On Sunday (May 25th) our group saddle up and hit the Phil's Trails trails just outside of, or on the edge of, Bend.
Click the map picture it should get bigger. If it doesn't click HERE.
We pulled into the parking area and gathered up at the pump track. The pump track area is outstanding in itself. In addition to a pump track, there's a series of humps, of various sizes, moving away from the parking lot. Then, when you get to the end of those, there's a great jump line. The jump line has little ones, medium ones, and quite large ones. More on this later.
We departed the parking lot headed up some trail. Vague? Well, I honestly can't remember the name of the trail. What I do know is we went up that trail, got on Phil's, and sort of topped out and the helicopter landing pad. There we snacked and rested a bit.
Leaving the helicopter pad we made our way down some junction 29 on the map. There is a bench at that location. Everyone sat on the bench but left a gap. The gap was for a recently deceased rider who was part of the group. A beer was opened and shared in his honor.
Post picture beer pause, seats were lowered and the quite fun descent down Whoops began. Whoops has a nice mix of bermed corners and jumps of various sizes. When we intersected a road, we rode it back up to the start and rode Whoops down again.
Finally, it was time to descend the rest of way down. We found a not-quite-as-fun-as-Whoops-but-still-downhill trail. We bombed down stopping only once to group up. Once at the bottom there was much rejoicing but more like playing on the aforementioned jump line. Another rider and I were on the medium sized jumps honing our skills.
When I dude's done riding for the day, what does he/she like to do? If you said, "Drink beer!" then we're on the same page. What's a trip to Bend without a stop at Deschutes Brewery? If you said, "One lame-ass trip." you'd be right! Our trip was not lame-ass as we did stop. Not only did we sample their finest, I loaded up my growler for post ride, campsite thirst quenching.
If you're heading to the Bend area, I highly recommend hitting up Phil's Trails. It was a blast.
Post ride, we headed to the State Park, showered, and then headed back to our Sisters area campground. Tomorrow was Monday, our last day of riding, and the long drive back to home.
Monday we were back through Bend in search of Tiddlywinks trail. Some of our group had other plans and head off in their own direction. However, with two vehicles of riders left, that meant shuttle the bikes and riders to the top, stash a car at the bottom, and gravity ride Tiddlywinks down. How's Tiddlywinks? Well watch the YouTube video I found (not by one of our group):
This was quite the trail to end our trip to the Bend, OR area. Much fun was had, much riding was accomplished, a few crashes were survived, but the beer didn't. Saying the trip was Amazing! does not come close. So, in usual mountain biker fashion, a new word to describe was launched. A female rider in our group proclaimed, "This was more than Amazing. It was Amazeballs!"
There you have it - AMAZEBALLS!
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