I got Bent

When I arrived in Bend yesterday I’d planned a short evening ride but it turned into something a bit bigger and wound up clocking about 20 miles though surprisingly less than 1000 feet of climbing. The trails off of Phil’s trailhead have fairly gentle climbs and are super smooth so you can really make time up them and downhills are fast and super flowy with uncommonly good sight lines.

I love the trails off of Phil’s trailhead because they are fun for pretty much any level of rider. Downhills are flow-filled and mostly smooth so beginners can really get a kick out of them but expert riders can challenge themselves with ridiculous speeds. They had some problems with the faster riders coming head on into climbers so recently they switched two of the main in/ out trails to one-way which makes speeding down a bit safer (but limits ride options).

Higher up and further from the mail trailhead, trails get a bit more technical and challenging which is what I was after. My goal was a particular section of Voodoo trail and getting to it turned out to be a bit longer than I’d planned. My 5-10 mile quick ride turned into a 20 mile journey, but it was a blast. Unfortunately, I didn’t prepare quite well enough and made a bad turn near the end of my ride and wound up riding about 4 miles in the wrong direction after sunset. I got a bit of assistance from a fellow rider (I poached his light) and I finished the ride going down some rather tame forest roads. Bad Ogre…. great day.

Heres the better pictures from the ride, click for the full sized versions, this first panoramic is particularly awesome embiggened.

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