The 143 mile, 14,500 foot circuit roughly follows Wasco and Wishram trade routes used by two namesake native chiefs to guide John C. Fremont's 1842 expedition through the territory. Sections of the route were already familiar to me, but I had never experienced them all together, let alone from a multi-day perspective. From a distance, the weather looked stable. We were two months into a historic drought. So when the forecast shifted to rain over our entire first day, I was a bit anxious.

What could go wrong?

Our world screams at us to see the differences in people – red versus blue, conservative versus liberal. So much energy is put into building walls and encouraging a low energy civil war. In reality, it’s not black and white, but shifting shades of grey mixed with feelings, fear, and desire for connection. A shared love and responsibility for our public lands is a place to start building bridges.

Follow Ben Handrich and Miles Arbour as they tackle the Timber Trail last summer—Ben captured some amazing arial and POV footage giving you a great overview of what each section of the trail is like.

As far as Singletrack is concerned, the almost 10 mile descent from Crescent Mountain to the primitive Shedd Camp, was the highlight of the trip for me.  Fast, flowy, all rideable, and completely isolated, when you ride this section, you have it completely to yourself.  Miles and I both were all smiles as we called it a night at Shedd Camp.

At each resupply (except for Chemult and Sisters), people we met were very knowledgeable and enthusiastic about the OTT. People in Paisley, Silver Lake, Oakridge, Idhana, and Parkdale all asked us what they could do to make the OTT experience even better. These small communities benefit from tourism, and really seemed to love having bike-packers come through. Feeling so warmly welcomed in each of these communities contributed very positively to our overall enjoyment of the route.

Lesson one: you can’t learn very much Japanese in ten hours. It’s really hard. Turns out, Keita and Innochi actually spoke some English and all the words I had just learned, they already knew.

We’d bikepacked a week on the Oregon Timber Trail (OTT) while it hurled curveballs. This latest one seemed insurmountable: Brady’s old aluminum bike sat next to us, top tube fully snapped off. Clearly, his trip was over.

We rode the OTT as part of a longer, 4 month trip through Northern California to British Columbia. By the time we reached New Pine Creek we were pretty comfortable with our set-ups and ready for some adventurous trails... and adventurous trails we got!