The other affirmative RSVP was KenL. He's as crazy as me, probably more so. He started from King City this morning, about 15 miles farther out than I did!
We all met at our official starting point,Edgefield, near Troutdale.
We pedaled off and jumped up to a pretty quick pace. Ken can out ride me most days, but Paul is still recuperating a bit. I was surprised to see him setting such a quick pace. I figured I'd have my work cut out for me today.
We crossed the Sandy River and began our climb. Not satisfied with the gentle grade of the Historic Highway we turned and took a steeper hill. Paul dropped the pace a bit but still was moving pretty quickly.
(Ken, getting ready to pour a good dose of hurt on me)
(Paul showing me just how to pedal up a hill)
However, as we reached a stop sign and regrouped. he announced that he just wasn't feeling it, and couldn't do the ride. I told him we didn't need to go so fast and could drop the pace a bit. He declined to do that and said he'd just make his way back to Edgefield and let us go on.
I didn't have today's route on my GPS, but Ken found it on his, after a bit of searching. We kept climbing until we dropped out onto Larch Mtn Road. We saw a bit of ice in the shadows as we made our way up but the air temperature was above freezing. We weren't too worried about ice being on the road. However as we got to Larch Mtn Rd we were reminded that we were at elevation here.
We knew the snow gate would be closed putting an end to any hope of reaching the top of Larch Mountain today. We were very close to the Brower Road intersection and decided to do a little exploring. We made a few comments about being like Lewis and Clark.
Brower Road lost a lot of elevation quickly. Within a mile or so another road took off from the left but it didn't look nearly as traveled as the one we were on. There were no painted lines and a lot of leaves in the travel lanes. We decided to keep going down Brower.
We continued to travel a mostly northerly direction, a direction that should drop us on the Historic Columbia River Highway but I couldn't recall seeing a Brower Rd intersection anywhere along the old road. The answer to that riddle happened soon enough. We rounded a corner to see an intersection with Palmer Mill Road, and the end of pavement. I knew Palmer Mill road intersected the old road. What I didn't know was if it was passable by bike. There were no signs warning us of a dead end so we proceeded on (in true Lewis and Clark fashion!)
We peered through the trees to see the Columbia River below us.
then turned our heads slightly to see this road ahead of us:
What an adventure this turned out to be. Much of the road was covered in an inch or more of what can only be described as slop. We had to stop several times to dig out brakes and clean fork clearances.
The road descended quite steeply. The river next to us had many falls, not rapids, FALLS! We eventually dropped onto the old highway, right next to the Wahkeena Falls parking area.
Ken noted that it was fortunate that we emulated the Lewis and Clark party, who were successful, rather than the Donner Party, who were..well notoriously unsuccessful.
We stopped for a bit to clean out the accumulated mud and debris from our brakes and forks then pedaled westward to Latourel Falls.
Before long we began the climb up to the Vista House and a bit more to Chanticleer Point.
From there it was a long run down to the Sandy River. We crossed the river on the Stark Street Bridge then climbed away from the river.
We jumped on the Gresham-Fairview Trail and followed it to the Springwater Corridor. We were noting the sun getting lower and lower in the sky, and the temperature correspondingly dropping. We kept the hammer down moving quickly. We did stop at Cartlandia for a quick refuel then continued on. We turned on our lights as the shadows lengthened. I had my 1 Watt front blinkie doing service for me, Ken had a brighter light on his helmet in blink mode. We had one homeless "resident" complain that our lights were too bright as we sped by him. Ken and I both chuckled a bit knowing that if he thought we were too bright now what would he think if we had the BRIGHT lights on? ;-)
We arrived back along the Willamette River just before dark and just in time to see an old steam engine rumble and hiss into the Oaks Bottom station.
The wheels on the engine were HUGE, probably 5-6 feet tall!
We pushed on racing the remaining daylight. As we approached the Hawthorne Bridge our route would diverge, with Ken making his way back over the West Hills toward his endpoint for the day. I had an easier plan, I only had to continue on the East Bank Esplanade for a short distance to finish up.
I rolled into the parking lot with 93 miles. The weather was dry. I did what I normally do in these situations, I prepared to ride some bonus miles! It was getting dark now. I stopped at my pickup and grabbed my 300 lumen headlight and my relective vest. I went out for a little out and back, enough to bag the needed 7 miles with enough extra to get 1 more "insurance" mile.
What a fun few days of biking it's been. The forecast calls for a dry week. I'm leading a Christmas Light viewing ride Monday evening, will get less than 10 miles then, and have a board meeting to attend on Wednesday, but beyond that be looking for me to be out on a bike in the evenings!
.........road bike.......rollers.........mtb.....lifecycle.....total
Today.......101..............0.............0..........0.........101
Jan.........474..............0............21..........7.........502
Feb.........530..............0.............0..........0.........530
March.......502..............0.............0..........0.........502
April.......524..............0.............0..........0.........524
May........1003..............0.............0..........0........1003
June.......1016..............0............10..........0........1026
July.......1148..............0.............0..........0........1148
August.....1049..............0.............0..........0........1049
Sept.......1153..............0............50..........0........1213
Oct.........881..............0.............0.........20.........901
Nov........1012..............0.............0.........20........1032
Dec.........297..............0.............0..........0.........297
YTD........9500..............0............87.........47........9634
Sounds like quite the adventure Kevin!
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