Nevada border with peaks as high as 8,500 feet.

Roughly halfway up, we paused for a nap under a cluster of wildfire-burned mountain mahogany trees. Our camp, and next water source, was somewhere high above us, so we pedaled on up steeper and steeper doubletrack into a fierce, unrelenting headwind.

As the sun dropped closer to the horizon, each false summit revealed another climb. There was some cursing, long silent stretches, and plenty of pushing. Eventually we passed over the real summit and began a wild, raucous descent into an entirely unexpected canyon full of aspen glowing in the golden light of the setting sun.

My limited braking capacity gave me some pause, but after a day of hard climbing, the rip-roaring free-fall down to camp was irresistible.

Day 5: A “Quick Bomb” Into Denio, Nevada

I intentionally, for the most part, read very little about the route before our departure, but we all remembered reading something about a quick bomb down from the Trout Creek Mountains to the only resupply stop in Denio, Nevada.

Even though the forecast called for another day of stiff headwinds, and the restaurant and store closed early on Sundays, we slept in and hit the trail late. We expected some climbing that day, but were surprised by the number of steep hills that broke up the occasional “quick bomb.”

Eventually, the climbing gave way to a rollicking, rocky descent to the valley floor with nothing but a steady 20-30 mph headwind to great us.

By then it was 3 p.m. and the restaurant in Denio Junction had closed and the store would too in another hour. We had 10 or so miles of hot, flat desert dirt road to cover, and it quickly became a funnel that drove sand and dust into our faces as we cranked hard against the wind. We were nearly out of water and hadn’t seen another human or vehicle in two days.

Shockingly, we rolled up to the tiny store with minutes to spare and set off hording snacks and drinks from the meager selection. Battered by the wind and blowing sand, we booked the last available motel room and settled in at a shaded table out front to hydrate and watch the parade of interesting characters stopping for gas and provisions.

At one point, after lamenting that we’d missed a hot restaurant meal, a guy in a truck delivering grass fed beef out of Reno pulled up. We chatted him up and a few minutes later we were searing four amazing steaks on a camp stove and frying pan we borrowed from the restaurant.

We passed around chunks of delicious steak on plates cut out of the cardboard box they came in, grease dripping down our hands. I can’t remember a more enjoyable meal or a time when I was so filthy and a shower felt so good.

Day 6: Off-Route to Virgin Valley Hot Springs

After a leisurely restaurant breakfast, the wind was already a force to be reckoned with by the time we hit the trail. Cutting off around 20 miles by taking a more direct route to Virgin Valley Hot Springs seemed like the best idea.

Less than 30-miles later, after some desert doubletrack, a stretch of highway riding, and a steep push and fast descent down a rough dirt road, we arrived at the hot springs just as the wind reached a new level of intensity.

We soaked in the barely warm natural pool and learned from soaking old timers that the big draw around those parts was the nearby recreational opal mine.

Back at our camp, we endured a few hours of being blasted by the wind before drifting out into the desert to watch one of the longest and most beautiful sunsets I’ve ever seen.

Day 7: A Long Ride Through the Middle of Nowhere

Maybe it was something we ate, or the wind, or the strange campground noises, but we all had a hard time sleeping that night. Morning came early, and for only the second time on the trip we got an early start.

We had no idea what to expect from the Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge section that day but hoped at least the wind would back off. No dice. Mile after mile of sleep-deprived pedaling through an unfortunately bleak, sun-blasted landscape made for a long, quiet day in the saddle.

We all agreed that this long stretch of mostly flat, scrubby Nevada sagebrush would be worth bypassing if possible. As if to punctuate our ongoing critique of the Sheldon NWR section, we camped that night in a waterless, wind-hammered, jack rabbit shit-littered cluster of knee-high sagebrush that stretched on as far as we could see.

Day 8: Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge

By now the temperatures had cooled considerably as we continued on a long, flat ranch road to the second of two historic, abandoned ranches. From there our route began to climb through increasingly lush desert terrain.

We saw plenty of antelope, made several deep stream crossings, and, with the wind finally at our backs, reached the flank of Hart Mountain and a forest of pine, fir, and aspen. After watering up in the crystal clear waters of Guano Creek, we climbed the final miles of the trip to a pass with some truly big country views.

The rollercoaster descent down the lightly-travelled doubletrack eventually spit us out abruptly amongst car campers, the first other humans we had seen in two days, and the inviting stone walls of the Hart Mountain Hot Springs.

With storm clouds building to the west, we soaked off layers of dirt and sunscreen from the trail, then hurried to set up camp and cook dinner before the rain started. I pulled my pot of food off the stove just in time to dive into my tent as a deluge unloaded on us.

Day 9: Hart Mountain to Frenchglen

A cold rain pounded us all night, and around 5 a.m., I woke to a lighter, familiar sound tapping on my rainfly. Since we weren’t prepared for riding in the snow, we hit the hot springs again that morning while we waited for the weather to improve.

The rain and snow let up mid-morning and the sun came out. We ended our trip with a 50-something-mile, mostly downhill and quite monotonous gravel road ride back to Frenchglen, Oregon.

Originally published as “Into The Wild Wind: 9 Days On Oregon’s Big Country Bikepacking Route” in the July-August 2021 issue.

Derrick Knowles is OTO co-publisher and editor-in-chief. He is a humble, hard-core outdoor enthusiast.

To learn more about bikepacking, check out related stories from the OTO archives.

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I haven’t yet packed a fishing rod on a bikepacking trip, but it’s something I’ve thought about lately. Here are a few lakes that would make great destinations, but with so many lakes to choose from you can come up with your own route that hits one or more lakes that have quality fishing and camping.

Pend Oreille County in northeast Washington has a great combination of small lakes with good fishing, lightly-travelled back roads (many of them gravel), and inexpensive campgrounds and even free camping at Forest Service dispersed campsites. Browns, Bead, and North and South Skookum lakes, among others in the area, are all good options.

Do your research since many smaller lakes have various fishing restrictions. For instance, Brown’s Lake is a fly-fishing only lake, and lead fishing weights/tackle are prohibited at South Skookum and a few other small regional lakes to protect loons.

Try using the Columbia Plateau Trail near Cheney as a bikepacking thoroughfare to reach one or more fishing lakes in the Channeled Scablands. Not all of the Scablands lakes have places to camp so do your research before heading out.

In North Idaho, Round Lake near Sandpoint or Spirit, Twin, and Hauser lakes further south have various fishing and camping options.

In addition to your standard bikepacking gear (check out Bikepacking.com for gear recommendations), you’ll also need to secure or stow a collapsible rod and reel, fly rod, fishing tackle, and a fishing license and copy of the fishing regulations for whatever state you’ll be in.

And before you load up and head out, check in with the land and wildlife management agencies or private campgrounds in charge of the fishing and camping at your destination to make sure there are no unexpected restrictions in place.

For more stories about fishing, visit the OTO archives.

Visit the 2021 Lake Guide for more destination ideas.

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While there are plenty of options out there, I was fortunate to make an industry connection with the Seattle-based crew from Ortlieb, a company with a long history of making waterproof and technical bags for biking and other outdoor activities. Ortlieb’s German-made bike bags would be a huge improvement on the patchwork of gear I had. 

Since carrying 8-10 liters of water was required for several stretches of our Baja route given the intense heat of late October, I opted for several bike bags including burly rack-mounted paniers over a more trim, light, and compact seat pack for one purpose: to haul more water; gear; and other perks like fresh fruit and vegies, canned beans, rice, tequila, and a great book. With all that on-bike storage, I was ready for backpack and backache free riding through the deserts and mountains of southern Baja. Here are the bike bags the crew from Ortlieb ended up setting me up with. 

Ortlieb Frame Pack: This large frame pack fills the triangular space below your top tube. With its low center of gravity it’s ideal for stashing heavier items like tools, stove fuel, and water bladders. The pack is waterproof nylon; has a bomber, waterproof zipper; and secures to the top tube, seat tube, and down tube with super strong Velcro straps. It comes in a 4-liter or 6-liter option depending on the size of your bike frame. MSRP: $140-150  

Ortlieb Cockpit: I developed an unexpected fondness for this little 48 cubic inch bag that sits on your top tube up against your head tube after digging into it almost hourly on our Baja ride. It’s an easy-access place to stash things you’ll frequently need along the trail. I used mine to stow high-calorie snacks, Lyte Balance electrolytes, sunscreen, my debit card, and a wad of Pesos. The large, zippered opening made finding what you need fast and easy. Stiffened material on the inside of the bag means the Cockpit keeps its shape, while still being lightweight and waterproof. MSRP: $65 

Ortlieb Bike-packer Plus Rear Panier Bags: Since we weren’t trying to break any speed records on the 40-60+ miles we rode each day, these rack-mounted rear panier bags provided a ton of space for food, water, clothes, more water, and other comfort gear like a Crazy Creek camp chair. The classic flap closure is easy to use, and the front compartment fits small items like paper maps and notebook. The strong, waterproof Cordura fabric braved sand, rock, and cactus thorns like saddle leather. The QL2.1 bag mounting system with self-closing hooks made detaching the bags from the rack for packing and unpacking super fast. The only drawback of even the best-designed paniers on extremely rough and rutted terrain is that they can and do rattle loose and require re-tightening from time to time. For all of that storage space, that slight inconvenience was worth it. If you plan to bikepack on desert routes where water is scarce, through rainy or cold weather where more clothing and shelter are a good idea, or with kids or anyone who wants to bring some of the comforts of home, Ortlieb’s Bike-packer panier bags give you all the packing space you could want. MSRP: $265 

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XWA is a non-race, non-event sort of thing, but you can be sure that freaks of nature will be out there gunning for the finish line—including course record holder, Josh Kato, and 2019 Grand Depart winner, Thomas Baron. Other riders take their time, making sure they hit every brewpub on the course and the pie shop in North Bend that offers a free slice to XWA riders. 

On May 18, 2019, riders rolled out onto a misty beach at La Push for the ceremonial dunk of the rear wheel in the ocean. They were ready for scenery, ready for adventure; as for the ride, they would soon see. The countdown was made and they all shuffled toward the tangled mountain of driftwood through which they hefted bikes to begin this epic journey. 

To fully understand this race, you have to understand the ethic of bikepacking. Distinct from bicycle touring, bikepacking can be any overnight bike trip, but tends toward ultralight minimalism and off-road adventure. A typical adventure bikepacking race is a self-supported affair with no support crews, no feed stations, no course markings, and no prizes. The exception for XWA is that the town of Tekoa offered $15 gift certificates for the top 10 finishers to any of Tekoa’s four restaurants. 

The first leg across the Olympic Peninsula was filled, as one might suspect, with magical fern-carpeted forests as riders pedaled over mountain passes on gravel roads and some exceedingly fun singletrack trails with that favorite west side companion, RAIN. The ferry from Kingston offered 6 miles of respite from the grind. Then the route begins hopscotching through parks along the northern Seattle suburbs up the steepest climbs of the whole route. 

The Snoqualmie Valley Trail leads riders to the PTCT, which offers a rather gentle climb over Snoqualmie Pass through an almost 3-mile long tunnel at the summit. The route continues on this chunky gravel rail trail all the way to Kittitas, where the route cuts north over the barely rideable Colockum Ridge, then plummets 3,000 feet down into Wenatchee. The last big climb over the Rock Island Grade leads into Palisades, Washington’s own Grand Canyon, and on to Ephrata, through a herd of cows to Moses Lake. It then crosses a waist-deep canal on the way to Ritzville and continues through the Swamps of Doom to the finish. 

XWA 2020 will be a virtual race, and you can follow riders’ progress at www.bandok.com.  Participants can complete the race either on their trainers or anywhere outdoors in a single push, or they can put in the mileage over the course of a month. Bandók Virtual Events offers virtual options for other long distance challenges throughout the summer. 

Justin M. Short has recently been drafted to write the Everyday Cyclist column. Watch his “Lockdown Washington Mountain Bike Race” on YouTube — a Stay Home, Stay Healthy-inspired spoof on the 2020 XWA Race.

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