August 8-12: Bend

Bend was our final destination as we had a wedding to attend there. We did a bunch of riding but only took a few pictures on our early morning North Fork -> Happy Valley -> Farewell loop. Bend has a well-deserved reputation for smooth singletrack, but by this time of year, it's very dry and dusty because unlike Oakridge, it's west of the Cascades. In addition to biking, we got in some rafting and quite a bit of beer tasting. Bend has about a dozen breweries, many of which are excellent. One of the highlights was our visit to the Ale Apothecary, which is an artisanal brewery (for lack of a better term, I'm growing to hate the word "artisanal"). The low point was certainly Cascade Lakes Brewery, which is a complete joke.

Stay on target:

Oh yeah, this trail had a zillion (ok, seven) waterfalls. It also was loaded with cobwebs, we must have been the first people through there that day.

Note the dust cloud. Bend seems to have a lot of twisty, swoopy trails. They also like to go through narrowly spaced trees, which is unnerving. We even found some too narrow for our wide handlebars.

Katie about to run over some stuff with Broken Top in the background.

August 5-6: Oakridge, OR

We arrived after dark the night before and woke up in a National Forest campgorund in an old growth forest. We had reservations for the next two nights at the Oakridge Hostel -- cool owners, great breakfasts, locked shed for bikes, and even a bike stand and tools. The first day we rode/hiked up Lawler and then back down. It was very cool to ride in such a lush dense forest as such things do not exist in Montana. The next day we planned to ride the legendary Alpine trail -- after a shuttle from the nice folks at Oregon Adventures -- except the lower portion of the trail was on fire and we were diverted to the longer and more challenging Alpine->Tire Mountain -> Cloverpatch route. As a reward for the several miles of gravel and pavement that closed the ride, we went the Brewer's Union Local 180 and consumed gigantic burgers, sweet potato fries and seriously delicious cask-conditioned beers.

Lush and dense.

More after the break....

August 4 - Black (Country) Rock

After a long drive from Bozeman the night before, we finished up on Saturday morning to arrive at Black Rock (in  Falls City, OR) on the hottest day of the year -- 100 degrees and humid as hell. We goofed around the practice area jumps and quickly realized that we are not rad freeriders, but we had a great time riding berms (banked corners), smaller jumps and wooden features anyway. We had intended to stay at the campground in Falls City recommended on the BRMBA website but it was beyond sketchy (think people living in dilapidated RVs and trailers...as their permanent residence). Instead, we hit the road towards Oakridge after riding and had an excellent dinner at Venti's Cafe in Salem (extremely delicious sweet potato fries).

First some appropriate tunes, then on to the pictures:

Katie represents:

I love berms:

Katie gets airborne-ish:

Look Ma! I'm freeriding!

Katie is stoked to hit this feature:

One of the weird camera accidents that turns out cool:

Sunset somewhere near Eugene: