Rode the Oregon Outback last week!

Rode the Oregon Outback last Sunday thru Friday! (Well, almost all of it except the last twenty miles). Other than some really chilly temps the first day or two out of KFalls (teens at night and ice inside the tent), the weather ended up being sunny with highs in the 50s and great riding weather.

Super happy to share specific info for anyone else thinking of squeezing this in before the snows!

We were on the standard 6-day itinerary. The first 4 days were super smooth, with the first day out of KFalls probably taking the longest with freezing weather and bumpy roads. Most other days we started around 8-9am and got in by 3-5pm. The infamous “Red Sauce” was super chill, to the point where I was still wondering where it actually started when we reached the end of the forest. I think prior light rain and then sunshine had probably consolidated it and hardened it.

Things got off the rails a bit after Prineville, where we were warned by the guy at the bike shop that people had gotten stuck in the mud a bit before Ashwood. He also mentioned that the gravel roads up to Antelope might be closed. That night, it rained even more and unfortunately we didn’t adjust our plans accordingly.

We ended up getting stuck in brutal “peanut butter mud” in the Nye Ranch area (few miles before Ashwood) and it took us 5 hours to move about a mile and a half. I ended up having to carry my bike and bags that whole way, mostly uphill. I wasn’t able to even push my bike more than a few feet before it seized up (I didn’t have enough clearance). My buddy had a bit better luck but still had to clean his tires with a stick every 20 feet for hours. Our bikes and all of our clothes were covered in globs of mud/clay that we couldn’t get off for the rest of the ride. By the time we escaped onto another road, the sun was setting and we’d only ridden 45 miles of a 70 mile day, and my front derailleur didn’t work anymore.

After that setback, we camped in Ashwood (25 miles short of Antelope). The self-serve fridge wasn’t there but Frankie, who had just taken it down a week ago, came out of his house in the dark and was kind enough to give us water and point us in the direction of camping. I managed to unclog my front derailleurs and get some of the mud out from inside my brake calipers.

On the last day, we had a 100 mile ride ahead of us to get to our pickup at the end, as we decided to ride out to the highway from Ashwood to circumvent the potential road closure before Antelope, which was unexpectedly a super scenic beautiful road ride (I think Pony Butte Rd.?). After Shaniko, we rode paved roads parallel to the route to speed things up a bit (Horseshoe Bend and Lone Rock Rds.). We made it to Moro and had our ride meet us there in the dark, ~20 miles short of the official end of the route.

Overall, super fun ride apart from the sufferfest in the mud! Gorgeous and desolate country, most days were scenic (especially the middle days), few cars or people.

by GoLoosh