If you seek solitude, look no further
This February heatwave continues, and I got to thinking about routes that are normally not accessible at this time of year but have been on my to do list. OMTM developed the Rajneeshpuram Roundup a couple years ago as a late Spring route, and I’d wanted to do it ever since. I’d ridden through this area on the Oregon Outback in 2015, and after the brutal climb out of Ashwood, the ride on Divide road to OR-218 and the tiny enclave of Antelope were true highlights. Then, a couple years ago, David and I did a huge single day driving trip where we visited the Painted Hills and then drove back via Horse Heaven to Divide road. The roads over Horse Heaven that day were extremely slick with deep peanut butter mud and David and I truly had the fear of god in us as we barely made it over the Horse Heaven summit only to then slip and slide with a bare minimum of traction down the other side. But that was in a normal wet January, and here we are in a parched February, and on bicycles, so really, what was the worst that could happen?
The only real downside of this ride is the drivetime to get to the start, a little under 3 hours to Antelope. After months of separate driving, COVID again seems mellow enough that we decided to carpool in David’s Sienna, stopping for a quick knosh in the Dalles where they are clearly over COVID as even the staff in the hipster coffee shop had chosen to go maskless. We got our food to go and headed down through Maupin, and then up and over Bakeoven road to Shaniko and then down the hill to Antelope. We chose to be lazier than the OMTMers by driving out onto Divide road and parking right at the intersection that we’d return to later.
It was a bluebird day but seemed chillier than the promised 65 degrees high in Antelope, but still just fine. I had a moderate heart attack when my wireless group refused to work for a good 10 minutes, but after spraying it down and cursing/chanting several times over, it finally became happy and soon worked flawlessly the rest of the day, who knows. Then it was on to the initial rollers heading southbound on Divide road before turning east, away from Ashwood and into the vast emptiness.
There’s a little descent when you turn off Divide road onto Gossner road that passes by a well kept farm and then into real sagebrush country, Dan lost a bottle on the way down, and when we regrouped, he turned around to go get it and I broke out my camera for the first time that day.
We regrouped, and settled into some pleasant climbing with lovely scenery. The road rose and fell a few times, but the tread was very smooth and it felt like we were quickly onto the climb up to Horse Heaven.
Horse Heaven is clearly a former mine (apparently mining Mercury) and also, according to wikipedia, a ghost town that once had a post office, but there’s really no sign of any town from where you can access. It’s my understanding that you used to be able to freely wander around the mine, but the current owner has it fenced up and aggressively sign posted so we decided not to trespass for a better look. Just a 1/4 mile down the road is the old town dump, littered with thousands of rusting cans and broken glass. There’s a camp spot there where we found a creepy sun-bleached deer pelt draped around a tree.
We ate a bar, took in the views looking eastward to the valley below, and enjoyed a long and bumpy downhill to the pasture lands along Cherry Creek, a small feeder of the mighty John Day river.
Further down the road, there’s a small stone shelter built into the hillside. It’s unclear whether it was intended to be a primitive bunkhouse for cowboys working this land or if it’s some kind of tiny barn, though I think a single cow would be hard pressed to get inside. Either way, it’s quite photogenic and is worth stopping for a look and perhaps a moment to join hands and soak in the spectral energy of this area.
Back on the road again and it wasn’t long before we had our water crossing of the day. Dan and David were able to pedal through but I got bogged down. It didn’t make a difference, all of us left with drenched feet. Then we opted to skip the side-trip to the John Day that the original OMTM route tacks on, and we were turning left down Muddy Creek road. The entrance to Muddy Creek road looks like a private farm road that someone had forgotten to close the gate to, and we were expecting to see a gate, but despite its rough and tumble nature, this is a legal county road, though the constant signs from the Big Muddy Ranch make it clear they want you stay on the road and not go wandering.
The Muddy Creek road climbs a thousand feet out of the Cherry Creek valley. This ride is nothing if not full of climbing, so despite the mostly reasonable grades, we were getting tired, and we knew we had to keep some in the tank for the final two thousand foot climb after this one. The Muddy Creek road climb gets to an apex, and then you immediately dump out all the elevation you just gained. The descending side of the road is quite lovely with some cool rock formations but I was committed to blasting down the road and didn’t stop to take any pictures.
And then, there you are, arriving at Young Life’s Washington Family Ranch. After several hours in some of the most desolate landscapes in Oregon, it’s pretty weird to cruise into well manicured lawns and contemporary buildings of a christian summer camp that hosts 8,000 teens at a time during the summer. The real interest in this ranch, of course is its previous occupants, the infamous Rajneeshee, who attempted to build a massive intentional community on this land and along the way committed bio-terror, plotted to assassinate a US District Attorney, and committed many other minor and major crimes. If you’re still interested, I do recommend the Netflix doc Wild Wild Country, with the caveat that its twice as long as it needs to be.
For us, the unfortunate reality is that the Big Muddy ranch in its current incarnation, is pretty damn boring. There’s a few old service buildings and and the airstrip, but really not much to see. On the way out, Dan and I did spy some of the original A-frames down a gated road, but again I wasn’t interested in getting into any drama with the current ranch operators. So that left us with a nasty 2,000 foot climb back up to Divide road. David took off with a little steam and Dan and I hung back and talked about Robert Altman films for a while. We eventually re-convened somewhere close to the top, and David’s and my mountain biking background kicked in as we decided to walk some portions of the climb. The sun was still up but getting very low and the temperatures were dropping fast. The climb plays a cruel trick of taking you 200′ above where you need to be, and then you lose that getting back to Divide road.
We cruised up to the car and started getting changed. An old-timer came down the road who David and Dan immediately read as being liquored up. He talked to us a little bit about the drought and God, but in a way that seemed like the conversation could fly off the rails at any moment. Fortunately before it did, he had to get himself along to church in Antelope and we said our see-you-laters. We were treated to some lovely colors in the sky as we headed northwest on Bakeoven road, and were more thankful to take our sacrament of Bliss shakes at the ever faithful Burgerville in the Dalles.
