2023 Summer Trip 5 - Volcanoes

Due to unforeseen events back at the home base, I decided to extend my trip by a week. Ran out of epic climbs to do but there’s still a lot of amazing scenery and volcanoes ranging from northern California all the way to Washington. Mt. Shasta, Mt. Hood, Mt. Rainier, Mt. St-Helens, Mt. Adams, Mt. Baker… What a region! Unlike the Rockies, these mountains just tower over their surroundings and can be seen from a hundred miles away.

Rainy Day

Had planned to ride Mt Ashland, which is still #125 in the country and 2nd in Oregon, but the weather had other plans for me. Got a haircut that day and the stylist was also just at Crater Lake the day before and told me the road was blocked with snow, so there went that plan to bike around it. Just decided to drive on through and plan different rides later

Got a haircut and an oil change in Ashland. It’s also home to some kind of Shakespeare stuff. The actual theater is behind this new construction.

Went up Ashland until I felt rain, which wasn’t very long. Then I tried biking a bit near Emigrant Lake here but I could see lightning strikes across the skies and everyone was already fleeing the area…

Drove all the way up to Crater Lake hoping there wouldn’t be rain. It poured the entire time until I literally got about 2 miles from the fee hut.

It was 10c at the hut and the crater is 300m up from there. Cold as hell. Snow everywhere. Crazy since it was 32c in Ashland! From heat wave to full winter gear and hoping the rain wasn’t catching me.

Drove from there to Bend, which is a decent little city home to the very last Blockbuster store. I have to say I don’t miss these.

Mt. Washington looming in the distance. That means North America has 3 Mt. Washingtons lol

Spent the night near the small town of Sisters, at this cool rest area/viewpoint on the highway. A bunch of people watching the sunset with me too.

Sisters Loop Denied

Had planned a nice loop here which includes Mackenzie pass ( road just south of Mt. Washington there ) but it’s closed until July. July. God.
Made an emergency crappy loop including sketchy forest roads and was punished when it turned out to be predictably impassable and full of garbage.

Started my day at this little cafe in Sisters. 21$ for a coffee and 3 pastries. Suitably Hipstery, as per the legends.

Saw a guy in a bike kit sit near me so I decided to ask him if Mackenzie Pass was open. He told me it wasn’t… then gave me these TaterBoost things. It’s his company!

You just pour water in the bag and mix and you get a sort of instant mashed potatoes thing going on. Meant as a portable endurance snack.

Pretty tasty. It’s good when you’re sick of eating gels. If I wasn’t easily able to eat 10 donuts I’d think about this.

Scrub Jays all over the place in these boreal forests.

Good view of Mt. Washington on the way to my loop start. It’s sharp as hell. Build a road up this, I dare you.

Some locals put nice big ‘murica holes in the info signs. Hey, it’s public property so they’re allowed. That’s what public means: Everyone owns it. No complaints.

Where my loop ended. Wasn’t about to start hiking this crap. If it was just this I’d go but you never know how many miles this goes on for. Sad.

Clear Lake. I think. It was scorching hot at this point.

I see you there.

This little swallow was just looking at me, breathing heavily. Clearly turned on by my sweaty musk.

Some nice falls in a little trail along the way. It was nice to rest here and get sprinkled with mist.

Some shit clearly went down here at some point. Everything in the region was shaped by some kind of volcanic event in the not-so-distant past.

The Three Sisters peeking out from behind the forest.

Painted Hills

Last “chill” day planned for the week. Spent the morning doing an EZ ride in the Painted Hills, part of the John Day Fossil Bed national park. Really reminded me of Drumheller or the Cheltenham Badlands in Ontario.
It’s a pretty small area overall and quite far out of the way, but very unique scenery.

Distant view of the hills from Ochoco forest pass, as you descend down 3000 feet into the badlands.

Parked the car in a random pulloff. This isn’t even the official hills! Naturally people walking all over these and fucking them up.

The far end of the park, with a look at the Painted Hills reservoir, adding some nice blue to the palette.

This one is called “Red Hill”. Don’t know why.

Best view of the park, from a little overlook just a few miles from the highway.

Then I just drove back West then North, where you come up on a plateau with a view on all the surrounding mountains. Mt Adams is 150 miles from there and you can see it clearly!

Mt Hood Loop

Most ambitious ride of the week: Riding around then up Mt Hood. My reward was camping. Didn’t do the actual climb because I had to make sure the back road was passable before I commit to the full thing. Last thing I want is to be stranded in some snowed up gravel road in the woods after biking 4 hours, with the only way back being another 4 hours the other way.

Love’s Truck Stop shower. Never tried those before. 16$USD is pretty damn steep though. Anytime Fitness was “just” 100$cad/month. So 5 showers at Love’s = Monthly membership for Anytime Fitness… woof.

There’s cool badlands/plateau scenery all around eastern Oregon. Oregon: A land of bums and natural beauty.

Up the first pass around Mt. Hood. Found some ‘Murica remains that the local yokels/dipshits left there. I’m not a big environmental person but at least I don’t trash nature on purpose.

Backside of the first 700m pass is a garbage gravel road. Over 10km of this with a section that was completely destroyed. This is why I started with this side. If this had been blocked by snow I could at least just turn back and still do Mt. Hood itself and end up with the same KM instead of 200+

The mountain see from the northern little towns. It really just towers over everything around it, it’s quite spectacular, especially when it’s not covered in fog.

Top of the 1200m Bennet Pass. It’s just 40km of going up at 2-4%. Then you go down a bit and turn on the actual final climb up to the ski lodge.

The climb from the road to the ski village is about 8.5km at 7%, going up around 600m. You get above the tree line and it’s obviously cold as balls as random snowmelt creeks and falls blast you with subzero air.

Summit parking lot. It’s a huge area with many ski lodges. Was pretty busy, I can’t imagine in winter.

One of the lodges. They’re really luxurious. Good place to rest and warm up/dry your clothes if you’ve been biking in the snow/rain up this thing. We’ve all been there.

The main lodge has all sorts of weird art and exhibits / rooms you can visit. Even guided tours.

This stuff but x20. Free museum just for biking up! I would have biked it ANYWAY, suckers.

Columbia River

This was a brutal day as my rear derailleur stopped working about 55km into this ride, sticking me in a really low gear as I faced the most brutal headwind of all time for the last 70km back to the car. The only other wind that rivaled this was last year’s Beaver Ride. I averaged 37kph in the first 80km of this loop ( the tailwind part ) and my avg dropped all the way to 30 by the end. Legs are completely shot today ( next day ) as I write this from McDonald’s.
Hours of low cadence grinding combined sprinting through all the tunnels just destroyed me.

Filled my water at the camping that morning. Was some kind of old timey hand pump. Yeah I’m not drinking that. In fact I’m throwing this thing away now, thanks lol.

First bridge across, so-called “Heaven’s Bridge”. Really thought the view would be better from here :(

The one downside of riding on highways is all the trash in the shoulder. Fixed with no issue, thankfully. Unlike my derailleur…

Second bridge, 70km east of the first one. Landscape changes from hilly rainforest to the Sonoran desert, with this region’s characteristic round yellow hills.

The Dalles dam. Open to visitors. Just no time to detour with a broken derailleur and storm clouds over my head. Life is about compromises.

Me taking a break from the monstrously brutal headwind to take a picture. Still 60km to go at this point. Tried to fix my derailleur with the aluminum trick like 30 times but it just refused to work.

The north side of the loop has much cooler views at least. It’s really quite a nice road, I imagine much of the river is like this. It goes on for hundreds of miles.

My friendly dino friend at Sinclair gas station. 18km to go… The Skittles were delicious.

There’s 11 of these tunnels. They have no shoulder so I timed the cars and just sprinted through. They concentrate the headwind like a funnel so it takes an all-out effort to go 40kph in there, it’s ridiculous. You will die if you’re slow and go in there though.

Shelton Loop

Spent a few hours trying to fix the derailleur and contacted some local shops. No luck. But hey I can still ride with two gears! And a skipping worn-out chain that’s shredding my cassette and chainrings! lol

My friend’s squirrel army is coming along nicely. They work for peanuts.

First did a little hike around this bridge. You just go down to the river then back up, about 300 feet at 40-60% gradient.

There’s even a rope at the bottom! Damn.

Check out this little Shire historical waterwheel.

The entire bay area between Seattle and Vancouver Island is dotted with these types of beaches. Lots of little lake homes. Wish I could add “far from the hobos” but no they’re in Shelton too.

Passed by this chainsaw wood carving shop on the way back. Eagles, bigfoot and bears: The Pacific Northwest Trifecta.

I’m sure it costs thousands of dollars. If I was rich, I’d gift this to people.

Good Minion representation in the area as well. Their simple shape lets people turn all sorts of random trash into minion lawn decorations.

I’ve seen them all over North America. Minions are truly the grand unifier of the western world.

Hiking attempts

With the really bad chain skipping on the bike I just decided to stop before I explode the whole thing so I went for a long hike.

That’s Mt Washington there. That makes 4 Mt. Washingtons in North America: Vancouver Island, Washington, Oregon and New Hampshire.

It’s a 4.7km hike at… 40% average gradient (lol). Basically a staircase. I only did 20% of it before I realized my Garmin was off by 300-400 feet. What you’re seeing is the same trail I double-backed on here, with 120m separating it.

Since the actual trail was like 1 foot wide and really hard to tell apart from the surrounding roots and rocks, I decided it was best to turn back before I get myself lost in the woods.

I just wandered around until I stumbled onto the Mt Eleanor trail. So I tried to make it to the top of that one instead. Sadly the last mile of the trail was snow.

Btw if this is the “summer trail” mid-June, what’s the winter trail like?

That’s the top there, about half a mile up. At this point it was really steep and the trail was just pure snow going over a rushing river. Since I was just wearing a t-shirt and shorts, didn’t really feel like falling into random icy streams as I struggle my way up. Blue balls day.

Best view of the day was just on the forest gravel road leading to the trailheads. Couldn’t even make it to actual viewpoints on the mountains because of the damn snow. Maybe next time. These are the two big mountains near Shelton ( about an hour away ).

That does it for this “brief” summer trip. Lots of snow and mechanical issues put a bit of a damper on it but that’s just life. It gives me places to come back to later!
Could do without the melting wheels and faulty derailleur though.

Enjoyed my new camera very much and it was great to not lose my new laptop like I did last year.

Back to Victoria I go to hopefully enjoy the summer and fix my bike.

More travel stuff:
Arizona/California: Drive to Tucson • Tucson • California Climbing • Bay Area / Washington
Canada Coast to Coast: Victoria •Vancouver Island • Vancouver • Southern Rockies • Prairies • Ontario • Niagara • Quebec • Gaspesie / PEI • Maritimes • Newfoundland • Maritimes2 • Bay of Fundy • Quebec2 • Montreal • Ontario2 • Prairies Statues • Jasper/Banff • Northern Rockies • Washington State Bonus

Car Conversion / Purchase: Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3
Life on the road: Part 1 • Part 2