As expected, the Tillamook trip was a good one. Kris and I arrived Thursday late afternoon, set-up camp and BBQ'd steaks for our Thanksgiving feast. Some cold beers and a few games of cribbage (which I got skunked at TWICE!) rounded off a nice stress-free holiday. To set the stage for riding in the mud-infested and ultra-steep Tillamook State Forest, it rained most of Thursday night and Friday. No worries though, we're both natives of the Pacific Northwest so even our Alpinestars have webbed toes. However, mud seems to have been invented or at least perfected in this neck of the woods, so we knew we were lined up for getting our butts kicked.
Friday morning we set out for adventure #1 by pointing our KTMs up the Rogers Road 4WD trail. The fast stuff lasted about 3/4 mile, at which point we veered off the jeep trail onto a singletrack that appeared to have had little traffic in it's lifetime. Within a couple minutes we're pushing up a slimy, rutted hill and laughing about how quickly we managed to get ourselves into that situation. A couple minutes later I fail in my second attempt to get up a pretty innocent looking hill, victim to the infamous "Tillamook muck". We decide to bag it and go back to the jeep trail to make our way up into the main trail system. There were other opportunities to take alternate singletrack off the jeep trail to keep us entertained. This also allowed us to polish up on climbing hills in rather nasty conditions.
The next series of trails we rode after Rogers Road were Maddog's Pumpkin Patch, Purple Bug Stump and Stick in the Nose. This area has very entertaining trail names! Purple Bug Stump is a one-way downhill trail and was the first of many this weekend where we broke the long standing rule of "never ride down something you can't ride back up". This trail is full of extremely steep drops and fully locked-up slides. Just point it over the edge, hang on for the ride and hope it actually goes somewhere! From there we looped around to the north side of Jordan Creek to ride a handful of other singletrack and some jeep trail. They were all reasonable trails, no pushing required and no hillclimbs that we couldn't crest. By early afternoon I was soaked to the bone and so cold I was shaking, so we decided to flip it around to head back to camp. We headed for the closest black-diamond downhill we could find: The Marvelous Mainline. Don't let the name fool you, this baby is steep and technical. We both walked our bikes down one big drop where our back tires drifted off the ground when the front tire nestled into the downhill side of the drop. The impending endo of my 1/2 levitating, vertical KTM was carefully stopped when the righthand radiator shroud dug into the bank of the rut - nice save! By the time we reached the bottom I was nicely warmed up and we ripped back to camp for some hot soup. Adventure #1 was safely completed with no damage to bikes or bodies.
Friday night brought more rain and hail pounding the roof of the motorhome as well as the gnarly trails surrounding us. Precipitation be damned, Saturday morning at the crack of 10 a.m. we were headed out for adventure #2. This time we headed for the west side of the Wilson River to the Diamond Mill trail system. The added bonus for today's ride is that we found 1/2" to 2" of snow blanketing most of the trail system. Burr! In kind of a repeat of the previous day, we were pushing bikes on the first singletrack we came to. Front & rear knobbies alike were packed with the Tillamook muck and rendered completely useless. We had a good ride planned and decided not to waste daylight on this silly hill. Back down to the snow covered road and up about a mile to cut back onto Cedar Ridge Trail where it was actually rideable. From there on life was good. We rode Frankenstein, Wolf Point, Mongos Canyon, Cedar Jones, Elk Wallow, Summit Trail, Cramlets Cliff, D.C., Old Cedar Creek and returned back to camp on the Cedar Ridge Trail. The traction was amazing. While the terrain was just as steep as the east side of the river, if not steeper, we were making it over huge hillclimbs - Yahooing the whole way up. Of course on a few occasions, just when my hillclimbing confidence was soaring, I'd hit something I couldn't do. A couple of the spots where I had to turn around on hills were pretty dicey, including one where the bike got away from me and slid on it's side in the rocks for about 5 feet - always nice on your plastics. The surreal part of that ordeal was that Kris was inflicting the exact same damage to her bike about 30 feet below me. It was like synchronized motorcycle abuse! The final run down Cedar Ridge on the eastern one-way downhill section was outrageous. It was about 1/2 mile of the steepest stuff you can find all strung together with almost no rest. That's a serious forearm workout trying to keep your butt on the seat when gravity really wants you firmly planted on the gascap. There was huge opportunity for crashing, but we came out unscathed. Whew! A short cruise down the road put us safely back in camp for hot showers and a celebratory beverage at the conclusion of another great riding adventure.
On the drive home we saw a reader board that said "The best antiques are old friends". I just got to spend a nearly perfect Thanksgiving riding with one of my favorite antiques (Kris and I have been friends for 30+ years) - ya gotta like that!
Friday morning we set out for adventure #1 by pointing our KTMs up the Rogers Road 4WD trail. The fast stuff lasted about 3/4 mile, at which point we veered off the jeep trail onto a singletrack that appeared to have had little traffic in it's lifetime. Within a couple minutes we're pushing up a slimy, rutted hill and laughing about how quickly we managed to get ourselves into that situation. A couple minutes later I fail in my second attempt to get up a pretty innocent looking hill, victim to the infamous "Tillamook muck". We decide to bag it and go back to the jeep trail to make our way up into the main trail system. There were other opportunities to take alternate singletrack off the jeep trail to keep us entertained. This also allowed us to polish up on climbing hills in rather nasty conditions.
The next series of trails we rode after Rogers Road were Maddog's Pumpkin Patch, Purple Bug Stump and Stick in the Nose. This area has very entertaining trail names! Purple Bug Stump is a one-way downhill trail and was the first of many this weekend where we broke the long standing rule of "never ride down something you can't ride back up". This trail is full of extremely steep drops and fully locked-up slides. Just point it over the edge, hang on for the ride and hope it actually goes somewhere! From there we looped around to the north side of Jordan Creek to ride a handful of other singletrack and some jeep trail. They were all reasonable trails, no pushing required and no hillclimbs that we couldn't crest. By early afternoon I was soaked to the bone and so cold I was shaking, so we decided to flip it around to head back to camp. We headed for the closest black-diamond downhill we could find: The Marvelous Mainline. Don't let the name fool you, this baby is steep and technical. We both walked our bikes down one big drop where our back tires drifted off the ground when the front tire nestled into the downhill side of the drop. The impending endo of my 1/2 levitating, vertical KTM was carefully stopped when the righthand radiator shroud dug into the bank of the rut - nice save! By the time we reached the bottom I was nicely warmed up and we ripped back to camp for some hot soup. Adventure #1 was safely completed with no damage to bikes or bodies.
Friday night brought more rain and hail pounding the roof of the motorhome as well as the gnarly trails surrounding us. Precipitation be damned, Saturday morning at the crack of 10 a.m. we were headed out for adventure #2. This time we headed for the west side of the Wilson River to the Diamond Mill trail system. The added bonus for today's ride is that we found 1/2" to 2" of snow blanketing most of the trail system. Burr! In kind of a repeat of the previous day, we were pushing bikes on the first singletrack we came to. Front & rear knobbies alike were packed with the Tillamook muck and rendered completely useless. We had a good ride planned and decided not to waste daylight on this silly hill. Back down to the snow covered road and up about a mile to cut back onto Cedar Ridge Trail where it was actually rideable. From there on life was good. We rode Frankenstein, Wolf Point, Mongos Canyon, Cedar Jones, Elk Wallow, Summit Trail, Cramlets Cliff, D.C., Old Cedar Creek and returned back to camp on the Cedar Ridge Trail. The traction was amazing. While the terrain was just as steep as the east side of the river, if not steeper, we were making it over huge hillclimbs - Yahooing the whole way up. Of course on a few occasions, just when my hillclimbing confidence was soaring, I'd hit something I couldn't do. A couple of the spots where I had to turn around on hills were pretty dicey, including one where the bike got away from me and slid on it's side in the rocks for about 5 feet - always nice on your plastics. The surreal part of that ordeal was that Kris was inflicting the exact same damage to her bike about 30 feet below me. It was like synchronized motorcycle abuse! The final run down Cedar Ridge on the eastern one-way downhill section was outrageous. It was about 1/2 mile of the steepest stuff you can find all strung together with almost no rest. That's a serious forearm workout trying to keep your butt on the seat when gravity really wants you firmly planted on the gascap. There was huge opportunity for crashing, but we came out unscathed. Whew! A short cruise down the road put us safely back in camp for hot showers and a celebratory beverage at the conclusion of another great riding adventure.
On the drive home we saw a reader board that said "The best antiques are old friends". I just got to spend a nearly perfect Thanksgiving riding with one of my favorite antiques (Kris and I have been friends for 30+ years) - ya gotta like that!
