Alrighty, we finally left the town vortex of Oakridge. The more time we spent there, the more it grew on us. It was a nice couple of days, for sure.
But we were anxious to get back on the hot sisters loop, too. The main thing keeping us around was the fact that trackleaders has 3 events starting this weekend, and all 3 have a fair bit of setup going into them.
Things kept popping up, as they are want to do, making it so that our original joke of only riding the 10 miles to the next hot spring was looking a lot more like a reality.
We did get to hang out at the shop some, and meet some cool locals at breakfast, among other things. But finally just after 4, we rolled out of town.
Singletrack along Salmon Creek was a nice way to start out. We popped out onto pavement a few times after not following the correct trail in the spiderweb system. Then back down.
The street tacos I had picked up just before we left came out at Salmon Creek Falls. Mmmmm…. never leave town hungry, or even with the possibility of being hungry.
A short climb and semi-rideable singletrack took us to the Wall creek spring, also known as Mediation Pool. It’s only 97 or so degrees, which is also the temperature of the human body. So it’s more of a comfortable soak than a soothing one. But it also makes it so you don’t want to leave. We soaked for a good hour, talked to a couple guys that showed up, then saddled up to climb some more. Camping next to the pool would have been ideal, and we had everything already up there, but it was looking not so secluded.
No matter, another hour of climbing put a good dent into our ‘for the loops sake’ climbing over to the Aufderhide Road. There really isn’t a good reason to climb up to 4600 feet only to drop back down, but it does put the spring on route and avoids out/back to town.
Plus we knew if we were back in Oakridge, we’d probably get sucked in again.
I think we’re as pleased as punch to be up here, camping a nice warm night in the woods. More trail and a hot spring tomorrow!
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