Looking to put together a North Trask group ride in the near future

[Mark Guglielmana]

Last week I did my second Forest Grove to Tillamook ride over forest roads with a buddy. It's known as the  on the Velodirt site. Pics here, note that this album has the ride I did last year as well as this year's in it, annotations included.

It's an epic, gravel grinder ride. 58 miles if you start in Forest Grove, add 10 miles if you take the MAX line out to Hillsboro from Portlandia. 50% of it is on forestry roads. Abut 5-6 miles of it is 6-12% climbing on gravel. I'd recommend no skinnier than 35mm tires, I used 42's, a couple of miles of it wished I had 50's. A mountain bike might be a bit overkill, but wholly appropriate on this ride. It's hard, it's beautiful, and there's a brewpub at the end. 

I don't have a date set, just collecting names of those that might be up to it. There would have to be planning involved. Once you get to Tillamook, how do you get back? There's a bus service that can take bikes, but it leaves Tillamook around 1, which is frankly undoable unless you left Forest Grove at o'dark hundred. The first time I did it my family picked me up in Tillamook, and we continued up the coast to Seaside for a 3 day mini-vacation. This time I drove over the day before with a friend in separate vehicles, and left my pickup near the brewpub, then drove back with him. I have an extended cab, could squeeze up to 5 people in it for the return trip, bikes in the back, of course. I could do this again.

Who's interested?

[Mark Guglielmana]

Oops, I copied and pasted from another site, it's the North Trask route on Velodirt.

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Mark Guglielmana

[Mark Guglielmana]

Thread bump. Some of you that I met at the un-meeting in Carson expressed interest in doing this ride. The date is set for July 10th. I've arranged a van to take everyone back to Forest Grove and Hillsboro (Trimet stop)

Send me an email if you're interested and I'll get you on distribution.

[Joseph Kopera]

...does *wishing* we could join you count?

[Mark Guglielmana]

We'll have you in spirit.

[Tim C.]

Impressive.

[Mark Guglielmana]

Final thread bump - I still have a few seats left on the van to drive back to Portlandia so this can be a one day trip and back.

Leaving Forest Grove at 8am this Sunday, 7/10

On Monday, May 23, 2016 at 8:46:02 PM UTC-7, Mark Guglielmana wrote:

[Mark Guglielmana]

Eight hearty souls rode this on July 10th. Drizzling a bit early, fairly wet up "The Wall", then cleared up, with sunshine by the time we go to Tillamook for beer. Finding someone to drive us all back to Portlandia was, in a word, brilliant.

 

[David Cummings]

More shots of the new ride! Ride report!!!

[Mark Guglielmana]

I tend to spend more time over at the bikeforums.net C&V site, so rather than recreate the wheel:

Ride report

Bike Build report (including the UBI framebuilding course)

On Tue, Jul 19, 2016 at 8:46 AM, David Cummings <flath...@gmail.com> wrote:

More shots of the new ride! Ride report!!!

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Mark Guglielmana

[Travis Kubicek]

Hey Mark,

I've heard great things about this route, however, nothing very recent. Looks like you're the authority! You mentioned 35mm tires as a minimum, can you give me an idea of how deep the gravel gets? I've suffered up some gravel climbs in the area that have crazy deep gravel. Most of the pictures I see of Trask it doesn't look too deep but it's hard to tell...  

Cheers, 

Travis 

[Mark Guglielmana]

Well, maybe I'm the only person writing about it recently, if that makes me an authority, so be it!

From our group of 8, one rode 35mm tires. He lives in North Bend, WA and rides gravel a lot, in fact, those are the narrowest tires he has. A very experienced gravel ride can get by with 35's. Referring to the ridewithgps map, the two worst areas are typically the "warm up" climb starting at around mile 9.5, where you hit gravel on farm roads, then after 4 mile "wall", roughly mile 24-28, which borders the reservoir. In May it was pretty deep, but in July it had packed down a bit. 

Use your own judgement, if 35 is all you've got, ride 'em, be careful on fast descents, eat your vegetables, yada, yada...If you have a choice, choose wider tires. I rode 42mm Hetres in May, and Rat Trap Pass fatties in August. I pinch flatted on the Hetres, but the RTP's floated on top of all gravel. I weight 200lbs, a lighter rider might not have the same issues. 

Plenty of good info at Oregonbike Bikepacking as well. If you're planning on doing it, download the map area using the ridewithgps app on your phone or GPS system, bring a water filtration device for use at mile 33, and then figure out how you're getting back from Tillamook!

[Christopher Jones]

I rode along with Mark and team on this last ride, weigh ~215lbs, and rode RTP tires as well. Felt great. Mark leads a good ride.

In terms of gravel depth/non-packed-down-ness, it seemed fine. If you're familiar with the state of NW Springville east of Leif, that's a good bit looser/deeper than what Trask is like. I'd say the grade of the gravelly part of Springville is about the same as the "wall" section Mark mentioned. So if you can ride up that with whatever you have, you'll be just fine on Trask!

[Mark Guglielmana]

For those up near Seattle, I can compare to the Iron Horse Trail. Last fall when I rode it there was reasonably fresh gravel starting around Hyak and headed east for about 4 miles. A year ago the 4 mile stretch along the reservoir on the Trask route was about the same as the Ironhorse last fall. By this May, it was a bit better, the July ride it seemed to be packed down even more. I don't know what the condition of the "new" gravel is on the Ironhorse, but if you can ride that with 35's, you'll be fine. 

Sheesh, when you planning on going? Maybe I'll come along!

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Mark Guglielmana

[alight]

Wow... glad I passed on the trask ride. No way I could make it up springville. Maybe it's my gearing, but I walked nearly the entire stretch last time.

Austin

[Mark Guglielmana]

Edit: 
"these are the widest tires he has"

[Paulo Dias]

A fried and I did Trask route just 2 weekends ago, we did the opposite though, took bus to Tilamook and then rode back. It was awesome, camped out on that "special spot" Really good ride, we ran out of water so we had to filter. Never did this ride from Hillsboro to Tillamook but I think that doing it reverse might be easier. Its not easy by any means, some crazy gravel hills but they seem a bit more spread out.

Excellent ridding you guys have in Oregon! I am jealous!

On Monday, May 23, 2016 at 8:46:02 PM UTC-7, Mark Guglielmana wrote:

[Mark Guglielmana]

That would be interesting to do "backwards". You completely avoid having to do the 4 mile "wall" climb, and spread it out over many miles. 

[Paulo Dias]

ahha yeah, as we were going the other way we were talking about how much harder it seemed. Reason for backwards was that I needed to absolutely be in Portland on Sunday and did not want to mess around missing the bus or some other problem that could have come up.