Road Ride to McKenzie Pass

A beautiful day here in Bend.  It was in the low 80's.  We decided to do the McKenzie Pass ride out of Sisters.  It's 15 miles to the summit, and climbs 2100 feet. These are the Sisters Mountains as seen from Hwy 20.   They used to be called Faith, Hope and Charity.  Now they're known as North, Middle and South.

 

Generally, the road to McKenzie Pass is closed to traffic until July.  That was not the case this year.  The road was open to cars today which was kind of a bummer.  Note to self, the gate is 9 miles from Sisters.

 

This is Windy Point.  It's about 12 or so miles into the ride.  That's a lava field stretching out toward the mountains.

This was taken just past the Windy Point scenic overlook.  That's more lava flow.  It's just amazing how deep it is.

 

I had to laugh at us and our packing for the ride.  Every single road ride we've done in Bend has resulted in our freezing our tooshies off when descending back to the truck (all rides in Bend are uphill).  Today, we thought, will be different.  We fired up the Lapse Rate Calculator and determined that it would be cold at 5300 feet.  So, we took vests, arm warmers and knee warmers.  We were expecting something like this (with the road closed), but there was virtually no snow.  So, our clothes took a nice bike ride, and we stayed warm.

This is the summit.  That's a lava field, with a trail put in to it.  We were wearing cycling shoes so we didn't walk up to the top.

 

The view from the parking lot.  More lava.

 

Here is Jim and the summit sign.

 

It's a nice ride.  I kept my speed down so as not to spike my heart rate.  It's not that steep, and it's a beautiful ride.  The descent, however, has solidified my desire to not ride down Mt. Lemmon.  It's really tiring going down hill for 15 miles.  It makes my feet and hands hurt.
We got a brief thunderstorm this afternoon.  I'm hoping the Phil's trail system got wet so it will settle the dust.  Now the sun is back out and it's a beautiful evening.