I planned on doing this 400 mile ride from Klamath Falls to Portland across the Oregon Cascades via a loose network of logging and dirt service roads. The intention was to cover the distance in roughly 4-ish days. Give or take. I had the bike, the gear, the long-time riding partner, and a solid familiarity with these types of rides.
DAY 1:
The first day started off with a sense of quiet cheer and anticipation, stopping off for a quick breakfast sandwich and coffee before heading up the hill out of K-Falls and into the unknown.
We weren’t even 500 feet into that initial climb, when I got the first indication that this ride was a very bad idea. My partner in this, who’d been riding a little way ahead, abruptly pulled off the road into a driveway. When I pulled up, he was furiously digging through his gear to free up his one-hitter, while managing a full-blown panic attack. My heart dropped, but my hope of hope was that this was just early-stage jitters and once we got into the flow, things would work out ok and we could look back on that moment and smile. For a while that seemed to be the case as we slowly climbed over ridges, stopping for photos and chit-chatting as the miles passed. But the morning wore on and the terrain got hairier, the route less distinct. Smooth dirt became deep sand. Wrong turns became more frequent, and any chance to refill water was rapidly diminishing. 60 miles in and I’ve got a friend succumbing to heat exhaustion, shaking and puking on the side of the dirt road while I cross reference maps that show there’s water sources nearby, but all my bushwhacking reveals is that the drought has long since taken them. My heart is broken. From here there’s only two options. Ride a little way to the highway,
Rt 97 and hustle the 40 miles back to where we started our day - or continue on route across 97 and climb for another 30 miles in the hope that there is water somewhere on the way to Crater Lake. I make the call to hit the highway back into town.
Despite the ravages of recent wildfires that had swept through the area, my thoughts are that maybe there’s services intact somewhere along the way. A few miles into this, we pull up on a FedEx tractor trailer on the side of the road. After a quick and desperate chat with the drivers, we’re rewarded with as many bottles of water as we can handle along with protein drinks…which were revolting in the moment, but absolutely saved the day. Still, there’s no way that we’ll make it back to Klamath Falls that day. We’re both fried. Stopping at a burnt-out motel, we rest a bit while I look for a spot to camp. Nothing beyond stripped forests, but I do end up spotting a sign for an open campground a few miles down the highway. Off we go. As it turns out, this was the cleanest and quietest campground I’d ever experienced. Over fresh fruit from the camp hosts, discussion turns to what the next days hold. This was quite possibly the worst day I’ve had on a bicycle and there’s no way in hell that I wanted to finish the ride as intended…but there is the possibility of utilizing the campground as a jumping off point for further exploration. And that’s what happened.
DAY 2:
Over a scrappy breakfast, the plan came together to jettison most of our gear at the campsite, fill up on water and head out to Crater Lake for the day. I’d never been there, and some redemption had to be had. The previous day was nothing but suck.
Back through charred forest and a dozen-ish heavy traffic highway miles, we turned onto the dusty and blown-out logging road which would start us on the 30 mile climb to Crater Lake. Pockets of deep sand transitioned into smooth dirt and soft loam…eventually linking into a gravel forest service road. Still climbing and with exposure ramping up, I was making my way through my three water bottles pretty quickly. Feeling the heat, and a fair amount of physical pain from the day before, I was quite frankly over it. I didn’t give a shit about some dumb lake. I’d seen dozens of lakes. Who cares! Climbing, climbing, climbing…and the road ends. The map on my GPS tells us to keep going straight, and after a little bobbing of our heads, we spot a tidy ribbon of singletrack which has been groomed and maintained by the forest service for folks of all levels of mobility. It is smooth! Cruising along, feeling a little refreshed by the change in terrain, the trail opens up into what I can only describe as the most incredible and otherworldly vista of massive stone spikes shooting skyward out of the surrounding hillside. It’s dizzying. Neither of us had seen anything like it. We lingered for a good bit before heading back onto the trail that would very quickly shoot us out into an empty parking area at the end of a beautifully paved road…that would ostensibly allow us to finish our climb to Crater Lake. Climbing another 7 or 8 miles through subalpine meadows, patches of snow still on the sides of the road, through swarms of orange-winged butterflies, we hit the summit. Any thoughts about whether this lake was worth it or not were instantly dispelled. It’s a giant crater. With a lake! On top of a volcano! Surrounded by rock spires and guarded by butterflies. Butterflies that were perfectly content to cover both my bicycle and person while I stood there completely in awe. Mind you, I was dehydrated, but that whole scene was pure magic. I could have made that my new home, but we did eventually have to head back. A quick stop to plop a bit of roadside snow in my helmet, refill bottles from filtered runoff, and off for a ripping descent back to the highway and to wrap up what is quite possibly the best day I’ve had on a bicycle.
DAY 3:
Is a story for another time…