I also wanted to talk a little bit about Mountain Bike Oregon (MBO). This is an amazing event, this was our third year attending and we have yet to be disappointed. You can read my previous review and of MBO. My only comment is that the popular Middle Fork ride was dramatically altered this year and the results were a bit disappointing. So a huge thumbs up to the event… but next year I will likely skip the extra $$ for the Middle Fork ride and just enjoy the closer in rides.

After MBO we spent a day riding the North Umpqua Trail (NUT) which is south of Oakridge along the North Umpqua River. This is an amazing trail filled with some spectacular views, long flowing downhills, it’s simply an amazing trail. Pictures and a more detailed review here.

Finally, I’m on a big push to get my weight down and my fitness level up right now (some people call this training) for a big ride coming up in September. As part of this I’ve been trying to get some longer rides and doing a little exploration in the Pinecrest area. We’ve discovered some great routes, and explored some really interesting areas over the last few weeks. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to share some of that on the site shortly. Not a lot to share yet, but I should have some GPS mapped routes up soon. Here is a route we did (motion based) that took us up to Eagle Peak and Pinecrest Peak. Some absolutely amazing views from those trails. I pretty much blew up early on that ride and never recovered so it was a looong day for me. I didn’t bring a camera but here are some older pictures of Eagle Peak and Pinecrest Peak

On the 4th I met up with rocket scientist and all around great guy Big Larry and another good friend Kathleen who coaches a high school mountain biking team in the Bay Area. We rode the section of the TRT from Mount Rose down to the Tunnel Creek trail. At that point we split up, Fiona rode the Flume Trail while Larry, Kathleen and I rode down to Red Flume Trail then around to the TRT over Marlett Peak. All in all a great ride. The TRT from Rose to Tunnel Creek is a great section of trail for beginning and intermediate riders to get a handle on the decomposed granite and rocky technical riding the characterizes the riding on the east and south shores of Lake Tahoe. Spooner to Red Flume Pictures and Ride Report here.

Saturday I had some slightly more ambitious plans. Last year some of the guys and I pioneered a new (to us) route going from Spooner Summit to Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. It’s brutal 40 mile ride starting on the east side of the lake and going all the way around to Meyers. It includes some brual climbs and a few amazing technical descents. Since this route was based on the classic “Punisher” route we dubbed it the Punsher Plus.

I’ve also rewritten my main Tahoe Rim Trail Guide to include information about more rides in the area, including these two.

On September 22nd and 23rd the TROGS, the Ogre (from Ogrehut.com), and some Sonora area locals are inviting you to a get together at Pinecrest Peak. Prepare for 2 days of riding, camping, and general MTB mayhem. If you’ve never ridden at Pinecrest, this is a great chance to try out some awesome Sierra Nevada trails which are a bit off the beaten track. Anyone is welcome to show up and we have plans for any level of rider.

Location : We will be camping at Fraser Flat Campground near Strawberry on both Friday and Saturday Nights. All rides will meet at the Strawberry Store (Big Red Store on Right).

Friday: We’re going to have a Friday night ride at 9PM along Fiona’s Favorite trail. The ride will be laid back and at a slow pace. Expect a mellow ride dodging trees through some fairly tame terrain. This is about a 9 mile loop and will be the only ride to start and finish at Fraser Flat campground. (Rain/ snow cancels)
Saturday: (none of the rides planned on Saturday are to be shuttled)
Easy Ride: Fiona’s Favorite Loop, down Ewok Trail from Strawberry, crossing the river at Spring Gap Road, then returning on the RR Grade to Strawberry. 10 miles, easy pace with very little climbing.
Challenging Ride: Climb up to Pinecrest Peak and alternately climbing up Willow Creek or Hammil Canyon then returning via Pinecrest Peak Trail.
Expert Route: This is a highly challenging ride for expert level mountain bikers, it’s a 35-40+ mile route with tons of climbing, technical cross country riding and finishes with the the killer Pinecrest Peak Downhill.

Sunday: Sunday’s plans are not set in stone yet. Here are the tentative plans for the day.
Easy Ride: 10-15 miles riding along the Flume trail above the Stanislaus River (may have a delayed start time due to shuttling Challenging riders)
Challenging Route: This will be a shuttled ride, the shuttle will drop riders off at the base of Eagle Peak and riders will climb up to Eagle Peak coming down some fresh new singletrack. At that point they can go directly to Pinecrest Peak via forest roads or drop down Willow Creek trail before climbing to Pinecrest Peak.
Expert Ride: A second day of high mileage, challenging cross country riding. The second day will likely not include Pinecrest Peak but will include 30-40 miles of challenging singletrack.

Cost: Zero $ (responsible for own campsite and food/ alcohol)
Registration: Just show up at Fraser Flat on Friday Night or meet us at the Strawberry Store on Saturday or Sunday Morning.

Weather seems to be deteriorating on Saturday. Still have a chance that it will blow over but I would suggest anyone day-tripping to come on Sunday rather than Saturday. The trails should be awesome post rain/ snow. I’ll be up there both days rain or shine and will likely ride on Saturday if it’s just limited to showers or a light drizzle. Friday nights ride is canceled if there is rain. Night rain rides are not fun (I’ve done it)

Also, note that Sunday’s Easy Ride will start at 11AM rather than 10AM as was listed originally.

I’m working on updating my ride guides, one at a time like.  The first one to get a serious retinkering is my Pinecrest Peak Guide.  The format is slightly different and it’s very focused on getting you around the loop since there are so few other references out there for this trail.  I have also included some options for bonus mileage and even some simple shuttling instructions.  I’m going to try and add some maps soon as well.  Let me know how you like the layout.

The Ogre’s Guide to Pinecrest Peak

The Mountain Bike Oregon event itself was very well organized. The cover price for the weekend is was right around $250 (depending on when you registered) and it was an all inclusive event. All ride shuttles and guides, a campsite, bathrooms (mostly portable), showers were available at the local high school, and food. Breakfast was excellent; eggs, pancakes, sausage, biscuits and gravy, and fresh fruit along with coffee and OJ. Far from your traditional camping fare. At breakfast time and shortly afterwards, a lunch spread was laid out in a pack-it-yourself fashion. All the good whole grain bread, lunch meat or peanut butter and jelly, cookies and munchies you wanted to whip up. The disappointment for me food-wise was dinner, a lackluster offering of mediocre pasta and dried burgers that was filling, but didn’t really inspire praise. Desert was excellent and the brownies with ice cream were great.

The one thing that really drives home how impressive this area is was the quality and passion of the riders in the area. Almost universally the guides were mind-blowingly impressive riders. These are people who are passionate about the trails and have migrated to central Oregon because of the quality of the trails there. The guides do an awesome job of keeping track of large groups of mountain bikers and every ride had a great guide to ‘paid client’ ratio. There were roughly 30 “Disciples of Dirt” at the event, all volunteers, all ecstatic about cycling and almost universally the most friendly people you would ever wish to see on a ride.

This is the third year of Mountain Bike Oregon and every year it’s gotten bigger and better. The trails in the area are so compelling that some of the people who went to the event were seriously considering a vacation home. One person was even talking about relocating to the area. All the beer you can drink, decent food, shuttled rides, and some of the friendliest, most accommodating organizers make this into a mountain biking event that people are going to want to go to again and again.

Saturday

Unfortunately the few pictures I had from Saturday I accidentally deleted. We started in Twain Harte on the Flume then we climbed up Mt. Elizabeth to the fire lookout. We climbed all the way to the peak and climbed the fire lookout tower to enjoy the mostly whited out view.

After spending a bit of time at the peak we dropped back down to a fairly hidden trail Jeff call “Devil’s Slide?. So named because you ride it by pointing your bike downhill and sliding along on top of a thick mat of pine needles. The trail is super steep and I wound up walking a good bit of the start. After the first 1/2 mile and a couple turns the trail got very fun though. Almost all downhill with a ton of bermed Motocross and quadrunner cut trails. Conditions were amazingly good considering we were riding in the rain, the trail was sticky and had very little mud. There were quite a few places where the berms saved my butt though.
After dropping for quite some time we dropped onto a forest road which took us even further downhill before eventually turning uphill and then turning onto South Fork road and back to our parking.

At that point there was a break in the rain and I managed to talk Fiona into riding on the Flume for a while. We rode for about 3-4 miles in intermittent rain before turning back when the rain got a little too persistent. By the time we got back to the van my fingers were numb. We changed quickly and by the time we got rolling there was slushy snowflakes on our windshield. This didn’t bode well for our Sunday ride which was at a much higher elevation.

In Sonora we stopped at the bike shop and I got some much needed brake pads then stopped at the Diamondback Grill, a great little diner along the highway 49 strip. After grub headed back to camped at the Deer Creek OHV area which turned out to be a great spot to stay since it was completely deserted due to the cold and continuous rain.
Sunday:

Sunday’s story is best told with pictures.

On Sunday I met up with Gary (Finch Platte) and Johnny (JFR) for a Toads run.  We my favorite Toads route up Oneidas to Armstrong Pass trail then Gary and I took a bit of a detour towards Star Lake and Johnny who’d been chasing us the whole time just kept cruising towards Toads. We hooked back up with Johnny just about in time for the DH. Then it was our turn to try and play keep up with him.

Toads was incredible. I can attest from my position in the rear of the Downhill that Toads was exceptionally dust free. The trail was also super tacky going down Toads. I’ve never bombed down those bermed out sections the way I did Sunday. Sweet!  On a personal note, I rode more of the technical sections that I even have, and I climbed better than ever as well. All in all a personal best performance all around on the climb and on Toads.

If you can get up to the Sierras before it snows… It doesn’t get any better than this.

Wow – WOW - WOW! What an incredible trail. While the other two days of riding were great, this trail was a true gem among gems. The Middle Fork trail is a 25 mile shuttled ride that descends more than 3500’ from top to bottom and includes miles of incredible technical singletrack. The top 15 miles is an incredible serpentine trail that slithers over roots and slides past tree stumps at a lightning pace (well, it seemed that way to me anyhow YMMV). The trail is covered in bark and organic debris making traction questionable from moment to moment and tree branches and the occasional rock made it interesting. Not a big drop/ hucker trail this is the ultimate gravity assisted technical cross country trail.

After the first 15 miles or so the trail flattens out quite a bit and you are shooting through long meadows and zig-zagging over small creek crossings on logs and small bridges. The bottom of the trail is fast and fun with some small climbs thrown in to keep your heart rate up. Overall this is one phenominal trail which you should make every effort to ride if you are anywhere near here. As usual too much chatter, picture count and quality is low due to the addictive nature of this trail. Pics and more yakking about Middle Fork Trail.

More MTB Oregon Action. Our first ride out the gate is the Alpine Loop and starts with a monster 15-18 mile climb up some forest service roads. A second group of riders took a shuttle to the top of the run, skipping the climb up. In total about 150 people rode this trail on Friday with about 100 of them taking the shuttle. After the 15+ mile climb we were rewarded with a brake burning 20 mile downhill run comparable to any of the popular Downieville rides… only the singletrack is 15” wide. Unfortunately, by the time our group started down the hill about 120 of the 150 people had already been down it so many of the corners were washed out from massive use overall though the trail was in great shape and obviously well taken care of. I would love to see this trail in the pristine condition it is normally in when it gets it’s typical 20 or fewer riders per week. Lots of super fast sections, switchbacks, some steep sections, jumps, and whoop-dee-doos. This downhill has a very high fun factor.

I rode up the hill most of the way with Impy from MTBR and Mark Gee, a Sonora local whom I had ridden with previously. After we started down the hill our group of about 15 riders broke up and when we hit the main downhill we were in a small/ fast group of 6 including Mark and Steve, one of the DoD ride guides. We kept the pace up and our group had no mechanicals so right around the half way mark we started catching the other groups coming down the hill. Mostly people who had either had mechanicals or had crashed or bonked. Overall for such a big group MTB Oregon and the DoD ride guides did an awesome job of keeping things organized and keeping folks together. This is a great ride either shuttled or ridden as a loop and is rideable by any level of rider with the endurance to handle the route.

Enough Chat. On to the Pictures!.