MBO August 2012

This past weekend was the final edition of Mountain Bike Oregon for 2012 and as usual, it was a great experience; fantastic mountain bike riding, carousing with old friends and enjoying the small mountain town of Oakridge, Oregon.
The weather has been hot and dry in the Pacific Northwest and the hot weather continued through MBO, but not as hot as predicted, that was a relief. There were a number of forest fires in the area, one of them closing down Alpine Trail, which is one of the marquee rides at MBO, but a couple rides were added to make up for it. So on a warm Friday morning, we loaded up and headed out to Flat Creek/Salmon Creek.

MBO guide Lee D. guiding the crew safely through the Willamette National Forest

Here’s Don from Just Fruit, one of MBO’s sponsors, trying to stay out of the hot sun with an expensive, all carbon fiber Cannondale Scalpel demo race bike

One of the Salmon Creek waterfalls

Here’s MBO guide Lee again crossing one of the bridges on the lower part of Salmon Creek trail

When you get to the Salmon Creek dam and spillway, you know you are almost back to camp. On this hot day of riding, a lot of people stopped here for a quick dip. The fishing was pretty good, too.

We got back to camp with plenty of time for more riding, so we hit up the shuttle for Larrison Rock. All downhill in the shade; perfect for an hot afternoon ride.

Larrison Rock trail is a really fun downhill trail; fast, but not too sketchy

After a solid day of riding, time to wash down the trail dust at the adult beverage garden. Here’s seasoned MBO guide Matt talking up the day’s riding

Here we have trusty MBO guide Dan(right) with Erin(left) who is a volunteer at MBO and fellow MBO guide Dave(center) having Friday night dinner

The day wound down with a beautiful sunset in a clear, blue sky

Despite the clear skies on Friday night, Saturday morning brought thunder, lightning and rain showers. The rain was welcome to help out the dusty trails, but with lightning caused fires already burning, more lightning dry strikes were something that was not needed. No major new fires overnight, so in a light rain, we loaded up for Lost Creek, a ride that had been added to replace the Alpine trail ride that was closed due to fire.

Lost Creek is a new trail for MBO, so it was kind of a mystery what it would be like. It is mainly the Hardesty trail ride with an extra section of the Sawtooth trail on the top. A very challenging ride with steep uphills, hike-a-bike sections and great downhill singletrack. Here’s demo Don again on another expensive carbon fiber bike. Today’s ride was a Santa Cruz Nomad; a long travel, carbon fiber rocket sled, perfect for this ride.

The last section of the ride was on Hardesty trail, pretty well known to most of the riders today, so it was easy to let ‘er rip down the last part of the trail.

Here’s Augusto from Nossa Familia Coffee, another one of MBO’s sponsors. Augusto gets up at 5AM every morning to make coffee for all the riders. After a night in the adult beverage garden, there is a long line for coffee every morning. Augusto is a strong rider, pretty sure he liked the Lost Creek ride.

Think Lost Creek wasn’t a tough ride? Not much jumping around at the end of the trail

Back to camp, a quick shower, then off to dinner

After dinner, more carousing with friends from around the country, and around the world, one more awesome Oakridge sunset, and everyone heads home until next time

That’s it until MBO 2013.