RideOregonRide.com, the awesome resource developed by Oregon’s tourism commission Travel Oregon, now includes a handful of the best gravel rides our state has to offer.
Nastassja Pace, a destination development specialist with Travel Oregon, shared the great news with us this morning. She explained that they’ve partnered with two locally-grown resources, OregonBikePacking.com and Ride With GPS, to vet the routes and display them on the site.
OregonBikePacking.com was founded by Donnie Kolb, the man who has stoked much of Oregon’s current fervor for unsanctioned, logging and gravel road riding (we profiled him back in July). Kolb worked with Travel Oregon to feature six of his favorite routes, all of which he has personally ridden, studied, and photographed.
The rides are:
- Old Dalles
- The Oregon Stampede
- Barlow Trail
- Hart-Sheldon Hot Springs
- Steens Mountain
- The Oregon Outback
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The routes vary in distance and toughness. The Old Dalles route — a 47-mile jaunt that begins in Hood River — is rated “moderate,” while the 241-mile Hart-Sheldon Hot Springs route is rated “extreme.” On the website, each route listing contains detailed information including: best times of years to ride it; recommended tire sizes; a detailed elevation chart; nearby lodging and services listings; a convenient link to GPS data via Ride With GPS, and more.
Travel Oregon launched RideOregonRide.com in 2009 in response to advocates’ requests to have an online tool to promote Oregon’s best road and mountain bike routes. The addition of gravel routes is a result of the agency’s new focus on this increasingly popular type of riding, which is a hybrid between mountain biking and traditional road biking on pavement. In November 2013, Travel Oregon convened a gravel road working group to create a database of the best routes and explore various policy and advocacy issues around them.
Check out the new gravel riding section at RideOregonRide and start planning your adventures!