Cascades Tour Day Two

Day two is our big climbing day. We started at about 1000 feet in Oakridge, then up up up through the 5126 foot Willamette Pass, then only down a few hundred feet to Odell Lake.

We spent just about the whole day on Route 58. Like Aufderheide yesterday, it’s a relatively narrow but straight road. Unlike Aufderheide, it’s got pretty heavy traffic, including big semis carrying all sorts of cargo. Fortunately, the shoulders were wide enough for most of it that we were able to stay out of everybody’s way, without any close calls. We did see one other touring biker today, coming from the other direction. As we got higher up, we noticed that incoming traffic tended to come in waves, which I guessed was from some slow truck backing things up when there wasn’t a passing lane.

Ame found us a side road with a bridge to sit on for lunch again. Today’s was less isolated, as several cars drove past. The bridge was wide enough that we didn’t have to move, though.

At about 4000 feet, we came across our first (and I think only) tunnel for this trip. Anne was concerned about it – the book we got the route from describes it as dark and with debris in the shoulders. The author evidently got a driver to go right behind them, acting both as a road block and to lend the use if their headlights.

It turned out not to be a problem. They’re doing construction on the tunnel, so its down to one lane shared between directions. They also were closing the whole thing for 15 minutes at a time between letting traffic through. This solved the mystery of the bunched up traffic.

For some reason, the construction dudes didn’t want to wait for us to slowly go through the tunnel, so we got rides in the pilot truck – a pickup truck driven through first each time to make sure everything is clear. We couldn’t fit the three of us, our bikes, and the trailer at the same time, so it took two trips. With the 15 minute holds between letting traffic through, it took quite a while. We chatted with the flagger and pilot driver while we waited. They wouldn’t let me use their port-o-potty, though.

Just after the tunnel, on a tip from the driver, we stopped to look at Salt Creek Falls, a 286 foot waterfall. It was starting to get late, and Ruth hadn’t napped yet. When we were getting ready to get back on the road, she kept telling us to “stay this hotel.” It took some convincing that there was no hotel there, and we needed to keep moving. then she napped for the rest of the ride. Anne pointed out that she naps better in the trailer than she did on the drive up to Oregon.

Around the same time, we saw the top of Diamond Peak, the first snow capped mountain of our trip. It was quite a sight, poking out of a sea of trees.

Finally, we made it to the summit. We snapped a quick picture, then enjoyed an all too short descent to Odell Lake.