With all the smoke from fires here in the Columbia Gorge making bike riding uncomfortable, if not hazardous and many of the riding areas closed due to the extreme fire danger, it was off to the Tillamook State Forest, a temperate rainforest in the Coastal Mountains of Western Oregon. These are local trails for our riding buddy, LeeMan, so we would have a guided tour of the singletrack through one of Oregon’s first state parks, an historic area where a series of catastrophic forest fires known as the Tillamook Burn were eventually transferred to public ownership and became Tillamook State Forest.
Anyway, Don and I met up with Lee and Dan, another of our bicycle bushwacking buddies, at the Rogers Camp trailhead and headed out on Gales Creek trail, leaving the off road vehicles behind. The riding started out with a bang; a big root drop into a twisting downhill. No problem for Dan
There are miles of great singletrack weaving through the rainforest with plenty of ups and downs and stream crossings.
The forest is mostly Douglas Fir with more deciduous plants than we are used to in the Columbia Gorge. Green everywhere, even this late in the dry summer weather. The seasons are changing, the leaves changing color and the sun getting lower in the sky, leaving the forest dark even at midday.
Tillamook State Forest is an awesome place. When people think of “Oregon”, it’s probably something like this. There are amazing sights around every turn. This is University Falls. If we didn’t have an experienced guide like Lee with us, we would have rode right past it.
There is plenty of climbing and twisting singletrack with roots and rocks. Here’s Lee negotiating one of the many roots that cross the trail
Don had a go at it as well
After about 15.5 miles and about two hours and forty five minutes of riding, we were back at Rogers Camp for a couple cold Ninkasis. Refreshed, we made it down to Coleman’s Shady Rest for some of their great home cooking. Coleman’s has great food, it’s like going back in time twenty years. It’s also probably the only restaurant in the country with a tractor in the lobby.
All in all, another great mountain bike adventure.