We finally made it to Oregon. After already being on the road for just over a month riding already at about 20 trail heads, and camping for most of the trip, we had pretty high standards by this point. Lucky for us, Oregon is bad ass. It started off by doing the horrible thing and just driving. We did take a pretty nice route down to Hood River and went through Rainier NP. We also got out of the car a couple of times and just before dusk, we walked to this beautiful and extremely clear alpine lake called Snow Lake.
The Panicles and Snow Lake.
From Hood River it was almost like we had a list (which we did) and were just ticking things off (which we were). We rode Post Canyon in Hood River, Sandy ridge, Black Rock, MacKenzie River Trail, Alpine Trail and Larrison Rock in Oak Ridge, finishing off in Ashland on Mt Ashland. We also got super lazy with taking photos.
Sandy Ridge was a favorite. Fast, fun and really well maintained. There was a paved road right up the middle that took you to the top and then really well designed layout so you could do some sweet loops.
Views.
Sweet little jumps.
Little rocky bits to just blast down.
This place was sick. It's called Black Rock and has some weird land access through a Christian Camp so you have to be on your best behavior at the trail head so that you don't upset the dude that lives there.. But it's a free ride park with heaps of fun stuff, heaps of BIG stuff, and a little bit of little stuff.
It was super fun to ride here. We ran into the guys who have been building the trails for the last 10 years and they were loving it. Personally after riding at some other places I found that the trails didn't flow the best in the way that some of the features on a track would be too big for your speed or too small so for riding them for the first time it was hard to judge your speed. Still heaps of fun though. Didn't have the balls to try some of the big features and my bike was being precious.
Cheeky road gap.
Fun wooden stuff.
These were from the famed MacKenzie River Trail.. pretty but a cross country ride for sure.
Clear Lake on the MacKenzie River Trail.
Pretty Forest
Pretty water fall
These are from the Alpine Trail. Super sick, all single track, over 1000m vertical descent, mad views, fast, sick forest, good dirt.. smiles the whole way down.
The shuttle up.
Nicole rip pin through some old growth on the Alpine Trail.
Mad views on the Alpine Trail
Unfortunately we took no photos in Ashland but that was a really fun day of going way to fast with some friends that we met up with to do a couple of shuttles. For $12 you got a ride to the top of a mountain, we had friends show us where the best trails were, and then we rode the 15miles and dropped the 5000 vertical feet back to town. Our one friend Mike had just built a hard tail and on a rock garden got way too loose and came off into a boulder. That was the end of the day for him. We ended up doing two runs down and I think Don enjoyed letting me go first and watching all my creative lines down the tracks he knew really well every now and then shouting a crucial line at me.
And that was Oregon in a nutshell...
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