Wow, 2021 is ticking by quick and the craziness hasn’t let down. We are back with our 2nd Stoked Spoke episode of 2021, FTW Nb Nite! Femme, Trans, Women, and Non-binary Nite (FTW Nb for short) is a dedicated space for our FTW Nb friends to tell their tales of adventure.
Wondering what Stoked Spoke is? Check out our previous post.
For the 2nd Episode of our 2021 Season we have adventurers from Best Coast to Beast Coast. Our five dispatch will on Single Speeding W. Virginia, miss adventures in Utah and much more:
Oregon Cascades Volcanic Arc 400
Diving into Bikepacking on the Big Sur Ramble
Out of the Frying Pan into the Fire
The Durbin Lollipop
Oregon’s Painted Hills, Again
Brenda – White Canyon, Hite, UT
Sarah Udelhofen (she/her)
400 Miles
Oregon Cascades Volcanic Arc 400
In my eyes, an ideal bikepacking trip consists of copious snacks, a handful of lazy swims, gorgeous PNW scenery, and just a bit of suffering. But it should also come with some surprises, too. In September 2020, our group of 6 untangled our bikes from a 15-passenger van in a parking lot in Klamath Falls, Oregon and made our way north through 400 miles of gorgeous national forests, remote campgrounds, dry red dirt, lush mossy forests, and small towns. Along the way, we learned a little something about group dynamics, collective decision making, and expressing one’s needs – and looking back, we had a fun time along the way too!
Natalia Cortes (she/her)
169 Miles
Diving into Bikepacking on the Big Sur Ramble
The Big Sur Ramble is 4 day loop that gives you a taste of the diverse terrains of the California central coast mountains. With 16,000ft of climbing, you’ll definitely put in some work. Day 1 gives you a scenic ride down the Pacific Coast Highway from Monterey through Big Sur. The final stop of the day is at Limekiln State Park, a beach with a canyon where campgrounds are tucked under redwoods. Day 2 features a steep climb up and over into a valley dotted with oaks through a military base, finishing off in a remote campground. Day 3 is only a 12 mile dirt descent, giving you a chance to rest up on the shores along Arroyo Seco. Day 4 is the final stretch the takes you out of the rugged river canyon back to your return to Monterey. Halfway through, you’ll encounter the first established town where your tastebuds will be eternally grateful for the fresh snacks from the local café.
Jay Melena – Big Sur, CA
Brenda Gayle (she/her)
15 Miles
Out of the Frying Pan into the Fire
This route begins just a little southeast of Hite, Utah. You couldn’t get more in the middle of nowhere. The beginning of the route takes you 5 miles down a canyon to the edge of Lake Powell. Then there is about 3 ish miles of paddling on the water. We pulled out of the water about 2 miles in and camped on a flat area in the canyon. The second day was supposed to be 10 miles of dry riverbed. But we decided (stupidly) to bike up it after 12 hours of rain and it was 10 miles of quicksand.
Emily Monroe (she/her)
143 Miles
The Durbin Lollipop
This route begins and ends in the ghost of a bustling coal-train town, Durbin West Virginia. You’ll follow a soft earthy path for about ten miles to Glady, ride rolling paved hills to Alpena through old growth orchards, then start a big circular loop through various Wildlife Management Areas, on road, trail, and singletrack. Expect minimal cell phone service, plan a backup map. You’ll enjoy incredible views as you ride along several rivers, with the chance to find waterfalls along the way. Camping can be tricky, since often the pitch of the terrain is far too steep for tents, but with planning and on-the-fly smart decisions, there are lots of options. The singletrack through Caanan valley and mountain is absolutely beautiful, and sisters up to an incredibly biodiverse natural area. From Rhododendron Forest to Mountain Bog and Spruce, you’ll experience it all. The singletrack is rocky and rooty, but after a hard push to Blackwater Falls, you’re rewarded with a long, generally downhill, trail that follows the Blackwater river through the mountains to Hendricks. Ride swooping gravel roads to Parsons, Otter Creek Wildlife Management Area dishes out jaw dropping scenery. These gravel roads end in Meadows. From there you’ll have a long road climb over the mountain, then a short bomb back to Alpena, where the currently-closed Alpine Lodge Marks the end of the loop. Back through the orchards to Glady, stop to pick apples if they’re in season, then finish your ride along the soft forest road back to Durbin.
Roxy Robles (she/her)
68 Miles
Oregon’s Painted Hills, Again
Fall was closing in on Seattle, and I was eager to go south to Northern Paiute and Tenino lands to complete the route I had attempted in May 2019. I reached out to some of the people who had been on last year’s trip to see if they would be interested in attempting it again, and assembled a group of 5. We drove about 8 hours south and stayed at Service Creek Resort and stayed in glamp tents, bought at an auction from the former Rajneeshi settlement. The Resort had bathrooms and water, but the route was fairly remote and we had to be prepared to not pass food or water sources for several hours. As we cycled through this captivating landscape, I noticed the juniper shrubs dotting the sagebrush steppe and prairie. Western Juniper (Juniperus occidentalis) is native to Oregon, but settler colonists introduced non-native foragers like cattle and sheep and changed the ecosystem. Many western landscapes and ecosystems are fire-dependent, and countless plant species evolved with, and depend on, fire for reproduction and ecological function. Cattle eat native grasses removing fuel for fires, and along with two centuries of widespread efforts to suppress fire in the American West, juniper crept down from its rocky mountaintop habitat and took root in grasslands. Juniper out-competes native grasses and sagebrush by shading them and using their huge taproots to suck up what little water is available. We had packed a lot of snacks, but stopped in Mitchell for a lunch of burgers, fries, and Arnold Palmers. None of the other patrons were wearing masks, and neither were many of the locals and tourists walking by. As we rolled through shale canyons I contemplated the ways in which humans manage and change landscapes. I thought about how the concept of wilderness creates a racist ideology that some land is devoid of human influence or management, which erases millennia of indigenous stewardship. Indigenous people managed Western landscapes through fire to create habitat for game and beneficial plants; and using terms like wilderness for certain places — such as those that were taken by force and are now only accessible by permit or fee — erases millenia of their care. National parks and wilderness are white supremacist inventions which remove the idea of indigenous peoples and their stewardship from places deemed industrially or commercially beneficial in capitalism. The Western ideology considers conservation to be a positive ecological endeavor, but how can this value system exist if these places look and function nothing like they should? It is a privilege to be able to visit such beautiful regions and to learn about its geology and ecology, and I hope you advocate for indigenous sovereignty and consider that wilderness is bullshit.
Sarah U. – Oregon Volcano Arc
Happy Trail Tales
