*Motorcycle Roads NorthWest

Road Report provided by Joe Trombetta

If you’re up in the Northwestern Oregon’s Tillamook and Yamhill Counties, you’ll find some excellent riding up there. Twisty gnarly little roads that benefit greatly from some off-road and marginal-road experience, for certain, but very rewarding when the other roads are full of cars and RVs.

Up in the Coastal Range, 17 miles East of Carlton and off NW Nestucca Rd is Bald Mountain Rd.

Traveling North to South there is a climb followed by a long, slow descent of about 2000ft from beginning to end. The road is about 25 miles one-way and takes about an hour travel time at average speeds.

The road is a mixture of sweepers and twisties, and like Nestucca Rd, this is probably “NOT a road for beginners or recently-returning riders”. The pavement quality is excellent with little or no gravel as of May’10.

A few things to consider for canyon-carvers and speedier folk… The road starts and ends at average width but becomes one-car wide (or thinner) for most of the road. This is probably never travelled and there is 2 feet of moss lining both sides of the road. I saw no cars from either direction during my 2+ hour ride, so risking a crash while riding solo would not be a good time. This might be in some kind of state park and there are ATV trails that cross over the road all throughout the area, but I didn’t see any of those either.

There are no amenities or cell signal anywhere. There is an outhouse about halfway through but no running water. I do not remember any speed limit (or any other signs) but the scenery is where my eyes strayed when not on the road. Mostly forest with some great spots overlooking Yamhill County, bring a camera. There are lots of side-roads that either end up reconnecting to larger roads or dead-ending; well worth exploring if you have the time and gas.

Google Map:

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Located just outside of Culdesac Idaho is one of the neat little roads tucked away up on the hilltops of northern Idaho.

It’s an amazing old road, with emphasis on Old and a double word bonus of Narrow. The road is barely the width of one and a half lanes of a modern roadway, and this one doesn’t have anything that I’d call a shoulder.

The curves are very tight and typical of Idaho, the shoulder gravel is the same color as the roadway as it’s paved with local stone. Most of the curves are very tight: most of the outside curves have no guiderail to demarcate the outside edges and the ‘inside corners’ have oncoming traffic is usually coming across the inside of your lane.

It’s a great road though and the vista is well worth the trip, not only from the top but also from many points along the way up.

This is the wide section.

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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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Way back in the opening decades of the 20th Century, an amazing road was designed by the Oregon State Highway Department and highway engineer Samuel C. Lancaster. An fantastic routing full of viewpoints, waterfalls, tunnels, and curves of all shapes and sizes.

It was described by John Arthur Elliot:

The ideals sought were not the usual economic features and considerations given the location of a trunk highway. Grades, curvature, distance and even expense were sacrificed to reach some scenic vista or to develop a particularly interesting point. All the natural beauty spots were fixed as control points and the location adjusted to include them. Although the highway would have a commercial value in connecting the Coast country with the eastern areas, no consideration was given the commercial over scenic requirements. The one prevailing idea in the location and construction was to make this highway a great scenic boulevard surpassing all other highways of the world.

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