McKenzie Pass

McKenzie Pass is magical. I spend a great deal of time up there in the late summer and fall. It's a bonus when ODOT plows a single lane width through the 20 ft drifts and opens the road to bicyclists and hikers only.  They did that last year and repeated again this year.

I led a group of 8 up there today to ride from Western Oregon to Eastern Oregon and back.  We started at the McKenzie Ranger Station. We had a series of delays today, none big in and among themselves, but cumulatively they added up. I had hoped to be pedaling by 9:30 AM, instead it was just after 10:30 before the 8 of us shoved off.

We rode a couple of miles on relatively flat road then turned onto Hwy 242.  The first few miles of that were just gently sloping also.  We soon began to climb however.

Earlier I had been talking about this ride and a friend had said she'd like to ride this but didn't think she could do it. Ever the optimist, I convinced her to join us by saying I wouldn't drop her.  The rest of the group was invited to ride a slower pace with me, or hammer along at their own pace.

Catherine and I ended up riding together as the others pedaled along ahead.

We started at an elevation of about 1600 ft and would pedal to over 5300 ft to cross McKenzie Pass.
When we were a a few miles from the Obsidian Trailhead we met John Henry coming back our direction. His plan as not to ride all the way to Sister but rather ride to where the main climb leveled off for a bit.  There is still about 500 ft of climbing at that point so I always choose to pedal on.  Today John Henry turned around and pedaled back up with us.

 The climb was relentless. We soon started seeing consistant snow.

 As we climbed the snow got deeper and deeper.

We reached the summit

 and within 150 ft passed through a snow drift that had to have been near 20 ft high.  It was an impressive sight to be riding next to the gigantic wall of snow and ice.

Catherine and I arrived in Sisters about 20 minutes later than most of our riding partners. We did have lunch there and a chance to compare notes with our ride partners. They took off a bit before we were ready to go, they were near finished with their lunch before we arrived.

There was a bit of a head wind as we pedaled back to the pass.  It was enough to really slow Catherine down. I tried to get her to draft me, but we just couldn't seem to get that to work.

We eventually got to the summit.  It was 42 degrees with about a 20 mph wind in that wide open lava field country. We stopped only momentarily to take a photo, the stellar view of the volcanic peaks was not to be had, as there were a lot of low clouds and fog obscuring them.

Though there was only about half the climbing on our return trip, the wind caused us to take longer than we had anticipated.  We arrived in Sisters after 4 hours of riding, as predicted preride.  The return trip took 3.5 hours, whereas we had predicted 3 hours.

It was a good ride, Catherine had never been on McKenzie Pass before and was amazed at the scenery. I only wished that we would have had clear weather, the North Sister is so close that it seems you can reach out and touch it.

Next time.

........road bike.......rollers.........mtb.....lifecycle.....total
Today........78..............0..............0..........0............78
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