Owyhee Canyonlands! The Planning... and Re-planning... and Re-re-planning...

I have been dreaming of exploring the Owhyee Canyonlands on two wheels for years, but it always seemed like it was too far away, or the wrong time of year, or I had too many other adventures planned. One of the silver linings of the pandemic is that it has narrowed my wanderings to be closer to home, so when we saw that the amazing folks over at Dirty Freehub had curated an Owhyee bikepacking trip, I knew I had to make it happen this year.

My bike touring partner in crime Ani and I threw some dates on the calendar for mid-May, did some research, created a route based off the Dirty Freehub route, crossed our fingers about the weather, and then patiently waited. In order to avoid the Memorial Day crowds, we took a calculated risk that the route would be snow free given the low snow year. The wild card was the pass near Silver City which sits at over 6000 feet... we had done some research and realized that the hotel and shop in Silver City generally opens Memorial Day weekend each year, and we were going to be over a week early. 

As we got closer to our departure date, we decided to dig deeper and try to get some better intel on what exactly the road conditions might be. Would it be similar to the McKenzie Pass which gets a single lane plowed through and then allowed to melt out? Would we just have a short hike-a-bike? We called the museum/library in Murphy, ID (the county seat of Owhyee county), and the nice employee said they thought it may be possible to pass by bicycle. We tried to call the road department but they only are open Monday - Thursday and well, it was a Friday. We also emailed the Idaho Hotel, and they had the best intel... we were told some ATVs and a few cyclists made it through, but that there was a big snow drift to navigate... less than a football field big. So we decided we would give it a go, and worst case scenario, we would need to turn around.

And then, after one last weather check, we saw that we would only have about 3.5 days of good weather before a massive cold front moved in with rain and snow. Our intel told us we did not want to get stuck in the Owyhee backcountry on wet muddy mucky roads. That it would be that awful clay that well... just don't do it! We had planned our route to be a leisurely 6 days and 5 nights. But even merging our two short days together didn't quite get us there.

Dorky paper map I make for all my bike tours, but sure made it easy to revision our trip...

Sooooo, we saw a cutoff road on the map that ended up being one of the recommended mountain bike rides in the Owhyee Canyonlands guidebook I had bought, and figured out a way to make it more rigorous 4 days and 3 nights. The big wildcard was that we had no idea what creeks would be running off that cutoff road as we had no intel for that section. We just chose a big looking creek (at least big looking from what the gazetteer showed) and made sure it wasn't downstream from one of the many mines that pollute water sources in this area... our backup plan was to carry extra water just in case, with each of us carrying 4 liters!

Here is what our final route looked like! We purposely avoided Jordan Valley due a huge rodeo that weekend and we felt uncomfortable riding through it. 

I still have the Silver City ride on my radar as an out-and-back... another time!

A few notes for bike tourists:

• The best intel on the area is from Dirty Freehub and the Owyhee Canyonlands guidebook. I also created a hard copy map using the Benchmark gazetteer for Idaho, which helps you identify which water sources have mines upstream and where there may be big enough creeks to camp by or filter water from.
• This is remote backcountry that requires folks to be fully self-sufficient and to carry water for an entire day. Our campsite on Day 1 seems like it would run year round, but we can't vouch for that and there were no other safe water sources that day (the only creek running came straight off a mine).
• Chubbier tires are better. Ani did fine on 46s and my 50s also did just fine. All other cyclists we saw were running much bigger or suspension. 
• Be prepared for some fun hike-a-bike! Nothing too crazy, but there are sections that have big chunky loose rock.