Saturday, Nov 6.
The Whoopdeedoo trailhead is about 15 miles southeast of Hood River, Oregon.
The trail has two sections : one follows a ridge that overlooks the Hood
River valley, the other drops down the opposite side of the ridge and
descends into an adjacent valley. The two trails connect nicely for a
longer ride.
We headed up around noon to let things warm up a bit. Heading up the road
to the trailhead, the valley was starting to warm up, covering the landscape
with a light mist and making big daddy Mt Hood look very distant. We got to
the trailhead for the ridge ride section, but there were a lot of cars
around and we decided to skip that section. A couple of miles further up
the road we found one of the exit points for the second section and left our
car there.
The ride starts with a nice warm-up as you pedal up an old gravel road about
1.5 miles. The trees are mostly scubby oak which are turning beautifyl
shades of gold and red, intermixed with pine and spruce. The trail ducks
off to the east side of the road, immediately becoming nice hard packed
singletrack with a generous helping of rocks and roots to make things
interesting.
We get a few hundred yards into the ride and see the first wet sections -
puddles with a fringe of ice. Frost is melting in the shady parts of the
trail, and we know it's going to be a slippy ride. The wet sections have
that really nasty layer of slick mud just below leaves and needles, making
cornering a real challenge. Skid marks from prior riders let us know when
to reduce speed a bit or risk having the back end break free at a bad time.
The Whoopdeedoo trail is always fun because it decends a valley and crosses
through several different types of landscape. You start in dense scrub
forest and then skirt the edge of some recovering clear-cut. The clear-cut
is ugly, but it affords views for miles towards Mt Adams (WA state) and
along the Columbia gorge. From there you drop onto a hillside of widely
spaced mature spruce. This section of trail is a playground of banked "S"
turns covered with needles and occassional bundles of exposed roots. It's
fast and delightful, makes you feel like a real pro. A slight climb and the
landscape changes again to denser, mixed conifers. About 4 miles into the
ride, the trail crosses a couple of extremely steep ravines, making for some
serious whoop-dees. You want to approach these with care, any real speed at
the lip and you may not touch down much before the bottom of the ravine -
probably 50 feet down. Truth be told, I've never made it up the other side
of the two biggest Whoopdees even on a dry day, so today I didn't really
try. I already had enough mud and wet on my rim brakes to make descending
interesting.
From there on in, the trail drops for a few miles. Fast, fairly loose
singletrack that crosses a couple of tiny, rocky streams and does some short
technical climbs. The trail ahead is never visible for more than a few
dozen yards, so there's always something of interest around the next corner.
For a fairly short ride (~8 miles in this section), it seems to descend for
a looong time. Hard to remember when you had to pedal last, and I always
find myself grinning like a fool and adding little "whoopees" along the way.
There are a series of small mounds that are easy to catch air from. You
really have to know your stuff to do so at high speed - the landings are
often deeply rutted or have sharp turns immediately on touchdown. Anyways,
the trail goes down so far you get that nasty feeling that you're going to
pay for this, and you do.
Finally the trails levels across the valley bottom into some nice dual track
bordered by more forest and meadows. Couple more small creek beds (mostly
just nice big mud puddles today), and things start to go uphill. The climb
back out is tough, at least for us 40-something weekend warriors. It's
probably 1.5 miles of steady uphill technical grunt, mostly along a rocky,
muddy creek bed. Lots of ruts and bigger rocks, so you have to pick your
line carefully. For us it's a matter of honor to make the climb without
stopping, about half the time we end up spinning out or dropping a back
wheel into a deep rut. It requires good climbing technique and good
conditioning - both of which we could use some work on. One young guy
caught up with us at the bottom of the climb and disappeared ahead of us in
a couple of minutes, so with the right legs, lungs and skills it's probably
only an average climb.
Back at the top we share our ritual post-ride beer, and get ready to head
over to a friends' vineyard to help them stomp grapes (no kidding). A pretty
sweet day!
Pics of the day at http://home.pacifier.com/~gwandsh/biking if anybody is
interested.
Cheers
Gary