CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A 116 km loop that starts and ends near Bend, about 3 h 33 of riding. It goes by way of Mount Bachelor, Elk Lake, Lava Lake and Sparks Lake. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,650 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Slow enough to look. The surface follows the shoreline, so the corners arrive where the water decided, not where an engineer did. Water arrives beside the road and stays for 10 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go.
Bend sits on the dry east side of the Cascades, where the rain shadow of the volcanoes gives way to ponderosa pine, juniper and sagebrush. The Deschutes River runs through the middle of town, and on one side of the city rises Pilot Butte, a cinder cone you can drive up for a view of the Three Sisters and the rest of the range to the west. The elevation is around 3,600 feet, so the air is thin and clear, and the sun is strong even in winter.
Read the complete Bend Oregon write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bend Oregon is where the day begins. Next is Mount Bachelor.
Mount Bachelor looks like a volcano drawn by a child: a clean, symmetrical cone that rises to just over nine thousand feet above the lava plains and pine forests of central Oregon. It is a young volcano, built in the last twenty thousand years or so, and sits at the northern end of a chain of cinder cones and lava flows that run along the eastern flank of the Cascades. Behind it, the Three Sisters and Broken Top fill the skyline with older, sharper, glaciated peaks.
Read the complete Mount Bachelor write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Mount Bachelor comes up about 34 km into the recorded legs. Next is Elk Lake.
Elk Lake lies at the foot of Mount Bachelor in a basin of fir and lodgepole pine, and it is one of the most reflective bodies of water in the Cascades. On a still morning, the cone of Bachelor and the pale spire of South Sister appear in the water as clearly as in the air, and the only disturbance is a fishing boat or a loon's call. The lake sits at around four thousand nine hundred feet, so the air is cool and the days short in spring and autumn.
Read the complete Elk Lake write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 53 km into the recorded legs you reach Elk Lake. Next is Lava Lake.
The name tells you most of it. Lava Lake exists because a flow of molten rock once dammed the valley, trapping the spring water and snowmelt that seeped through the volcanic ground. It sits at about forty-eight hundred feet on the Cascade Lakes Scenic Byway, ringed by pine forest, with the Three Sisters visible on a clear day. Right beside it is Little Lava Lake, which is the headwaters of the Deschutes River, one of the best-known rivers in Oregon, and a quiet spring that gives birth to a major waterway.
Read the complete Lava Lake write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Lava Lake, about halfway. Next is Sparks Lake.
Sparks Lake is a photographer's lake, and the photographers know it. It is a shallow, irregular sheet of water on the Cascade Lakes Scenic Byway, with dead trees standing in the shallows and black lava rock along the shore, and at the far end rise the Three Sisters and Broken Top. At dawn, when the water is still and the light is soft, the whole range appears in the water with a clarity that almost looks staged. People arrive before sunrise with tripods and thermoses, and the lake is quiet and cold.
Read the complete Sparks Lake write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sparks Lake sits at 78 km, late in the day. Next is Bend Oregon.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Bend Oregon write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 116 km.
Bend Oregon → Mount Bachelor is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Mount Bachelor → Elk Lake is 19 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Elk Lake → Lava Lake is 8 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Lava Lake → Sparks Lake is 6 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sparks Lake → Bend Oregon is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.