Rough Stuff Cycling Northwest

I’m a lucky guy in a lot of ways. Recently my good luck included being able to spend some time on the Oregon coast, bringing along my daily commuting bike (née mountain bike), and getting in a few hours for riding while my kidlets were otherwise occupied.

A few hours isn’t much in terms of some Rough Stuff rides, usually the seem to involve doing some driving to the rough as well as some extended exploration. While it’s fair to say that our drive from Seattle to the Oregon coast counts for driving it was really great to roll my bike out of the garage, on to the streets and then into the woods without anything else in between.

I was near Nehalem, Oregon, 20 or so miles south of Canon Beach, along the 101 Highway. 101’s well known for tours — relatively friendly roads and great views of the beach. Turns out the coast is also well known for dairy farming and logging, meaning lots of nice valley rides with turn offs into logging land. With this in mind, I took 101 south into Nehalem downtown, turned left up the Northfork Nehalem River road and kept my eye out for promising logging roads on my left (uphill, out of the valley). Here’s a rough map of where I went on day 2.

My first ride was pretty much unscripted. Part way up the Northfork road, I stopped to take a photo of some cows, and found myself staring at the Nehalem Quarry road up ahead. Let’s see what’s at the top, and so off I headed. The Quarry road is paved to start, and predictably heads up to a quarry yard after just a few miles. Seen one Quarry yard, seen them all, so I didn’t stay long. A clearing was visible to the north, and at the end was a gravel road that I headed up. Rough, winding and steep it was a full on logging road that wandered through the coast forest with occasional side trips through clear cuts. The road was ‘fractured’ in places, with parts of it sliding downhill from the rest. The biggest fissure was actually a 4 foot side sink hole I’d hate to have plunged into coming back down hill.

As I went up, the clouds came in closer and squeeged themselves dry on the hills I was climbing. Mindful of the time and the increasingly foul weather I turned back southwards at the top of the road in a unmerciful clearcut, after getting the remainder of my rain gear out of my bag. The trip down and back was the trip up in reverse, just slightly faster and quite a bit damper.

I took advantage of some time in the evening to plan my next route: Up the north fork river road to the Fish Hatchery, then looping back along some logging road. The road out to the Fish Hatchery is 2 lane the whole way (both the North Fork road and Highway 53) is 2 lane, but traffic was very sparse and careful when passing. I took a short side trip to the hatchery to see the fry and take a look at the river. The actual turn off into logging land is about 3 miles eastward along highway 53, and bears this sign on the gate.

The roads in this area seemed more mature than those above the quarry, more like a gravel road you’d expect to drive a car on, at least for most of the roads. It’s clear that some of the roadways are new, and not all of them are mapped making it a bit difficult to determine which intersection you’re at without looking very carefully at your map. I blame this, and the failing batteries of my GPS, for taking a wrong turn farther up into the forest. Fortunately I ran across some powerlines running back down to the river, and used the overgrown track there to navigate back to the road I was trying to be on (Carol Drive). These roads were much tamer, leading through a backwoods gated community of lovely houses nestled in the valley. Home again, home again lickety split.

A word about my bike — she’s a mountain bike at heart (Surly 1×1) running fixed. I set her up with 650b wheels and tires (Grand Bois Hetres) and a front basket and modified fork some time ago. She’s a great rain bike for my daily commute, and I wasn’t sure how she’d fare once back in the woods, especially with the slick Hetres. Amazingly well is what I found out. I did loose traction on the rear tire one or twice, and probably a small-block style mountian bike tire would have been better but it’s hard to imagine another tire giving me better overall performance across pavement, gravel (regular sized) and the Great Gnarly Gravel I ran into. On longer, dedicated rough stuff rides maybe I’ll be lucky enough to switch. Maybe I’ll bring a better camera too.

The blog has been quiet all winter, but not forgotten.  The best areas for rough stuff cycling are covered in snow all winter long, but that doesn’t mean that every destination is.

This last weekend Andre, Jimmy, Roscoe (Jimmy’s dog), and I stretched our legs by looking for Drunken Charlie Lake in the Marckworth Forest.  I’ve searched for this lake before and failed with Mark and Kent, but it was okay because we found a great waterfall instead.  This time I was equipped with a GPS and did want to find it.

The Marckworth Forest is a large industrial forest just east of Seattle.  It is mostly behind locked gates, but is open for day use to cyclists and hikers.  Since it is a working forest there isn’t too much information available on the recreational opportunities within.  There are endless logging roads (active and out of use) to explore and little bits of singletrack here and there.  The high points in the forest are usually under 2000′, which makes it a good place go year round for Seattle cyclists.  The views and scenery aren’t as good as what one can find farther up into the mountains in the summer however.

This ride is about 15 miles long and has about 1500′ of climbing (only the last couple of miles of which are steep).  It’s a great early season ride that will help you get excited about the upcoming summer.

Map and GPX.

The roads and intersections in Marckworth Forest mostly look like this. Good surface condition and unmarked intersections. A good map or GPS is helpful.

If you get to this clear cut you've missed Drunken Charlie Lake. On a clear day it looks like there may be some views available from around here.

This marker gets you onto the short trail from the road to the lake. How did we miss this in the past?

It's a pretty nice alpine lake and could be a decent place for swimming in the summer. It was is the mid-40s we were there, so we stayed out of the water.

I recently built up this mountain bike, so I rode it instead of my normal adventure touring bike named Gifford. These shorter rides (~15 miles total) are a good place to test out gear.

We couldn't visit a lake called "Drunken Charlie" and not have a beer. Jimmy was nice enough to bring along a couple of cans of my favorite bike camping beer.

On the way back down we took the side detour to this waterfall. There is a good place here to nap overnight if one is so inclined. The waterfall isn't that high, but an impressive volume of water comes tumbling over it.

Jimmy and Roscoe come running down the descent. This ride is all climbing on the way in and all descent on the way out.

Side roads like this could go somewhere really interesting, or could just take you to an old logging area that is a 1/4 mile down the road. We didn't have time to explore this one today.

As a reminder, this is a semi-open blog.  If you live in the Northwest and have routes or ride reports to contribute please contact me about getting an account on the blog.  A couple of other ride reports should be coming soon, and I’m going to do a little series on finding routes and picking gear for these rides.

Andre posted a great local camping option on Green Mountain to the Bike Overnights blog.  This is a good one for a first S24O.