July 27, 2021
Day 76 - Smith rock, OR to McKenzie Pass, OR
Last pass for passing gas
Today we woke up under the shadow of smith rock. It rained a couple times last night, so I'm glad we got back out and put the fly on. At 6am, there were already hikers at the base of the rocks and no one else in our party was awake.
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Mary and I took down the tent and it started to rain, so everything got a bit wet. We packed fairly quickly, and went to the cooking area to make breakfast. Pretty soon after, alex walked by and said he was off to hike to the top and see the monkey face wall. We continued breakfast and Mark joined as well. Since Alex was going to meet us in sisters or on the pass, we decided to bypass Redmond and go straight to sisters. Alex wanted to go to Redmond for Walmart, but we didn't really want to. So we left and headed out for the 30 mile portion to sisters. We took alot of back roads and even passed a backroads bicycle tour. We also passed alot of great views of smith and the sisters mountains. We also passed a llama farm.
We got to sisters, which is a really touristy town with only 2k full timers. They did have an awesome cafe with alot of vegan pastries though, so that was sweet. I got 2 giant cinnamon rolls, ate one then and kept one for the road. I also got a burrito and coffee. After food, we went to the grocery store and on the way, mark pissed off some pedestrians when he got close to them in a cross walk. It was nice to finally pick on someone more helpless than us. Kinda joking, but they did freak out.
After grabbing some groceries, we went to the bike shop to get the lube. We had a successful mission there and Alex said he would be in town soon, so we just waited for him. It was still overcast and had rained on us a few times already, but it looked to be clearing up. After reuniting with Alex, we took off for the hills full on food, water, and canned wine (for celebrating the last mountain pass!). Our plan was to camp on the top, so we only had 16 miles to get there. It was all uphill from sisters, but stayed really gradual. Eventually, when we passed the chain up area and the winter gates, the climb stabilized around 6%.
It was windy, on a small winding road with only a few cars. We got great views of the surrounding range and eventually made it to a giant lava flow that covers the entire pass. I didn't know at the time, but we were close to the top. We rode beside the lava flow for a few miles and made it to the campground near the summit.
Alex, who had beat us up the mountain was asleep on the pullout. After rousing him, we had a short mile up. It was an emotional moment being our last pass together. How will we replace these experiences of terrible pain followed by amazing fun? Climbing passes becomes a bit fun after a while. The downhill really makes it worth it. We arrived at the top to what we thought was going to be an observatory. What we found was a lava rock lookout castle.
Some lady told us we could probly camp up here, but it is surrounded by a talus field of lava rock. We decided to just camp inside the tower once everyone left for the evening. We killed some time before bringing the bikes up the ramp and into the round main room. We started cooking and fewer people dared venture in to the main room. Once it was almost dark, around 9, some dude asked us if we planned to sleep there. We told him we were, and he said that was awesome and it was like lord of the rings. It was funny because we were joking about being goblins in a castle.
It finally got dark, so we moved to the roof and set up to camp with no tent. It was high humidity and a deer point we would surely exceed, but I wanted to see the stars. They were amazing with good views of the milky way. I saw 3 shooting stars and fell asleep untill I heard a dude talking loudly. Everyone woke up and it was clearly a couple people walking the long windy path up to the tower. It must have been near midnight. We freaked out and I wondered what to do, but there was nothing to so we waited until they shined their headlamps on us. Luckily they saw our bikes downstairs and figured someone was nearby. I greeted them and they thought it was funny and left. I went back to sleep until the moon came out. It was bright and I realized my sleeping bag was covered on dew so me and Mary moved downstairs. I tried to sleep but kept feeling and hearing things. Turns out there were bugs everywhere so I freaked out and we popped the mesh part of the tent. After that I slept good.
Mileage:46
Altitude gain:3200
Today's ride: 46 miles (74 km)
Total: 3,928 miles (6,322 km)
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