The Southern Cascades

From Willakenzie we headed south along the Willamette Valley into Linn County and stopped for the night at Waterloo County Park just outside of Lebanon. Linn County maintains a network of exceptional campgrounds in its county parks, our site at Waterloo was situated on the banks of the South Santiam River, known for its salmon and trout fishing and another chance for Max to fling a few lures (but again no luck…). It had been another long day in the car and none of us had the desire to go out for dinner, so I ran down to the minimart to grab some mac-and-cheese (much to the kids’ delight) which we paired with the delectable smoked spring Chinook salmon we bought in Cascade Locks and some goat cheese and crackers. We should have bought two to three times as much of the salmon, it disappeared in a flash!

Our last mountain biking stop on our Oregon tour was in the backwater mountain town of Oakridge outside Eugene. The trails around Oakridge were made famous by the Trans-Cascadia mountain bike race and are maintained by the small handful of local shuttle operators that run in the area. The trails are old school: grueling climbs and big, steep descents with lots of natural features through the towering mountains surrounding Oakridge. The most famous routes – the Alpine system – are something that I wouldn’t dream of tackling with the kids, but some of the newer trails with machine-cut portions were mellow enough for the littles.

We hooked up with Oregon Adventures – one of the original shuttle companies in the area – and Randy our driver ferried us up more than 3000 vertical feet to the top of Dead Mountain for our first descent. The view from the top of Dead Mountain was phenomenal: a 270 degree vista from Willamette Pass all the way around to Eugene with the small town of Oakridge below. It took some convincing to even get Lilia out to take in the view, as it involved walking along a spine with sheer drops on either side.

The first couple of miles of our descent down Dead Mountain was on machine-cut flow trail replete with berms, jumps and plenty of whoops to pump. Basically a two mile BMX track through the lush forest without any need for pedaling. Lots of grins. The middle third was soft, fern-covered flow trail which then progressed into some blindingly fast and steep singletrack to finish the ride. The last section required some stopping along the way to rest everyone’s wrists and let the brake pads cool off. We logged some serious vertical: 3295 feet of drop over close to seven miles of trail: Dead Mountain. It was the kids’ first full shuttle downhill, I think now they’re wondering why we can’t shuttle all the time!

We enjoyed a great dinner and some well-earned beers at the 3 Legged Crane Pub and Brewhouse in central Oakridge, one of the few establishments in North America that brews and pours traditional cask beer. A hot tip on the 3 Legged Crane: open mic is Thursday nights from 7:00PM onwards, worth a stop if you’re in the area on a Thursday. Lilia and I played Heart and Soul as a duet on the piano to a round of rousing applause, the piano man who leads the open mic was a phenomenal performer, could have held his own in a Vegas piano bar without a doubt. We camped at a beautiful site called Blue Pool alongside Salt Creek a few minutes out of Oakridge, the Willamette National Forest has so many great campgrounds, so much to explore. The sound of the gushing Salt Creek was so relaxing as we sat by the fire and enjoyed a few beers before bed.

After the drop down Dead Mountain the kids requested a rest, so Lisa was nice enough to shuttle me up to the top of Larison Rock on our last day in Oakridge for one last ride before we left the area. Larison Rock was a little more hectic than Dead Mountain: 3.7 miles of trail dropping 3048 vertical feet back into the town of Oakridge. Pure bomber. There was a short trail to the Larison Rock overlook at the top of the downhill, which I rode while the kids hiked. I was cognizant of keeping things mellow on the way down as I had no desire to take a spill while riding solo on a remote trail, but still managed to let the bike have some fun all the same. It took me about 12 or 13 minutes to get down (my Strava tracking app crapped out, which I wasn’t very impressed about…), much faster than Lisa could drive back down on the paved road! You’d definitely want to bring some backup brake pads if riding the Oakridge area for a number of days, my wrists and forearms were shot after riding Larison Rock top to bottom without stopping. A great ride: Larison Rock.

Randy – our driver from the day prior – gave us a local’s hot tip on some natural hot springs that we visited our our way east out of town. We eventually found the trail to McCredie Hot Springs – which ended up being just upstream from our campsite at Blue Pool – off the side of the highway on our way up to Willamette Pass. The trail made its way across a natural logjam of fallen trees over Salt Creek, eventually culminating at some natural pools where we all enjoyed soaking in the superheated water as it mixed with the icy flow of Salt Creek.

As we headed to Highway 97 from Oakridge over Willamette Pass we figured we might as well head back to California via Crater Lake National Park. It only added 50 minutes to our drive and it’s not often one gets to visit the deepest lake in the United States housing what most consider to be the most pristine and cleanest large body of water on the planet. The views from the rim were breathtaking, the kids quite enamored with the fact that there was still snow on the ground in the middle of summer. Definitely worth the detour.

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We hightailed it south after Crater Lake, making it into California for dinner in Weed and then to a quaint campsite alongside the Sacramento River in Shasta National Forest. What an awesome 10 days!