It’s very steep
I prerode it today, and, my, ~7000 feet of climbing all crammed into about 120km makes for a looooooong day. And Buckner Creek Road, which I’ve now climbed about 5 times; it gets worse every time I try rowing the MLCM up it.
As a R200, it’s certainly doable. I’m not the fastest rider out there, and I still finished the preride in 11h55 (including two hours of very long stops at the controls in Canby, Estacada, and Sandy – riding time was under 10 hours, and someone who’s in better shape could probably crank up everything except for Buckner Creek Road without breaking more than a genteel sweat.) But it’s the sort of R200 that would provoke death threats against the organizer; as a comparison, the Sellwood to Hood & Back R300 didn’t seem even close to as horrifically vertical as this one.
More detail to follow at a later date, after I’ve collapsed in an exhausted heap for a while.
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Wow- thanks for introducing us to this route. People don’t so often seek out such totally do-able spirit crushing adventures. I’ll be trying this before October shortens the days.
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Death threats seems a little strong, but then again I haven’t ridden over 7,000 feet of elevation change.
I’m presuming you want to stay in Oregon, and the map is very very much not the territory, but it looks a lot like the smaller, western branch of the river is going through quite a bit of nigh-flat – the river at least winds fairly wide – and while bridges seem a bit short of supply you could presumptively get a nice rural-ly 200 out of looping around to the west instead of the east? Or does that lack artistry, or at least elevation?
(Though presumably the ideal is still to do most of the climbing on the outbound leg of the trip…)