by Amy Beaton

I came into mountain biking late in life. My kids were in high school and I was in my forties. I had taken judo classes with my kids, so I was used to falling. Their dad, my old husband, had dumped me and a friend loaned me a Santa Cruz bike for some months. Eventually, I bought my own bike on Craigslist. I had a few independent years riding before meeting my now husband, Dana, on Craigslist… It seems I find all the best things on Craigslist.

Some forty years later, I still get delighted by a new trail or route. When the mechanic at my local bike shop told me about the Oregon Timber Trail, I immediately looked up the site.

From the website, I got the impression that these were my kind of people, good folks, and I ordered a map. I had my copy of the map framed and Rainy Peak Bicycles Shop was proud to hang it.

I’m 63  years old now, and I’m lucky because I live in a town with a bike shop and a bike path. Infrastructure could mean that to everyone. My convalescing sister bought a geared recumbent tricycle from my local bike shop. She came to visit from New Jersey and stayed for six months. After she left, I started riding the trike on our paved 17 mile Row River Trail that leads out of the historic downtown up to the mountains. I had given up mountain biking as I couldn’t put weight on the wrist, hand, elbow, shoulder, and especially my cervical spine. That was because of a work injury years earlier. The trike worked for me because I could be out there riding. I increased my stamina and in a year or so I realized my precious old mountain bike was wasting in the attic, that I should pass it along, let it get ridden. 

But, when my husband was handing my old Superlight down the aluminum folding ladder from the attic, I thought “No! I am going to ride this bike”. 

I got a call from the OTTA sometime after I purchased the map and an enthusiastic person was reaching out for the 2021 season. I jumped to conclusions thinking they needed sponsors for race participants. No, that wasn’t it. Did they need ride support?  No, that wasn’t it. He was calling to share the  Stewardship mission and trail building events. So I asked, “How much does it cost?”  This is what you do when you’re married to the cheapest guy on the planet. I thought it was a fundraiser that sounded fantastic. No, that wasn’t it either. They wanted volunteers to work. Since I’m now disabled, I thought it would be a great opportunity for my husband and it sounded like fun, a chance to volunteer with other like-minded people. 

I looked at the events and signed up for the Watson Fire Rehab on Memorial Day Weekend. We had driven the Oregon Outback the previous summer on our way to the High Sierras and were curious about Paisley. On that trip, we slept in the ODOT yard just north of Summer Lake. Being married to the cheapest guy on the planet means you enjoy sleeping under a decrepit camper shell on a long bed plywood platform that was installed to accommodate his 9 (count ‘em 9) cardboard banana-box-storage-system beneath. Ah, the 1984 Toyota pick-up. so functional, reliable. Despite the creative sleeping accommodations, I was smitten by this part of Oregon.

To prepare for the Watson Fire Rehab, I ordered more maps and went to the Cottage Grove Knechts to buy some used coveralls because from what I read it sounded very sooty and blackened on the Fremont. Chet, at the Knecht’s counter, asked where I was going, and it turns out, he had been raised outside of Paisley on a ranch. He gave me a window into growing up in Paisley when taking the school bus into town required him to get up at 4:30 am in his high school years. He opined that the coveralls would be too hot; +that I was crazy to work for free and for good measure told me that he could fix anything that runs. I still bought the coveralls.

Finally, Memorial Day approached, I was pretty excited.  This would be for me an extreme challenge–enduring the exposure. elevation changes, climate, and general conditions. I’m talking about just getting to the event and surviving the work party here, not “riding” the Timber Trail. Still, it was the perfect adventure. 

Fact is, I picked the Fremont Tier on purpose. So extreme, the grandeur of the Winter Ridge. What's in a name? A lot when it's “The Fremont!” Like Fremont Winema National Forest. The roadside attraction in Summer Lake says the names Summer Lake/Winter Ridge appear in Fremont's journals. Tired, wading through deep snow on their way to Sacramento, he and other explorers (read ‘white Europeans’) look over the rim to see the green floor, water below, descending there December 16, 1843.

Yes, I do a lot of descending because yes, I am a mountain biker.

I had been toying with the idea of heading to the Steen’s for summer solstice with Sheila, a woman I know who would be retiring from a public school teaching career in a posh East Bay suburb. She wanted to see desert mountains. I figured if I could survive an upcoming trip with a civilized group in the Fremont, I would be preparing for a summer trip to another large fault block feature in remote basin country, and besides, this long term friend had flaked on many previously held phantasmagorical itineraries that never came to pass.  

Vast and unsupported. That word unsupported just kept bubbling up. People ride the OTT that way, I learned. When we got to Campbell Lake we didn’t feel unsupported. These people looked camped. In fact, first thing in the morning I realized I had forgotten to pack was my camping stove! Thankfully, I was with great people who were willing to share their camp kitchen.

One word you need to know when you come to Paisley is The Chewaucan Garage. Yes, that’s pronounced like mirage. GUERR -rauge….

That’s where you’ll gas up before entering the Chewaucan drainage, and, if you are lucky, return to. Chewaucan is a different sort of name and sometimes I’m amazed that there is any evidence of earlier peoples.  The  Paisley Caves should be high on your list but, take a guide, someone knowledgeable. 

CHay wah CAN

SHE wa khan

CHE wa can

The actual work party was ultra fab. The day started with a firm safety orientation, land acknowledgment, a shout-out to people from the industry, and an introduction to board members and all these experts on trail building, riding, and sawyering.

DAY ONE

Orientation: safety, tool technique, etc. Everyone introduces themselves briefly, lots of varied experience. I chose the wrong tool, others were too heavy, awkward. I was glad my husband is good with a rake. Where we worked was not as sooty as I expected on a project to rehabilitate trails after the Watson Fire 2018. Turns out, Chet was right. It’s hot and the duff was largely ash itself. Trees were blackened, treacherous pillars that unknown to me in just a few weeks’ time would be ravaged once again by what we now know as the Bootleg Fire. 

DAY TWO

I decided to, at least, carry around the correct tool; progress.

I spent the day walking back and forth, up and down the ‘trail’, wondering curious about the work everyone was doing.  I had never done trail rehabilitation work like this before.  

Day THREE

I didn’t bring my mountain bike because the celebratory ride would be on Sunday after the work party was over. I’d have to make my husband, who doesn’t ride, wait in the parking lot for me–a cruel reward for his effort and labor.  We planned to wind our way home and descend the Winter Ridge in the ’84 via Government Harvey and head to Fort Rock on our way home from the work party. Life is what happens while you are making plans. Our faithful stead died (ignition module) but fortunately we were able to coast downhill to the Sycan Marsh Campground, where, as fate would have it, the riders had parked their vehicles. When they got back, local Paisley Adventure’s Michael called the local mechanic and cajoled him into promising to come up the next day and tow us out. (The closest tow truck was in Bend and unlikely to be willing to venture into the woods). After a fitful night battling mosquitoes Robert showed up with a tow rope and pulled the ‘84 to the edge of Government Harvey road where he cut us loose and we coasted all the way down with him following. At the bottom, he reconnected and towed us into town, in front of the Garage. He was busy so he said, “The library is open today and the bar is closed until Wednesday when I get a chance I’ll take a look at the truck.” An overnight delivery that took 3 days got the part there that got us home, full of gratitude for all the people we met and who befriended us in Paisley.

We would again visit Paisley in November 2021. We immediately parked the trusty ’84, in front of the Chewaucan Garage, this time under our own power. For my triumphant return, I brought my mountain bike and got to stand in the exact spot in the Fremont where the women at the work party surrounded me and said that they loved my husband because he had introduced himself saying he didn’t ride mountain bikes but was there to support his wife. And yes, I still mountain bike. I’ve now ridden some two miles along Bear Creek on the Fremont Tier of the Oregon Timber Trail. It was moist but not muddy and I passed stonework that had survived the Bootleg Fire. It had been set in place by dedicated volunteers. Though I clipped a pedal, I was so happy. It was a sunny, cool delight remembering the shared work. With the sun at its low angle, the trail had a tiny frozen crunch.

At the end of my triumphant stay in Paisley, my friends didn’t listen to my sage advice and experience and one of them drove their rental vehicle right off the road and into the mud, catapulting my husband and me unwittingly into a new adventure. Since they had a flight the next day it was looking like my husband would have to take the ’84 and my friends to the Eugene airport for their return flight while I stayed stranded in Paisley with my mountain bike and the mired rental car (thankfully, I had come prepared this time with my bike!). Paisley was familiar to me and having visited the November before, I had a hunch that the ground might freeze overnight. By morning, I had my answer; the rental vehicle had traction in the frozen mud and we managed to free it. While the others were celebrating wildly I was bummed that I didn’t get to stay behind with my bike and have more time in the Outback. Maybe it’s true what I’ve heard about Paisley, that it’s vast and unsupported but I see it in a new way–I am capable.

Rainy Peak Bicycles is my local bike shop

Paisley Adventure is my tour guide

The New York Times is where I did my research on the Bootleg Fire