No. 55
Blaine and I bought our tickets to The Unrally— which is in the Alvord Desert. We decided to take a few extra days and ride some of the Oregon Backcountry Discovery Route (OR-BDR) to get down there.
Blaine lives in Sisters OR, which happens to be where BDR Section 4 ends… so that’s where our adventure begins.
Paulina Peak sits at 7,984 ft above sea level. From here you can see the Newberry Calderas, the twin lakes (Paulina & East), and a large expanse of hardened lava.
“The Big Obsidian Flow” is Oregon’s youngest flow, which was formed 1,300 years ago.
The “Pine Mountain Fire” burned 2,589 acres of Deschutes National Forest —and technically speaking— it was still considered “active” while we rode through it (unbeknownst to us at that time).
At this point, I’ve been on this adventure for about 14 hours (realistically, with about 10 hours of actual riding-time).
This hill sucked to navigate! The fire really destroyed this mountain. It had loose dirt, little rocks, baby heads, roots, large ruts, dead trees, very steep, and a cliff on one side.
Blain pulled over to take a photo, and in order to not lose momentum, I kept riding up the hill. When I got to a safe spot to stop I waited for Blaine… but I never heard his bike coming. A few minutes later, he called and said his bike wouldn’t start!
I was about a mile up the hill when Blaine found his Main 30 Amp Fuse completely blown.
After a lengthy conversation, we decided to both stay put and get some rest.
I was sleeping next to my bike when I was woken up (about 10:30pm) by the rumbles of a truck coming down the hill. Luckily, these two guys were looking for a camping spot when they passed by me. I told them about Blaine, and they said they’ll try to help him. I went back to sleep and about an hour later, I was woken up again — but this time by the sounds of Blaine’s motorcycle.
Since I already had my “camp” setup, I decided to just go back to sleep. Blaine continued up the hill in search of Pine Mountain Campground.
