Bike Route Toasting, Part 4: The McKenzie 600k

This is the first 600 I've designed. I decided to give myself a little more leeway in terms of the starting location, which opened up a treasure trove of roads that I'm absolutely mad to ride:

The McKenzie 600

The McKenzie 600 starts in Corvallis, at the Super 8 on 2nd and Tyler, and takes the nearby bike path to Philomath. From Philomath, riders will turn onto Fern Road before heading south on Bellfountain to Alpine. From there, it's over to Monroe and south on Territorial Highway. The route follows this road all the way to Lorraine, where it heads over the hills to Cottage Grove and riders get on the Row River trail, following it through the hills to Disston. Then it's a stiff climb on NFD 22, the recently-paved 5850, and 2102 down to Oakridge. From Oakridge, riders take the fabled Aufderheide Scenic Byway through the Cascades to McKenzie Bridge on the McKenzie River, and the overnight control.

In the morning, riders start at first light by scaling magnificent McKenzie Pass, through the lava fields, past the observatory, and down to Sisters. From Sisters, it's over Santiam Pass, and north on OR-22. This takes our intrepid randonneurs to NFD 11, aka Quartzville Road, for the last major ascent of the ride. At the top, it's downhill for miles at river grade to Sweet Home, rollers to Lebanon, and flat across the Willamette Valley back to Corvallis.

I've wanted to ride up the McKenzie Pass forever, I've been drooling over Aufderheide since I heard about the Oregon Ultimate Bike Ride, the Row River Trail plus the climb over to Oakridge caught my eye from being on Cycle Oregon a couple years ago, and Quartzville just came from looking at a map, realizing that it was designated as paved the whole way (which I have corroborated), and figuring that it would be an awesome ride. So, this was a way to pack 'em all into one epic rando challenge -- about 50% of the roads on this ride are one-and-a-half lane roads through the forest with no traffic and trees growing right up to the edges. Sounds pretty good to me. I'm hoping to run this as a summer 600 next year; alas, it's not likely to be doable before then because of work ODOT is doing on 242 this summer

Here's the elevation profile. Don't look too hard at it; down that path lies madness.

4/25/2008 -- Columbia Foothills 205k

Having recently designed and submitted to RUSA 3 permanents, I decided that it might be a good idea to actually ride them before I sent my woolly randonneuring friends off for sheering. I've ridden most of each of the three, but designing a new route is nothing to me if I can't satisfy my yen for adventure by throwing in some new roads. While I'm pretty confident in the research that I do beforehand, there's just no substitute for actually going out and seeing what things are like on the ground. And, half of the fun in designing a course with new roads is in then going out and riding them.

So I sent out an email to Sam Huffman to see if he was up for a 200k adventure for no credit, and he was game. He met me at my house on a cool, grey Saturday morning. The plan was to get a leisurely 9 am start, spend the day scouting out the Columbia Foothills 205k, and finish up before dinner.

The Columbia Foothills 205 is based on a year-round route that I've done a couple times, going up to Longview on low-traffic roads on the Washington side of the Columbia, and coming back into town on US 30 on the Oregon side. I've modified the route a little bit to make it into a permanent, though, simplifying it through Vancouver, and adding a segment that goes up to Apiary on the Oregon leg to add some distance and to get you off US 30 (for a little while, anyway.) I'd checked out the route from the I-205 bridge to Daybreak Park back in January, and found it to be just fine, but the Rainier-Apiary-Deer Island leg, while not literally uncharted territory, was outside of my experience. I was excited.

Sam and I set out, unhurried, around 9:15, and made our way to Vancouver by way of the world's loudest bike path (where I think we saw Mike Bingle heading in the other direction.) I was pleased to discover that the route I'd described through Vancouver was easy to navigate and reasonably pleasant, though once we got onto Andresen, I'd describe it more as "efficient" than anything else -- flat and straight, with a wide shoulder. We settled into a good rhythm that carried us to the east fork of the Lewis River, and Daybreak Park.

Past Daybreak, we were on roads that I had only traveled in the other direction, on RACC. It was flat for a while, but soon we had to climb out of the Lewis River floodplain and it was rollers to La Center, and beyond that, more rollers. In this stretch, Sam asked what busy road was yonder through the trees, which I then identified to him as I-5. We arrived in Woodland not long after.

Through Woodland on a frontage road, and onto Green Mountain Road. A quick bathroom break, and it was time to tackle Green Mountain. I hadn't come this way in a couple years. I remembered it as steep, and my memory didn't fail me. It's about 1.5 miles from bottom to top, with grades frequently in the double digits. Fortunately the climb stair-steps up, relenting 3 or so times, giving you a chance to catch your breath. I climbed steadily, and well, but Sam easily pulled away from me on the steepest parts. I came up with a few control questions based on landmarks as I climbed.

At the top we took in a great view of the river and floodplain below. The road wound around and rolled a bit, before plunging down to the left in a crazy steep, technical descent. In spite of the fact that I had actually been on this descent several times before, Sam had way more confidence his bike handling skills and the quality of his tire-roadway interface, and pulled away from me. At the bottom of the hill, we found ourselves on old US 99, which never gets too far from I-5, and some rollers took us through Kalama and Carrolls into Kelso, the halfway point. We took a break to take in some calories.

After catching our breath, we made our way to the Lewis and Clark Bridge through industrial land on the south side of Longview. At the foot of the bridge, we stopped at the Starbucks to refill my bottles and escape a sudden downpour. To this point, we'd had mostly occasional drizzle, but as we headed towards Oregon, the weather began to change in earnest. The stop at the Starbucks was long enough for things to clear up again, though, and so we headed over the bridge.

Conditions on the bridge weren't too bad. The rain had let up, and there wasn't the nasty cross-wind that you can get high above the river. Once we got to the Oregon side, we even found that ODOT had swept the shoulder for us (the League of American Bicyclists can suck it!) On the other side, we were quickly in Rainier, made a right turn on 6th, and found ourselves on new ground.

The climb out of Rainier is pretty long and challenging, but not nearly as steep as Green Mountain. It reminded me quite a bit of the climb up OR 47 out of Clatskanie, but it wasn't anything like that long. The dwellings got further apart the higher we went, replaced by forest, pasture, and clearcut. The rain came back as we ascended, drenching the two of us pretty thoroughly. After a couple miles, the grade relented considerably, and while the road continued to trend upward, it was more of a middle-ring grade. Halfway to Apiary, I put together several questions for the information control.

Fern Hill Road ended at Apiary Road, where we turned left and briefly found ourselves in familiar territory. Then, around a couple of turns, we turned left onto Meissner Road, and once again I was in the dark. Meissner rolled a bit, but continued the upward trend through alternating clearcuts and lush woods, with the occasional dwelling. We never reached what we identified as the crest, exactly, but the uphill bits started getting switched out for swooping downhills that just about got us into our top gears without spinning us out, featuring sweeping turns that never quite got tight enough to make us reach for our brakes. There were sections that wound along creek drainages, sections between neat, square farm parcels, and a section on the spine of a ridge, with views of the coast range to the left and the right. It was, in short, a hell of a descent. Before we knew it, we were spat out onto US 30 at Deer Island, next to the Quick-Mart.

We turned south on US 30, and got the whole US 30 experience. The rain had stopped, thankfully, and the day stabilized into overcast and slightly blustery. This meant alternating periods where we were fighting quartering headwinds and periods where we were on the conveyor belt. There were lots more cars than we had seen to that point and there were sections with a bunch of crap in the shoulder. We took one last break in Scappoose, and then got onto the conveyor belt for the rest of the ride. I teased Sam whenever we went by the entrance to one of the roads that goes up the west hills: "Hey Sam. Look, there's Rocky Point. We're not doing this ride for credit, we could do a detour if you wanted. You go ahead, I'll be right behind you." "Hey Sam. Logie Trail, Sam, it's not too late." Nevermind that it wouldn't really have been an issue for either of us if it had been called for, I think we had both drunk our fill of bicycling for the day.

Our momentum was only impeded by a screw that embedded itself in my tire on the approach to the St. John's bridge. That taken care of, we proceeded through its cathedral arches into North Portland, and wound our way along Mock's Crest and Alameda Ridge, back to my house. We glided to rest into my driveway at 5:45, completing 205 kilometers in around 8:30.

Bike Route Toasting, Part 3: The Alsea Falls 400k

I dreamed up this route as an alternate spring 400, in case the Covered Bridges route has gotten a little stale:


The Alsea Falls 400k
This ride starts in McMinnville, heads north up the Yamhill Valley, and immediately undertakes the challenging climb up the Nestucca River Road. Halfway to the coast, though, the route turns south onto Bible Creek Road, taking it all the way to Willamina. From there, it's south through Ballston, onto Broadmead and Perrydale roads to Dallas, and into King's Valley. King's Valley Highway takes riders to US 20 just outside of Philomath, where they come within shouting distance of Mary's Peak and turn onto the Alsea Highway. In Alsea, turn onto the South Fork Alsea River scenic byway, and take that to Monroe. From there, the route crosses to the other side of the Willamette Valley and heads back north on flat country backroads through Brownsville, Jefferson, and Turner to Salem. In Salem, riders cross to the west side of the Willamette, and take roads at the foot of the Eola and Amity hills back to OR 18, and then into McMinnville.

The inspiration for this ride was my affection for the Nestucca River Road, and my interest in riding Bible Creek Road, King's Valley Highway, and the South Fork Alsea Byway. Brownsville looks like a neat little town, too, and Parrish Gap Road into Turner is a fantastic place to pedal. This route is open pretty close to year-round, and should easily be doable as either a spring or summer 400. It's a nice complement to the Covered Bridges 400, too, in that it goes south in the foothills of the coast range, and returns on the flat parts on the east side of the valley, while the CB 400 goes south in the foothills of the Cascades, and returns on the flat parts on the west side of the valley.

The elevation profile is below. Not a ridiculous amount of climbing, and you get most of it out of the way early.