(Photos: J. Maus/BikePortland)
Before we get to know Hobo Joe, I want to share a brief programming note…
When I started mountain biking back in the 1990s one of the things that really drew me into it was the solitude. In just a few minutes of pedaling (I was lucky to live close to mountains), I could get away from busy roads full of smelly and loud cars.
on the racecourse or on backroads.
These days I’m motivated to ride and stay in shape for that same reason. As our roads get more crowded and more dangerous, my urge to escape has never been stronger. And I don’t think I’m the only one. My hunch is that the huge surge of interest in “gravel grinding” and “gravel bikes” is coming from a desire to escape urban areas. It’s an urge that’s driven by a fear of traffic, a need to unplug from the insanity of modern American culture, and partly by a good, old-fashioned thirst for adventure and new experiences.
Many of us are drawn to roads less traveled (a.k.a. #roadslikethese) and they’re often unpaved.
Thankfully, advances in technology make escaping by bike easier than ever. Drop-bar “road” bikes now come with bigger tires and more comfortable frames and there are many digital tools and devices to help plan and discover new routes — and to keep us from getting lost once we’re out there.
Over the coming weeks and months I’ll be sharing some of my favorite escape routes. I’ll also introduce you to some great characters who I’ve come to think of as Portland’s escape artists — people with vast knowledge of unpaved routes that are off the beaten path. In addition to getting away from it all, we’ll also be getting into it on the race course.
This coverage is being made possible thanks to a partnership with River City Bicycles and Giant Bicycles. They’ve provided me with an excellent bike for exploring and racing, the new Giant TCX-SX (above). With just a month or so in the saddle, I can already report that my TCX has exceeded expectations on the racecourse and on some of the most remote backroads in the region.
Hope you enjoy the coverage.
Now, onto this Hobo Joe character…
Washington County recognizes 220 miles of unpaved roads on their official map and Beaverton resident Dan Morgan has ridden nearly every inch of them. (“Dyno Dan” is one of the escape artists I plan to tell you more about in an upcoming post.) When I asked him to share a favorite Washington County escape route last month, he emailed back a route named Hobo Joe. Hoping to find out why he named it that, I met up with him at Jessie Mays Community Center in North Plains (which is a great spot to know about if you ride in this area because it has a porta-pottie and a drinking fountain.)
To get there, I rode up and over the west hills via Springville Road and then skirted over to my favorite west-side-traffic-avoidance-alternate-route: Rock Creek Trail. By taking advantage of the ribbon of nine greenspace parks between housing developments it’s possible to avoid five miles of busy and stressful roads. Whenever going east-west north of Highway 26 I take the Rock Creek path between Kaiser Woods Park and the Rock Creek Powerline Park soccer fields.
Once I got to North Plains and hooked up with Dan, we rolled north onto Old Pumpkin Ridge Road. It didn’t take long before we hit gravel on Corey Road. A few turns later a big view of a valley opened up with farms and trees and mountains as far we could see. “In the winter there are so many white geese in these fields it looks like snow,” Dan said.
Advertisement
By riding on Corey Road and Keller Road (both of which are unpaved) we were able to avoid about five miles of riding on Pumpkin Ridge Road, which is paved, has poor sight lines and very little shoulder room to ride in. By the time we re-connected with Pumpkin Ridge we were so far out of town that we didn’t have to worry about other traffic at all.
After four or so miles climbing up Pumpkin Ridge we headed east on Smoke Ranch Road at a locked yellow gate (it’s open for biking). On one of the gate posts someone had tagged “Hobo Joe” with a bicycle clearly drawn on both of the “Os” in Hobo. Who was this person? Dan has no idea and neither do I. Whoever it is, Smoke Ranch Road seems like the perfect place where a bicycle hobo would want to be. Overgrown with weeds and brush, it winds through thick groves of trees and crosses seven creeks on its way to Dixie Mountain Road and the highest point of our loop — 1,500 feet.
Once atop Dixie Mountain Road we were treated to a stroke-inducing, 13-mile descent back to Shadybook Drive and eventually North Plains.
The Hobo Joe loop is about 33 miles and 3,500 feet of elevation gain. If you’re looking for an escape from Hillsboro, Forest Grove, or Beaverton, I highly recommend checking this out. And if you ever find Hobo Joe, tell him I’d like to meet him.
Stay tuned next week for an escape to Gunners Lake, a hidden gem of Columbia County.
— Jonathan Maus, (503) 706-8804 – jonathan@bikeportland.org
BikePortland is supported by the community (that means you!). Please become a subscriber or make a donation today.
Thanks for reading.
BikePortland has served this community with independent community journalism since 2005. We rely on subscriptions from readers like you to survive. Your financial support is vital in keeping this valuable resource alive and well.
Please subscribe today to strengthen and expand our work.
Beautiful
Part of that ride (down Springville and the Rock Creek Trail) make up the about half of the best-part of my regular summer-time commute to work. There’s nothing like an empty stretch of SW country road at 6:30 am to make up for the rest of the day.
Jonathan,
You should consider writing a guide book. The rides you’ve posted over the years all look like great fun. Maps would also be a great complement to your articles.
Thanks for passing your experiences on.
Hi Keith. Thanks! That’s my plan. But not a book. I want to put all these routes and photos together into a more easily usable digital guide on the blog and on phones.
JM,
myself and a buddy rode much of that area this year and put together some routes and even punched a connection though one area that was not supposed to have one.
Oh do tell Middle of the Road guy. I would love to know what you found out. Do you have a GPS track? maus.jonathan@gmail.com – i’d love to take a look. I’ve been researching the area myself to find a fully/mostly unpaved route from Dutch Canyon – Bacona and then north of West Union back to Skyline.
I’ll look at my old ride with GPS routes. Man, Bacona road was nasty – that was easily the worst ride of the year from a flats/getting stranded perspective.
I see I missed the map. Scratch that part.
I’ve not ridden much west of North Plains, and try stay on paved roads and away from gravel. Still, I’m aware that many people increasingly will be interested in riding the thousands of miles of roads, gravel and dirt surface, less or rarely used with motor vehicles. Residents and voters of Oregon ought to take more steps to have those roads be better for recreation with bikes.
I think part of the fun is that they are not well supported. These are rural roads, that’s part of the allure and what makes them fun. One has to be self-supported. Sometimes that means finding a spring for water or simply hoping for the best :).
Smoke Ranch Road is the best!
That is one gorgeous road 🙂
My cell service is very questionable once I leave civilization. I’m interested in a lot of these rides you ride about, but concerned about not being able to call for help if I need to, or be able to check my phone’s GPS. I’m interested in reading about how you cope with that.
The calling out part is tricky, but ride with a buddy and the chance of a catastrophic issue is diminished. Plus, it’s more fun to yell at steep hills with a friend. A decent smartphone with GPS provides enough capability to not get horribly lost. I use RideWithGPS (see the post above, and no I’m not a paid corporate shill), and when you have a route plotted ahead of time, you can download the relevant Google map layer info, so no cell service needed for mapping.
All probably obvious but… Set your phone to allow roaming. SMS (text) gets out on a flakier signal than voice, and in the area of this ride 911 accepts SMS (http://www.nwtext911.info/map-view/). Cell signal is better higher up the hill. PLBs or satellite messenger devices are available. Old school: leave your route and a “call the sheriff” time with a trusted party – and don’t forget to check in with them when you’re done! An emergency space blanket weighs 3 ounces.
Yes. I forgot to mention that to save battery I will put my phone on Airplane mode.
Hi Dan,
Good questions. These rides aren’t really that remote… and keep in mind we’re riding on big fire roads, not technical singletrack, so the chance of a really bad crash is low. That being said, things can happen of course. I always tell someone (usually my wife) where I’m going so they know where to look for me if I never come home. I ride by myself a lot so that’s a key consideration. As for GPS, the good apps like Ride With GPS and Gaia GPS allow you to download maps and routes to your phone so you don’t need a cell connection to read the map. Also, if I do a very big ride I will take a backup battery with me to make sure I don’t run out. Another thing about calling out for help… I’ve been in the position where I had to walk up a long dirt driveway and knock on a rancher’s door to get me home. ;-).
When I used to be more adventurous I would carry a SPOT tracker. It sends to satellites, so it works in all the fun places (e.g., where phones don’t).
I’m more boring now and less likely to be two hundred miles from the nearest help.
I love my Spot. I regularly end up far from the nearest cell service so it’s nice know I can send out a pre-programmed email to a select few friends to come get me if I have a mild catastrophe or hit the SOS button for an emergency response if I have a major catastrophe. (I’ve never actually sent either message out.)
My folks and in-laws love being able to track our progress when my spouse and I take off on a tour. Plus, when we’re meeting someone they can estimate our time of arrival by checking on our progress.
This gets dark, but the “tracking” feature of SPOT is how we discovered a friend was dead- in fact, before the state could identify him.
That’s why they call it adventure riding.
My experience is that Verizon usually has a signal out there 90% of the time. ATT less and TMobile not at all.
Good ride to highlight, Jonathan! I would add that If I remember correctly there are a few intersections between Smoke Ranch and Pumpkin Ridge where it is not entirely clear which fork to take. Adds to the adventure…
Last time I did this ride in the spring I hung out at the gate for a while, and don’t recall seeing the “hobo joe” – maybe it’s relatively new?
“Thankfully, advances in technology make escaping by bike easier than ever. Drop-bar “road” bikes now come with bigger tires and more comfortable frames…”
That gave me a chuckle. Those “advances” were what we used to just call bikes. My primary half-bike is still my 1981 Trek 720. It fits 38mm tires on the rear and 35mm on the front. I changed my wife’s 720 last year to an even older “advance” by having the brake posts moved so she can run 650B wheels. She rolls 42mm but could fit 48mm.
I hear you B. Carfree…. I’m referring to the fact that the mainstream bike industry is now making these types of bikes more available to the masses and is embracing them in general. This means that the activity is suddenly on a lot more peoples’ radar. Similar to the start of MTB’ing in Marin… Lots of folks were riding fat-tire bikes in the woods well before the “Repack” crew… But it was their smarts and foresight and work to bring mass-produced products to the market that really made MTB-ing a phenomenon.
You passed up Hobo Joe twice on your ride. As you climb Saltzman you can see his mark on the gate as you cross Leif in Forest Park.
How does the 1×11 work on that Giant? Miss any gear ratios?
So far I love it. At first I thought it would bother me because I am really big on getting just the right cadence. But I never think about it now. I love the 42 for getting up steep fire roads in Forest Park (I’ve climbed BPA road on this thing!)… and I have done 70+ mile dirt/pavement combo rides without ever feeling like I wanted a better gear ratio. The shifting is really solid too. Stays in adjustment so far… even in the demanding conditions of cyclocross racing through deep mud and water.
And other thing.. .I’ll be sharing more about the bike in a separate post.
Cool. My buddy and I have been having discussing on converting (gears) **removed borderline content -ted**