Mt Hood has nothing on the Flying Aquarians!

My Race Across Oregon teammate Lauren and I went for a bike ride today. The day was just gorgeous and by the time the day was over we logged 109 miles, 11,441 ft of climbing, burned 7531 calories, averaged 14.7 mph, and had a grand time!

Here's our route:

It appears that all the links to gpsies.com no longer work.  So, instead of interactive maps, you now get a static map.  Sorry.

We began our ride from OMSI and followed the Eastbank Esplanade to the Sellwood Bridge. We took the lane and crossed the bridge. Lauren is getting a little more comfortable doing this. Once across the Willamette we rode to Lake Oswego where we jumped on a multi-use path that follows the west shore of the Willamette River for a way then got on the low traffic Old River Road until forced to get on Hwy 43. We continued to Oregon City where we again took the lane on a fast down slope as we merged into the appropriate lanes and crossed the Oregon City Bridge.

We made our way via side streets and back alleys to the road that runs up the Clackamas River. (Clackamas River Dr/Springwater Rd/Bakers Ferry Rd)




We had both remarked that for a route that promised a lot of climbing we sure hadn't seen much.......... yet.

We continued our way up the Clackamas River and through Barton. We talked about how in my previous life I had done a lot of whitewater and in my early rafting years had used Barton Park as access to the river. Today it was but a footnote as we rode on.
We climbed up out of the Clackamas River canyon and made our way to Sandy. In no time at all it seemed like we were there. We topped off our water bottles, had a snack from our "on bike" supplies and continued on to the infamous Bull Run river canyon. We expected most of our climbing to come in the next 40 miles.

First we had to cross the Sandy River which we did at Revenue Bridge.


We had expected most of our climbing to come in this section and our expectations were met. We'd climb up some pretty decent grades......

,,,,only to summit, then experience a hair raising twisty descent. The roller coaster ride eventually tamed a bit and we suddenly found ourselves peering into the Columbia Gorge between Women's Forum Park and Larch Mtn Road. I've biked the gorge many times, always east and west. Today marked a first for me in that we arrived here from the south.

We turned eastward (into a stiff east wind) and descended towards Multnomah Falls. As we rode around the Vista House we were both buffeted by some nasty swirling winds and found it very difficult to hold our lane......or even stay on the bikes! As we dropped back into better tree cover things became more manageable and we reached Multnomah Falls. We both refilled water bottles and had more of our on board food, as well as supported the lodge's snack bar for some salty snacks (now pressed into the "health food" role).

From there we turned back around and climbed our way back towards Chanticleer Point and Women's Forum State Park.




Though we had been riding some significant climbs Lauren couldn't help but be enjoying the day. Smiles came easily.


We took the "regular route" to Corbett then took every alternate to the right that was available. Rather than taking the descent that the Historic Highway follows we managed to eek out a few more climbing opportunities. The last alternate road we took was Woodard which dropped us back on the Sandy River a few miles below the Stark Street Bridge. We turned back upstream and gave Lauren her first look at an RAO route. We followed the `08 route up the Sandy River, across the Stark Street Bridge then a hard left on Kerslake Rd and climbed up to 302nd Ave. The climbing continued, a bit surprisingly to my partner!


We rode 302nd until we reached the Orient area then angled SW to cross Hwy 26 then made our way to Gresham where we jumped on the Springwater Corridor Trail to make our way back towards Portland.



The Springwater Corridor is not my favorite route to ride. It's surface is rough for a road bike and on a sunny days such as today it was full of the ipodded masses.
We just wanted to make fast tracks and get back to town. My partner had evening plans and I generally just subscribe to the mantra "momentum is my friend"!


We did eventually get back to Portland under an increasingly cloudy sky and into a bit of a wind that had shifted. It appears as if the weather forecasters may be right, tomorrow may be a wet day...... but today it was an absolutely glorious day to be on a bike. Sunny and 70 degrees!

Mt Hood was beautiful today, all white with snow, beautiful clear blue sky as a backdrop. It is Oregon's highest mountain at 11,242 ft, today we bettered it with climbing totaling 11,441 ft.

Maybe we should have named our Race Across Oregon team the "Climbing Aquarians" instead of the "Flying Aquarians". ;-)


............BIKE............LIFECYCLE.........TOTAL
Today......109................0................109
Jan........618...............0................618
Feb........692...............0................692
March......628...............0................628
_________________________________________
TOTAL.....1952...............0...............1952