*Motorcycle Roads NorthWest

This is another one of those interesting Oregon mountain roads. I thoroughly enjoyed it, not to mention that it beats the living daylights out of taking the interstate and droning through the Blue Mountains. Nobody else seems to be on this road on the weekends, and I’d be willing to bet that it’s busier during the ski season than in the summer since the top was littered with shuttered businesses, closed ski lodges, and rentable cabins when I rolled through in June.

And you might ask, “Why’s it so great if nobody else is up there?” Sweepers. Really hot ones. Plenty of opportunity to take your open-class sport-tourer and see what it will do on a nice quiet mid-day ride.

I found it rather amusing really, since so many of the corners up there were marked with speeds that read 30-35 mph. Not sure why they were marked that way mind you, but I could easily do 50+. And the ones that were marked 45mph? They could be taken at truly righteous velocities that my Wee-Strom with its saddle-bags was just not going to attain that day.

Local Landmark:

One thing that every discussion of this area seems to contain is the weather. Even when the sky is clear blue down in the valleys, it always seems to be cloupy up on 204. The day I was down there had turned into a real barn-burner in the Pendleton and Baker valleys but it was only in the upper 60s atop Route 204 and the sun was peaking through patchy clouds that seemed close enough to touch.

• Counties: Union, Union
• Length: 42 miles
• Towns: Elgin, Tollgate, Weston

Google Map for Oregon State Route 204:

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Note: Google Maps and the other Navitech based online maps show that at least one routing of Willow Creek Road rolls right into downtown Heppner on Hager Street and the routing software really latches onto that direct route. This is not the case. From what I could see, that road has been on the bottom of the Willow Creek Reservoir for quite awhile now and the new route is on the south side of the creek and town.

Flood Control Dam at Heppner:

If you’re coming down out of the forest there’s no real way to get lost. Just roll down the pavement and enjoy the ride.

South of Heppner on Willow Creek Road is the Willow Creek Campground. At least while I was there the RV spots were 1/3 full with rather friendly elderly folks. Where I stayed in the tent section ($6/night), the ground was pretty rocky and unpleasant. But I had the tent area to myself and nobody bothered it through several days of leaving my saddlebags in the tent while I went riding for 8 hours/day.

Willow Creek Reservoir:

Halfway down the road not far into the serious ascent is the Cutsforth County Park. It’s a nice little campground nestled in amongst the trees. It’s a bit high up in the air for this flatlander-Seattleite to sleep in, but it look quite nice from the road.

One interesting thing to watch out for on FS 53 is the occasional cattle drive. Complete with cowboys on horses and herding dogs. It seriously thought I’d somehow dropped about 100 years into the past. The entire landscape up there looks like something out of a Western around Ukiah. Wide open mile-high pastureland with a cluster of buildings that just happen to be grouped togheter there for no apparent reason. Nice folks though, so be sure you wave.

Speaking of waving, it seems everybody waves to everybody there. The old folks in caddies wave. The farmers wave. When they’re not out raising hell it seems even the teenagers driving around wave. And just about anyone under the age of 14 waves to the motorcycles like their arm is gonna fall off. I think I might be making some more frequent vacation plans down that away.

One other thing to worry about is gas down there. While Heppner seems to have the only commercially-franchised gas station in North-Central Oregon, there’s no other fuel on the road and difficult to find in much of the region. Make sure you know when your gas stops are going to be open when you go through, and I recommend calling ahead a couple weeks before you leave to be sure that the place has fuel or is even still in business. I’ve heard that a lot of mom & pop gas stations have folded this summer due to low tourism.

Mural along the grain elevator. Reportedly the biggest mural west of the Mississippi:

View of Heppner from atop the hill by the dam:

Aside from these standard concerns about riding in North-Central Oregon, it’s great down there. There’s very little traffic to worry about the pavement is quite smooth and ridiculously grippy compared to the billiard-ball smooth Seattle freeways.

If you get a chance, Ukiah has one unique characteristic shared by no other town I’ve ever heard of. The school district there is so huge and so sparsely-settled that it’s probably the only public school distract in the US that is actually a boarding school. Boys and Girls dormitories more or less on the opposite ends of town, of course.

GPX file containing track for Willow Creek Road

• Counties: Morrow, Umatilla
• Length: 44 miles
• Towns: Heppner, Ukiah

Google Map for Umatilla FS 53:

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Sunrise Park Road
Road to Sunrise Ampitheater

The Road to Sunrise Ampitheatre is extremely twisty and challenging. The paving also leaves a lot of be desired with large frost heaves and sunken sections of pavement. Be quite careful when riding this road due to these concerns and the astonishingly heavy tourist traffic in the afternoons.

However, where the paving is smooth, you’ll find a technically-challenging road with several sharp switchbacks and lovely tight curves. The curves are fairly well-planned, but the road has been sorrowfully neglected recently, and doesn’t appear to get much in the way of preventive maintenance.

The Road up to Sunrise Ampitheater

Do be careful of the turns, as there are rather large drop-offs and no shoulder or guide rails in much of the area.

Above: A Map of Sunrise Park Road

Below: A General Map of Mount Rainier National Park

Additional Photos from my August 2008 trip up to the Sunrise Visitor Center:

Google Map:

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This road is part of the Hells Canyon Scenic Byway. It wends its way down from Imnaha Highway near Joseph through the Hells Canyon back-country past a number of peaks in the Blue Mountains range before dropping you out east of Halfway.

Obviously, this road isn’t in one of the more populated parts of the lower 48 states. Food, fuel, and water are all important issues for travelers through this area. You can get food (Safeway!) and fuel in Enterprise and Joseph (a tourist town, watch out) and that you can at least get gas and snacks in Halfway most of the time. If you’re travelling through this area in the extreme ends of the riding season, I would recommend keeping an eye out for road closures. It’s often closed through much of its length in the winter and gets officially closed at least from Salt Creek Summit down to Oregon 86 (east of Halfway).

One item of concern with this road is that it is part of the Hells Canyon Scenic Loop. And during the peak times there’s lots of tourists driving around. I needn’t belabor how poorly the weekends tourists drive when they’re in sight-seeing mode, but if you visit during the middle of the week or early in the day you might just have the road to yourself.

I would recommend visiting Hells Canyon Overlook also, it’s got a wonderful view. Several resources have listed a number of horse camps, so be careful not only of horse trailer but equestrian near the roadway.

The road itself is in extremely poor shape throughout much of the length. There were many spots, often mid-hairpin, where the top surface of the road has literally come undone and there’s poorly-bound chipseal stones strewn across the entire lane. The top half of the roadway is a much more recent chipseal effort than the south end, but the lane lines are still just as faded as they barely perceptible ones to the south.

View up the river on the bottom half of Wallowa-Whitman Forest Service Road 39:

Most of the corner between Oregon Route 86 and the Salt Creek Summit @ 6000′ are in the 25-30mph range with occasional 15mph hairpins. It’s one of the better technical roads that I’ve ever done. I just wish it was a little less technical in the off-road dirt & stones sense of dealing with tires sliding from deteriorating pavement. The worst spot in the whole length during my June 2009 visit was about 18 miles up from the south where there were full-on potholes and gravel plumes right in the middle of the lane at the bottom of a decreasing radius hairpin where you’d cross through the pothole and thus into the ditch if you don’t very carefully assiduously late-apex that corner.

And also while it may not need to be mentioned since it’s one of the most common occurrences in Central & Eastern Oregon, be careful when you approach dirt-road junction that are mid-corner. There’s usually rocks from the side-road all over the pavement.

Signage one the road is rather typically National Park-thin. Most corners are unmarked and this road also follows the Oregon convention of 1 sign for each set of corners with the recommended speed on the sign set for the tightest corner. Of course, that corner is usually at the end.

• Counties: Baker, Wallowa
• Length: 52 miles
• Towns: None. Road has several traveler “rest stations” and runs near both Joseph and Halfway at each end for Services

Google Map:

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This road starts on the south edge of Ukiah and gently wends it way uphill into the heart of the Blue Mountains. Once you’re about 15 minutes in, you’ll start to see signs for various OHV riding and snowmobile areas, and shortly afterwards the road starts to get interesting with much tighter and more frequent S-curves.

Keep following FS52 up into the mountains past a number of USFS trailheads and you’ll come across and intersection of FS51 near the headwaters of the John Day North Fork. You’ll want this road if you’re heading back up to the north. Otherwise continue on south to FS73 which will take you east into Sumpter and eventually down to Oregon Route 7.

I recommend double-checking road conditions before you head out on this road. It’s very high up with a 5600′ / 1700m crest at FS51 and snow starts early and stays late at those elavations. There’s a Forest Service station right there on the west end of Ukiah and they were right helpful last time I was there.

I don’t have a lot in the way of photos of the area. It was rather pretty there and the horizon views were nice, but not jaw-droppingly gorgeous. If you do get a chance to stop at the bottom end of 52, look out to the West and you can see across the plateaus for at least 50 miles or so.

• Counties: Umatilla, Grant
• Length: 39 miles
• Town: Ukiah

Google Maps for Umatilla FS 52:

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