Hot Sisters Day 10 – Dread and Terror

Mmmm… today we started the North Umpqua Trail, which is really one of the best in Oregon.

But first, we left campo deluxeo and rolled the dirt(ish) route back to Lemolo Lake.  The timing was perfect — we had 1.5 hours to stuff ourselves at the all-you-can-eat breakfast!  It was glorious.  And cheap.  And the setting on the deck is so nice.

It took a bit of motivation to leave in our bloated state, but I knew there was much to get excited about ahead.  Superb singletrack leading to a hot spring.

The first section of the trail is called the Dread and Terror segment — why, I’m not really sure.  The best way to describe it might be to say it’s like riding *in* a waterfall.  Or as close to riding in one as you can get.  There are a number of actual water falls, endless creek crossings, water running down the trail often, and mossy weeping walls.

The latter are fascinating to me, as a desert dweller… and they are also refreshing to me, as a bikepacker.  We stopped and dunked under the dripping walls a few times to cool off.

Part way down we had the classic experience of coming upon  rider, 20 feet off the trail, off on the woods! Are you ok??

He was fine and we ended up leap frogging with him for the next while.

The trail is quite rideable, but pretty demanding, in all the best ways.  Even the steep climbs beg to be ridden because you know the reward of coasting down the other side is going to be worth it.

It was funny to emerge from the very wild feeling of Dread and Terror, with no road crossings or sign of civilization….. into hippeville!  The hot spring has many quasi-permanent residents, and lots of visiting hip dippers.  So much for camping nearby — lots of people were there.  We changed and hiked up to the spring, thinking we may have to wait in line for a chance to soak.  But it was actually pretty mellow up there, and the soak was just perfect.

We rolled on some more nice miles of the Umpqua Trail before diving off to check out Tokatee Falls, a short hike off route. I tried to get a little too tricky in optimizing the exit from the trail, using Gaia’s topo maps (which is a resource I’m not used to having on trail). Well, the first road exit was there, but the closest one had long ago been swallowed by the forest, so we did some bonus climbing and backtracking. It was well worth it — one of the best waterfalls we’ve seen yet, and the selfie-stick action at the falls was pretty entertaining.

Tokatee Falls

We’d hoped for a quiet campsite near the falls, but there with a fair number of people around, we hoofed it back to the trail for a nice little spot in the woods.

More Umpqua tomorrow! Singletrack bonanza!