We cruised through Prineville on our way to the parking area...on the way we second guessed our turn-off despite it feeling 'right'. The problem was there was no road signs so I had to go by memory which in and of itself os definitely not fool-proof, although you could argue the 'fool' part of that.
Soon enough we were parked and readying ourselves for the ride. I had borrowed the wife's bike since my bike was still en route from the Tour of the White Mtns in Arizona. Fortunately for me, she had a brand new toy to play with so I obliged and tried to put the bike under some stress.
Our ride started out along a long road climb which was a nice warm up for what was in store. Trevor and I kept commenting on all the hunting camps set up along the road as we made our way up the mountain. We heard a series of chainsaws along the way and figure this was probably enough of a deterrent for the hunters that they might be elsewhere.
We crested the first ridge at the top of the pavement and then the road turned to trail and the trail offered us a first glimpse of the mountain in front of us that we had to climb up. We made our way along the ridge line until the trail kicked up and got mean. We were able to ride the steep terrain and switchbacks until it got really mean towards the top. We were forced to take our bikes for a little hike as we worked our way up. Eventually, the angle eased back up and we were back on our bikes pedaling to the summit of Round Mtn. We took in the views and looked forward to the downhill that awaited.
I was still trying to get a feel for the bike as it was all new to me. The handling felt twitchy and I was just starting to understand what the bike could do going downhill...and that is a lot!
We bombed downhill (although the downhill included some punchy climbs) until we hit the paved road. At this point I knew we were connecting into the Lookout portion of the ride...Climb #2 coming up!
I remembered the climbing heading up Lookout as much more reasonable (via the Independent Mine trail) and I did not remember any hike a bike. It was a slow grind up as we crested and eventually reached a higher elevation than we had on Round. We took in the views and anxiously looked forward to the awesome descent that awaited!
I told Trevor lunch/dinner was on me if he could clean the whole descent. Lucky for me the most technical section of the trail was at the very top so I was let off the hook when we hit a really sharp and hard right turn. The next few miles were steep and had consequences in terms of wrecking on the trail onto a bunch of big sharp rocks, or going off-trail and stumbling down the steep sidehill. Fortunately we both made it through without consequences and we just kept gobbling up the trail that presented itself in front of us. The descent continued to provide miles and miles of satisfaction and I started to get an appreciation for what the bike was doing. It was amazing to not have to worry about picking good lines (as opposed to being on a hard tail single speed) and just bombing through stuff. The bike just kept handling everything with ease!
All too quickly we were back at the car and felt like it was a really good day in the saddle...albeit with some tired legs and big smiles.
ride details below:
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