Death and the Surveyor in the Hood

Killed a small bird just before we reached Wyeth campground - it pretty much lined up the front of the van and flew straight into it. Much like the teenage girl on Mt Eden Rd did* a couple of years back, although this time there was no new bike retail therapy. We did nab one of the two remaining campsites at Wyeth though, and got the tent up before dark.

Our neighbors for the night were trash, to put it plainly. I won't go into why, but we didn't think particularly highly of any of them, and especially the parents**. They went to bed early, though, which is more than can be said for some of the other campers, who liked their country music audible, and so turned it up every time a train went past. Which was often.

As we left the next morning, we passed a Sheriff's car at the Interstate on-ramp. I watched him like a hawk in my mirrors, up until the point where I just about put us off the shoulder and down the bank for the second time, at which point I decided that paying some attention to where we were actually going might be a good idea.

Ten minutes later we were in Hood River, which is a neat town, with a friendly local bike shop (Hi, Greg @ Mountain View) where we acquired a trail map and a bunch of ride advice, including the admonition to make sure we had dishwashing liquid handy at the end of the Sincline - Coyote Canyon ride to help get the Poison Oak oil off us. We headed back to the feeder road where I washed and dried pretty much every item of clothing we own at the laundromat while Nene hit Safeway for delicious foods.

Blasted out of town to the south, into the mountains, and pulled into the most rudimentary camground we'd yet struck; Routson County Park. Like Wyeth, there were no showers. There was a toilet block, but it was locked, and shards of smashed porcelain behind the southeast corner gave hints as to why that might have been. One site was already occupied but vacant when we arrived; The two big plain chairs next to the two small bright-colored ones made us feel pretty good about what kind of neighbors they were likely to be though, so we set up camp then bailed back down the road a few miles to start the first epic ride of the trip: Surveyor's Ridge.

Advice had been to park at the Dog River Trailhead, ride the road to the Oak Ridge Trailhead, then in off the road and up Oak Ridge to Surveyor's. The road ride was an easy downhill 15 minutes - would have been less without the headwind. The climb up Oak Ridge took a wee while longer - about 70 minutes all up. And it was hard climbing, with some fairly unpleasant steep sections where loose shale and tight switchbacks made riding all-but impossible. Janine claims to have seen a red-crested woodpecker, but as it was on an uphill section, I missed it - it was long gone by the time I made it up to that part of the trail!

What goes up must, in this instance, go along before it comes down, and the next 150 minutes had us negotiating swooping, flowing trail sections followed by climbs just long enough that you felt you'd earned the next downhill. When the cloud cover lifts the views are probably incredible, but we'd forgotten the camera, so were perversely pleased to not be able to see anything past a couple of hundred feet. We'd left our start later than planned (4:00pm), so it was in gathering gloom (8:00pm) that we reached the top of the Dog River trail and regrouped for the run down to the van. This was the sweetest run we've struck so far. Half an hour of flowing downhill trail, with streams (some bridged, some not) and dips and small climbs then more downhill flowing stuff. Awesome.

Mixed emotions at reaching the van - pleased it was still there, and exhaustedly looking forward to food and sleep, but sad to not have any more Dog River trail in front of us - if we get the chance to ride this again, we`ll jump at it, with all four feet.









* = The girl wasn't flying though. And the bird didn't trash the front end of the van.

** = She was a fat chain-smoker who carped at everyone near-constantly. He sat in his chair the entire evening and morning, and only spoke to bring up instances of past wrongdoings by family members and to demand restitution.