Alpine Trail mountain bike singletrack trail (Oakridge, Orgeon)

Day 7 - Blue River -> OakRidge (Oregon)

We woke up to another beautiful morning and had breakfast on the verandah, then we packed up our stuff. Ready to drive over to Oakridge the next stop on our road trip. I signed onto the Internet and found that Wild fires in Ketchum meant all the MTB trails were closed there, so I cancelled our reservation in Ketchum, and we decided to go to Stanley in Idaho instead.

Clare packed quicker than me and walked up to the covered bridge and took a couple of photos, whilst I finished packing, I also rang universal cycles and they agreed that it would be ok for me to post the broken Gravity dropper seat post back to them for a refund.

Before we left I took a few pictures of the cottage, as it had been a great place to stay. Definitely worth splurging the cash to stay somewhere special for a couple of nights.

We finally finished packing up at at 10:30 am and we reluctantly left Blue river, and started driving over to Oakridge, we decided to take a scenic byway to Oakridge FR19.

The route was 52 miles long to Oakridge, at times there were great views, but most of the time all you could see were trees.

We did not see many other cars on the way, and got to Oakridge fairly quickly. We checked into our Hotel the Oakridge Best Western - the room was clean but basic and smelled of cigarette smoke - this was due to the door of the room opening directly to the outside of the hotel where people smoked. Oakridge seem'd to be a very run down small town, and there wasnt really a great varierty of places to stay at. Once we had dropped of our bags we went to Willamette Mountain Mercantile to buy some maps for the Area. We picked up a couple of Tread Maps of the trails in the local area. And finally we went to the Post Office and posted the seat post back to Universal.

As Clare had a cold we decided that I should ride the Alpine trail, with Clare giving me a shuttle to the top of the trail. We managed to drive a couple of miles past the trail head, as its not signed at all. We also spoke to a guy in camo in a truck who said he'd seen a bear recently.

The Alpine trail Mountain bike singletrack , Oakridge, Orgeon

I headed off up to the Alpine trail, and Clare then drove back down the road.

Initially with the thought of a bear lurking in the bushes I didn't stop much to take photos, the single track was great to ride, with only a couple of trees down on the trail.

After riding along on single track through the trees , the trail broke out into some grassy meadows.

The trail then dived back into the trees, the trail was fast but was not a very steep downhill - you still had to pedal a fair bit. There ws only one place on the trail that was hard to navigate and that was were it joined a couple of fireroads.

Some sections of the trail rode through some large old growth trees, some of the biggest i'd seen so far on this holiday.

There were some great sections of trail where it switch backed down through the big trees.

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The trail was quite interesting as the vegetation kept on changing as you dropped further down the trail.

In a couple of places the trail broke out of the trees and contoured along side the edge of the hill, In places you could see Alpine flowers growing along side the trail.

The vegetation on either side of the trail got thicker as it dropped further down, but never completly obscured the trail.

I took a right turn near the end of the trail, and after a fun narrow single track trail with brambles waiting to scratch you, it dropped out at a covered bridge at West Fir. As I thought Clare might be waiting at the official end of the trail I rode along the road to that, but she wasn't there so I then headed back along a busy road to the Hotel. In total including riding back to the Hotel the ride was 24 miles long.

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Clare it turns out had driven down the the road, and then gone for a walk along the rider, where she found a swimming hole as described in on one the route descriptions. Back at the Hotel we had a swim in small out door pool before getting dinner at a Mexican Restaurant called Matzalan the food was good, but there's not much choice in places to eats in Oakridge.

DAY 8