FertileLies
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Oregon Backcountry Discovery Route: Route 4 through most of Route 5 - Section 3
So it all started with a plan, "we should do the ORBDR" my riding buddy Rick says. Of course this was a week prior to Labor Day weekend. I make plans to take the Friday off before to prepare. I get the GPS tracks downloaded from DualSportMaps.com and load them on an app on my phone that I install the demo of called Backcountry Navigator. It let me load the tracks, and then download map tiles along the route at the zoom level I wanted, for offline use. I put my phone in airplane mode to test it, sure enough, track and map. Better pack my backup GPS with tracks loaded, just in case.
Day 1:
I got my bike all packed up and ready to go. I've got my Giant Loop Great Basin saddlebag (with 1 gal water, tool roll, water filter, tiny fold up camp chair, sleeping mat, food and camp stove and cookware, tent, and Delorme OR map book), Holan top box (with clothes, sleeping bag, first aid/toiletries, and jacket liner and empty gas can on top, just in case, turns out we didn't need it) and Camelback pack (with backup GPS, required flask of whiskey, warmer gloves, water, and easy to get to snacks) loaded up for the 3 day trip.
We leave Sandy around 3:30pm with our only plan for the day being to get to Prineville, get gas, and then see how far in to Route 4 we can get before it starts getting dark. The ride to Prineville was uneventful and as soon as we get off road we stop to take a quick picture, for posterity sake.
Right away there are some pretty nice views. Another quick stop, another picture.
A little farther down the road, I'm leading and I see a black streak run down the hill to my right, across the road not 50 feet in front of me and down the hill to my left. It takes my brain a minute to realize that what I saw was a black bear. I stop to ask Rick if he saw it and
he laughed and said no. I have to remind myself that the "backcountry" part of ORBDR is there for a reason.
Before long, the sun starts to set and with the cloud cover, starts getting dark earlier than it normally would. Time for us to find a camping spot. We head down a random side road and end up stumbling on the perfect secluded spot. We get tents set up just in time for it to be dark enough for headlamps, which is why I have no pictures of our first night's campsite. Rick cooks his dinner, I opt for some snacks not feeling like dragging out all my gear. We head to our tents soon after that.
Anyone who has spent any amount of time in the backcountry will know what I'm talking about when I say the quiet at night is deafening. You hear nothing, like being in a sensory deprivation tank. It's like nothing I've ever experienced and certainly can't do any justice explaining it, you really need to experience it yourself. That being said, I didn't sleep more than a couple hours that night. Between the silence amplifying the ringing in my ears and the pack of coyotes in the valley below carrying on about something, I couldn't catch a break sleep wise.
Day 2:
Oddly I woke up a bit groggy, but not exhausted. Rick had been awake for a while, eating some oatmeal and shivering away. Apparently his sleeping bag was not warm enough and he had not put on enough layers before going to bed. Since the entire area was under "extreme fire danger", no campfire for us the entire trip. We finish up eating, break camp and get going. We've got a long day ahead of us if we're going to get any mileage under us.
After an hour or so of mild forest roads, the route turns...challenging. Loose, fist sized rocks for 1000 yards, a short break and then more rocks. After I couldn't feel my hands anymore, it was time for a break to shake the feeling back into them.
We power through it and around lunchtime come to the turn off to the Wolf Mtn. Lookout. The person tending the lookout waves at us as we approach, but doesn't offer to have us come up once we're at the base. Rather than intrude, we just eat our lunch at the base. There's no view from the base and hard to believe that up there would offer a good enough view to warrant a lookout. Oh well, maybe another time.
The rest of Route 4 is a mix of rutted out Jeep trails, fast forest sections, great lightly traveled winding undercut 2 track until we make it to the highway and on to Seneca for gas, snacks and water. After making a bit of small talk with the lady running the only gas station in town (87 octane only), she's quickly distracted by hunters out looking to fill their tags. We get on the move again and continue to head East.
Did I mention this part of the state is all one big open range? Cows, everywhere. Cows in the road, cows on the side of the road, cows that want to run with you along the side of the road. They are curious at first, but the closer we slowly get to them, they scamper off. A bit further and we see a sign for the Malheur Ford. I'd watched a few videos of people making this baptism of bike, and a few others dunking their bikes and needing help pushing dead bikes out. I let Rick go first "so that I could video him crossing with my GoPro", yeah, that's it.
Rick rides his KLR like it's a part of his body and makes it across without any real issues. I wait for him to get his camera out to video my crossing, and then push across. I feel like I'm bulldozing water more than gracefully skimming across the slimy rocks and when I make it out to about the middle, the current grabs the bike and nudges it enough to knock me a bit off balance. I dip a foot in the river, gun it (which I should've been doing all along) and pull it out on the other side with a huge grin on my face.
We get up the hill and see this amazing view.
By now we're feeling exhaustion setting in and start scanning the GPS for somewhere that looks like it might make a good campsite. "Oh, here's a nice looking meadow...called Cougar Meadow". We both look at each other and know what we're both thinking and head for it anyway. We drop down into the meadow and it's picturesque.
There are signs other people have camped here, fire ring, beginnings or end of a structure of some kind with four walls and some cut up wood. Also a large animal skull hanging in the tree. I'm pretty sure that didn't get there naturally.
We quickly set up camp after some seriously dark clouds start forming directly over us. Soon after we hear thunder, not good. We get our tents set up just in time for a light sprinkle, some wind, but it blows over relatively quickly and we're able to finish getting things set
up.
We eat and just about immediately it gets cold and we decided we've had enough and hit the tents for the day. This time not as quiet, wind blowing, some light rain occasionally, other sounds we're not alone. I look at my watch, 8pm...this is going to be a long night. Thankfully I'm so beat I fall asleep much easier. I wake up around 3am to that urgent feeling you get when you're camping, and it's cold, and you've had a lot to drink the night before. I make my way out of my tent, headlamp on scouring the periphery for eyes glowing. Nothing. I take care of business and then rush back in the tent to get a few more hours of sleep. After laying there a few minutes, I hear a growl or roar most likely at the end of the meadow. I try not to think about it. Then about 30 min later, a pack of coyotes, this time in the meadow, or up on the rim yipping at other coyotes across the meadow.
Day 3:
I wake up early, before the sun is out, around 6am, but it's so chilly I decide to stay in bed a bit longer. Once there's a bit more light, I get up, put every bit of riding gear on that I brought and set up to boil some water for oatmeal and coffee. We take our time getting going, hoping that the sun will come up and dry the tents out a bit. The sun comes up, but is quickly blocked by clouds. We pack up our gear as we're anxious to see how far we can get in the rest of the day. As we're leaving, cows come down to graze in the meadow and couldn't be bothered with us at all.
If I wasn't awake yet, this next section did the trick. Lots of slick silt, ruts and rocks. Some steep sections with rocks and silt, wow, what a workout. AltRider skid plate, money well spent. Every time I hear the tell-tale "BONG" of a rock being kicked up and hitting the skid plate, I feel much better about that purchase. Dragging the bike down some rock steps only solidifies that for me. After that exhausting bit, we come to the N. Fork of the Malheur river crossing. We watch a guy on a quad make the trek across and it looks like the ATV is floating. It doesn't look any deeper, but it is a bit wider of a crossing. The guy kindly tells us to stay close to the "dam" as it's a bit shallower. We make our way across as we did the other crossing and this time I dip both feet. At the risk of sounding like a commercial, my Gaerne G-Midland boots were another purchase I don't regret one bit at this point. My socks/feet never got wet.
From here the road heads up, and then quickly down, then we start to see broken pieces of pavement, and then full on pavement. Nice to have a stretch were we can open it up a bit, and then there goes the turn off. I like to think I'm a good navigator, but at a few points I either missed turns or had to stop and make sure we were going the right way. All part of the adventure. Back on the trail, we climb in elevation through some very gorgeous and isolated forest. More rocks, more ruts, but easy enough to skirt around. We finally get to this vista which makes a good place to take a break for some water and energy.
From here we lose elevation relatively quickly, dropping through switchback after switchback until we reach an OHV campground that on a Labor Day weekend is suspiciously empty. A little further up the road and we come to the end of the gravel, and the end of our ORBDR adventure. We decide to skip fueling up in Unity as we both have enough fuel to make it to John Day.
Once in John Day, we fuel up, both our bikes and bodies. We opt to skip a sit down style meal at one of the nice looking restaurants, and instead just go for Subway. We both need to get home and it's already 2pm and 4.5 hrs back to Sandy. We jump on Hwy 26 and ride back to Prineville. I have to say, Hwy 26 between Unity and Prineville is one of the nicest and scenic street rides I've been on in a while. I'll definitely be back to slow down and check out some of the cool western looking towns along the way. We stop in Madras long enough to get gas and then make the final trek home.
This was one of the most enjoyable, grueling and memorable experiences of my life. My bike handled it all better than I could have expected, as did my gear. I made it back home with pictures, video and memories and look forward to exploring more of what the ORBDR has to offer.
So it all started with a plan, "we should do the ORBDR" my riding buddy Rick says. Of course this was a week prior to Labor Day weekend. I make plans to take the Friday off before to prepare. I get the GPS tracks downloaded from DualSportMaps.com and load them on an app on my phone that I install the demo of called Backcountry Navigator. It let me load the tracks, and then download map tiles along the route at the zoom level I wanted, for offline use. I put my phone in airplane mode to test it, sure enough, track and map. Better pack my backup GPS with tracks loaded, just in case.
Day 1:
I got my bike all packed up and ready to go. I've got my Giant Loop Great Basin saddlebag (with 1 gal water, tool roll, water filter, tiny fold up camp chair, sleeping mat, food and camp stove and cookware, tent, and Delorme OR map book), Holan top box (with clothes, sleeping bag, first aid/toiletries, and jacket liner and empty gas can on top, just in case, turns out we didn't need it) and Camelback pack (with backup GPS, required flask of whiskey, warmer gloves, water, and easy to get to snacks) loaded up for the 3 day trip.
We leave Sandy around 3:30pm with our only plan for the day being to get to Prineville, get gas, and then see how far in to Route 4 we can get before it starts getting dark. The ride to Prineville was uneventful and as soon as we get off road we stop to take a quick picture, for posterity sake.
Right away there are some pretty nice views. Another quick stop, another picture.
A little farther down the road, I'm leading and I see a black streak run down the hill to my right, across the road not 50 feet in front of me and down the hill to my left. It takes my brain a minute to realize that what I saw was a black bear. I stop to ask Rick if he saw it and
he laughed and said no. I have to remind myself that the "backcountry" part of ORBDR is there for a reason.
Before long, the sun starts to set and with the cloud cover, starts getting dark earlier than it normally would. Time for us to find a camping spot. We head down a random side road and end up stumbling on the perfect secluded spot. We get tents set up just in time for it to be dark enough for headlamps, which is why I have no pictures of our first night's campsite. Rick cooks his dinner, I opt for some snacks not feeling like dragging out all my gear. We head to our tents soon after that.
Anyone who has spent any amount of time in the backcountry will know what I'm talking about when I say the quiet at night is deafening. You hear nothing, like being in a sensory deprivation tank. It's like nothing I've ever experienced and certainly can't do any justice explaining it, you really need to experience it yourself. That being said, I didn't sleep more than a couple hours that night. Between the silence amplifying the ringing in my ears and the pack of coyotes in the valley below carrying on about something, I couldn't catch a break sleep wise.
Day 2:
Oddly I woke up a bit groggy, but not exhausted. Rick had been awake for a while, eating some oatmeal and shivering away. Apparently his sleeping bag was not warm enough and he had not put on enough layers before going to bed. Since the entire area was under "extreme fire danger", no campfire for us the entire trip. We finish up eating, break camp and get going. We've got a long day ahead of us if we're going to get any mileage under us.
After an hour or so of mild forest roads, the route turns...challenging. Loose, fist sized rocks for 1000 yards, a short break and then more rocks. After I couldn't feel my hands anymore, it was time for a break to shake the feeling back into them.
We power through it and around lunchtime come to the turn off to the Wolf Mtn. Lookout. The person tending the lookout waves at us as we approach, but doesn't offer to have us come up once we're at the base. Rather than intrude, we just eat our lunch at the base. There's no view from the base and hard to believe that up there would offer a good enough view to warrant a lookout. Oh well, maybe another time.
The rest of Route 4 is a mix of rutted out Jeep trails, fast forest sections, great lightly traveled winding undercut 2 track until we make it to the highway and on to Seneca for gas, snacks and water. After making a bit of small talk with the lady running the only gas station in town (87 octane only), she's quickly distracted by hunters out looking to fill their tags. We get on the move again and continue to head East.
Did I mention this part of the state is all one big open range? Cows, everywhere. Cows in the road, cows on the side of the road, cows that want to run with you along the side of the road. They are curious at first, but the closer we slowly get to them, they scamper off. A bit further and we see a sign for the Malheur Ford. I'd watched a few videos of people making this baptism of bike, and a few others dunking their bikes and needing help pushing dead bikes out. I let Rick go first "so that I could video him crossing with my GoPro", yeah, that's it.
Rick rides his KLR like it's a part of his body and makes it across without any real issues. I wait for him to get his camera out to video my crossing, and then push across. I feel like I'm bulldozing water more than gracefully skimming across the slimy rocks and when I make it out to about the middle, the current grabs the bike and nudges it enough to knock me a bit off balance. I dip a foot in the river, gun it (which I should've been doing all along) and pull it out on the other side with a huge grin on my face.
We get up the hill and see this amazing view.
By now we're feeling exhaustion setting in and start scanning the GPS for somewhere that looks like it might make a good campsite. "Oh, here's a nice looking meadow...called Cougar Meadow". We both look at each other and know what we're both thinking and head for it anyway. We drop down into the meadow and it's picturesque.
There are signs other people have camped here, fire ring, beginnings or end of a structure of some kind with four walls and some cut up wood. Also a large animal skull hanging in the tree. I'm pretty sure that didn't get there naturally.
We quickly set up camp after some seriously dark clouds start forming directly over us. Soon after we hear thunder, not good. We get our tents set up just in time for a light sprinkle, some wind, but it blows over relatively quickly and we're able to finish getting things set
up.
We eat and just about immediately it gets cold and we decided we've had enough and hit the tents for the day. This time not as quiet, wind blowing, some light rain occasionally, other sounds we're not alone. I look at my watch, 8pm...this is going to be a long night. Thankfully I'm so beat I fall asleep much easier. I wake up around 3am to that urgent feeling you get when you're camping, and it's cold, and you've had a lot to drink the night before. I make my way out of my tent, headlamp on scouring the periphery for eyes glowing. Nothing. I take care of business and then rush back in the tent to get a few more hours of sleep. After laying there a few minutes, I hear a growl or roar most likely at the end of the meadow. I try not to think about it. Then about 30 min later, a pack of coyotes, this time in the meadow, or up on the rim yipping at other coyotes across the meadow.
Day 3:
I wake up early, before the sun is out, around 6am, but it's so chilly I decide to stay in bed a bit longer. Once there's a bit more light, I get up, put every bit of riding gear on that I brought and set up to boil some water for oatmeal and coffee. We take our time getting going, hoping that the sun will come up and dry the tents out a bit. The sun comes up, but is quickly blocked by clouds. We pack up our gear as we're anxious to see how far we can get in the rest of the day. As we're leaving, cows come down to graze in the meadow and couldn't be bothered with us at all.
If I wasn't awake yet, this next section did the trick. Lots of slick silt, ruts and rocks. Some steep sections with rocks and silt, wow, what a workout. AltRider skid plate, money well spent. Every time I hear the tell-tale "BONG" of a rock being kicked up and hitting the skid plate, I feel much better about that purchase. Dragging the bike down some rock steps only solidifies that for me. After that exhausting bit, we come to the N. Fork of the Malheur river crossing. We watch a guy on a quad make the trek across and it looks like the ATV is floating. It doesn't look any deeper, but it is a bit wider of a crossing. The guy kindly tells us to stay close to the "dam" as it's a bit shallower. We make our way across as we did the other crossing and this time I dip both feet. At the risk of sounding like a commercial, my Gaerne G-Midland boots were another purchase I don't regret one bit at this point. My socks/feet never got wet.
From here the road heads up, and then quickly down, then we start to see broken pieces of pavement, and then full on pavement. Nice to have a stretch were we can open it up a bit, and then there goes the turn off. I like to think I'm a good navigator, but at a few points I either missed turns or had to stop and make sure we were going the right way. All part of the adventure. Back on the trail, we climb in elevation through some very gorgeous and isolated forest. More rocks, more ruts, but easy enough to skirt around. We finally get to this vista which makes a good place to take a break for some water and energy.
From here we lose elevation relatively quickly, dropping through switchback after switchback until we reach an OHV campground that on a Labor Day weekend is suspiciously empty. A little further up the road and we come to the end of the gravel, and the end of our ORBDR adventure. We decide to skip fueling up in Unity as we both have enough fuel to make it to John Day.
Once in John Day, we fuel up, both our bikes and bodies. We opt to skip a sit down style meal at one of the nice looking restaurants, and instead just go for Subway. We both need to get home and it's already 2pm and 4.5 hrs back to Sandy. We jump on Hwy 26 and ride back to Prineville. I have to say, Hwy 26 between Unity and Prineville is one of the nicest and scenic street rides I've been on in a while. I'll definitely be back to slow down and check out some of the cool western looking towns along the way. We stop in Madras long enough to get gas and then make the final trek home.
This was one of the most enjoyable, grueling and memorable experiences of my life. My bike handled it all better than I could have expected, as did my gear. I made it back home with pictures, video and memories and look forward to exploring more of what the ORBDR has to offer.
