July 4th - North Umpqua Trail

This past weekend Thor and I headed down to the North Umpqua River Trail for the holiday weekend to do a little mountain biking with our good friend Sarah Sturdy! We rolled out of town on Thursday afternoon and reached our campsite around 7:30pm. We got the second to last campground at Horseshoe Bend campground - good thing we left early! Here's a shot of our site:


Friday morning we got up early so we could run our car shuttle and be on the trail by 10 in the morning. The first day we rode about 35 miles. The North Umpqua Trail (NUT) is divided up into ten sections and on day one we rode the first four: Lemolo, Dread & Terror, Hot Springs and Deer Leaf. Here's Sturdy and I at the beginning of the ride - the bugs were real bad here and we were antsy to get riding!

This is at the top of Lemolo Falls looking down - it's about 3 miles or so into the Lemolo section!

Here you get a better view of Lemolo Falls from the side - with me in front!

The second section of the trail is called Dread & Terror - there are sections of this trail that are 12 miles off the road - so if you get injured or break your bike you're in a tough spot! Here's a neat YouTube video of this section of trail - we didn't film this - but you'll get an idea of the are where we were riding.

A gorgeous shot along the river in the Dread & Terror section. There are parts of the trail where you're riding right along a rock wall to your left that is just covered with maiden hair ferns - it is lush and wonderful.

There was a portion of Dread & Terror under water - but it wasn't too hard to get across.

Some very brave person took a cut out of this log so people could bike through without knockin' their noggins.

All ready to go on the second day! We rode three sections on Saturday before the Poison Oak got so bad that we finally called it quits. We started on the Calf section - which was my least favorite section by far! Tons of loose, shale-type rock that made it very tricky to ride uphill. After Calf we rode the Panther section. Mid-way through the Panther section Thor realized that he had left the keys to the truck back at camp. Doh! He rode back to camp on the road while Sarah and I continued down the Mott section of the trail. By the end of the Mott section the poison oak was really getting bushy and we decided we did not need the last 15 miles of trail badly enough to risk getting covered in itchy blisters. We'll come back and tackle that section early next spring!

Sarah & I negotiating a fallen log on the Calf section of the trail.

A shot of the crawfish that Thor caught in the Umpqua. He was very patient standing in the water and then dropped a shirt down on it and scooped it up. We let it go shortly after our little photo shoot.

The last day Thor & I got up early and rode a final two sections: Jessie Wright and Marsters. These were absolutely beautiful - Jessie Wright reminded us a lot of biking in Alaska. It was a nice 10ish miles on the bike before a delicious breakfast of lemon ricotta pancakes, bacon, coffee & beer! (We had three beers left....and three people....seemed like a shame to drive them home).