Another day, another 100 mile loop
Despite having ridden somewhere in the ballpark of 5000 miles this year, I’d not yet taken the loop out to the big pile of waterfalls on the Columbia River Highway. And given that I’d just climbed Larch Mountain, it seemed only appropriate that I should turn around and visit the base of said mountain. So thisWednesday morning, I got up bright and early, packed a lunch (two peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, 6-7 oreos, and three slices of cheddite) in the keep-it-cool bag, tossed a handful of cookie bars into the panniers, tightened the seat bolt (there were two mysterious sounds coming from the bicycle, and tightening the seat bolt killed one of them. The other mysterious sound is either the chain being worn out after being ridden 1100 miles in the last month and a half or it’s the bottom bracket’s way of reminding me that I need to pull it out and repack the bearings), and, after doing some housework to keep the chaos down to a dull roar, rolled out the door at the bright and early hour of 12:30.
Oh well.
My usual route to the east (17th to the Springwater Trail, then east until I get to a good jumping point) has been critically damaged by the upcoming opening of the Clackamas trolley line, which means that every time I go east I jump off the trail at Flavel St, go across to the Flavel St. station to see if a train is about to appear. Today was no exception, but, alas, nothing showed up in 15 minutes, so I jumped back onto the Springwater Trail and rolled out to Gresham, where I jumped off the trail and made my way to Stark Street, and followed it east to the Sandy River (and the Columbia River Highway), and then up and up onto the flanks of Larch Mountain at least as far as Crown Point, where the Columbia River Highway and I started plunging back down to water level.
The Columbia River Highway is marvellously twisty on the way down from Crown Point; the first couple of miles is hairpin turn after hairpin turn, so if you’re following a car or van, you can simply plant yourself in the middle of the lane and follow them down without worrying about blocking traffic, because they won’t be going any faster than 20mph anyways. And after the twisty section ends, pop, you’re in the land of waterfalls, with more waterfalls and other car-trapping tourist stops that you can shake a stick at, so the poor cars that are trapped behind you aren’t likely to be trapped behind you for very long before they’re lured away by scenic beauty™.
The big waterfall is, of course, Multnomah Falls, which, conveniently, comes fully equipped with the multnomah falls lodge, which means that a wandering bicyclist can pull up, lock their bicycle to the convenient bicycle rack, buy a fruit smoothie, then sit down at an outside table to eat their previously prepared pb&j sandwiches. And after I finished that, and after a couple of hopeful looks at the Yellow Menace mainline just the other side of the highway (no trains :-(), I got back on my bicycle and headed east towards the east side of Ainsworth State Park (which is where the Columbia River Highway merges onto i84, and which is where I turned around and headed back.
Going up the Columbia River Highway to Crown Point is nowhere near as swoopy as coming back down. A serious biker with a nice light bicycle could, no doubt, make pretty short work of it, but as of today I’m 186 pounds, plus the xtracycle and supplies makes it pretty damn close to 250, so I dropped into my dump gear (35") and crawled very very slowly up to the very top, where I pulled off into the Portland Women’s Forum and refilled my water bottles which had mysteriously all gone empty whilst I crawled up the cliff face. And then it was quick work to descend down to the Sandy River, then north to Troutdale and Marine Drive.
Did I mention that it was windy yesterday, and the wind was coming out of the northwest? Well, it was, and that convinced me that I should proceed all the way to Kelley Point Park (20 miles?) because if I could make it there, then the rest of the trip home would have a nice tailwind and there’s nothing finer than finishing a long loop by being blown down the line at >20mph. But Marine Drive is a pretty grim way to get my reward; it’s a busy truck corridor, so along with the wicked wind blowing in my face trucks were constantly blowing by just the other side of me. Most of them swerved to give me 3-4' of clearance, but it’s not a very soothing ride along the waterfront nevertheless.
But I plugged along, and eventually (at 19:30) reached Kelley Point Park and took the obligatory “slightly deranged” photo of my bicycle:
… at which point the sun looked at me, said “ah hah!”, and commenced the nightly plummet from the sky. So, with the wind at my back, I bolted south down Lombard, then down Lombard, then Willamette, Greeley, and Interstate, and only had to stop to attach all my running lights just before I reached the Eastbank Esplanade and stepped off the public roads for most of the last 8 miles to home.
I only had one collision scare, too: I was on the Esplanade, creeping south and ringing my bell pretty much constantly, when some fellow on a fixed-gear bicycle came whipping around a corner just as I was veering around a group of pedestrians. We both cried “OH SHIT!”, stomped on our brakes, and skidded almost to a stop before our bicycles did a headon collision and bounced off each other. I did have to pry my hands off the brake levers after determining that neither of us was actually hurt (we were going slowly enough so that neither of us fell over, but just bounced our rear wheels off the ground), and, after kicking my headlight a couple of times to get it to light up again (there’s a loose wire inside and when I hit a bump it turns itself off. I’m going to have to pry the casing apart, re-solder all the connections inside, and put a proper pushbutton switch on it) headed back south into the deepening gloom.
The grand totals are:
- 164 kilometers
- 1453 meters ascent (2050 if you believe the GPS’s lies)
- 7h22 minutes riding (22.2 km/h)
- 8h25 minutes total loop time (19.5 km/h)
- 2 bicycle pictures, 6 waterfall pictures, 10 locomotive pictures
- the pleasant discovery that the forest in the Columbia Gorge smells much like the forests around my grandparent’s summer camp in Maine used to smell like.
I don’t know why, but this was one of the most effortlessly pleasant bike rides I’ve been on, and I was pretty unhappy when the sun set. At no point during this trip, and this includes crawling up towards Vista Point from either direction, did I feel so exhausted that I didn’t think I could finish the whole ridiculous loop. Maybe it’s because I brought sammiches, and didn’t have to resort to cookie bars or on-the-trail junkfood?