Day 1: High Desert Happy Monkey (Culver to Cyrus Horse Camp)

Fall in Bend is often a whirlwind of frantic outdoors adventures before the shoulder season of rain and ick sets in and we collectively wait for snow to blanket the mountains and the skiing season begins. This is particularly true in years like this one when we spent an inordinate amount of time indoors due to the excessive heat and wildfire smoke. Three weekends and three bike tours? Challenge accepted. My friends Elisa, Ani, and I threw some ideas around, everything from a potential Mt. Hood circumnavigation to a trip towards the coast to wanderings in the desert. It all depended on the weather.

We had set aside four days to do a longer sojourn, but as the weekend weather forecast revealed itself, we shortened the trip to three days with a cold front moving in with potential rain and high winds. Elisa had thrown a route out to the group that we all had half-heartedly looked at. 

Ani and I had ridden many sections of this route since a lot of local gravel rides incorporate these roads, and we were excited at the prospect of connecting them. The camping logistics were challenging this time of year since very few creeks are running, and often those that are come from questionable water sources. We ended up bribing Elisa's partner to drop water so we could dry camp the first night at the Cyrus Horse Camp. While we would normally just carry the extra water, we knew we had a gnarly climb with some guaranteed hike-a-bike the first day. 

Posing with the Peter Skene Ogden overlook area before figuring out how to connect to a not-so-super-secret back way to avoid riding on Highway 97.

Riding some of the scenic singletrack at Smith Rock State Park before our epic hike-a-bike.

Pushing bikes up the Wolf Tree trail... I had to actually remove my panniers and hike them up separately at one point!

Elisa's partner Chris found us at the top of Burma Road... he had taken the opportunity to get a trail run in before dropping off our water (and some firewood).

Singletrack coming down off of Burma Road... short lived as we forgot we would have to hike-a-bike around Gray Butte. Awesome.

We all had mistakenly thought that after Burma Road, it would be smooth sailing. This is where we all realized we had not really looked that closely to the route. The hike-a-bike up and around Gray Butte was still solidly in the realm of Type 2 fun, but we started getting a little worried that we might not get to camp before dark given our sloooow pace. The few parts of the singletrack that we could have ripped through were rendered terrifying as our panniers caught on the sagebrush. A few descents were so steep and loose that, much to our chagrin, we had to walk our bikes down.

Sweet sweet sweet dirt road downhill mostly into camp as the sun started to set.

We made it! Hello horse!

Pure joy at camp. And extra firewood that was already there.

One of these days, Ani and I are going to put together a gourmet bikepacking food cookbook. Yes, Ani did actually pack in fresh seafood, including shrimp, steelhead, and scallops.

Having a fire at camp is soooo luxurious!

A few tips for cycle tourists:

• We relied heavily on this version of the route which started in Terrebonne for our trip planning. We wanted to break out the days into more even days and the first day seemed really short. In retrospect, we now know why the first day was so damn short given all the hike-a-bike. Plus, those who have never been to Smith Rock will want to hang out and soak in the views.
• RideWithGPS' guess of what the road surface is sucks! Almost the entire first two days are dirt and singletrack. 
• This route is best done on a bikepacking set up. I did this with a more mixed set up with front panniers and so the Smith Rock Burma Road and Grey Butte sections had a crapton of hike-a-bike (up to 15% grade) and some near death experiences with sagebrush catching my front panniers! 
• We parked at the City Park in Culver, though make sure to fill your bottles in advance as the bathroom was not open and we didn't see anywhere to fill up water.