Painted Hills Redux

Our travel took place on the ancestral lands of the Nüümü (Northern Paiute), Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, Cayuse, Umatilla and Walla Walla, and Tenino peoples who have stewarded those lands since time immemorial.

Fall has been closing in on Seattle: The sun is coming up closer to 8am and setting around 6pm, rain is falling and the gray sky is not letting up. In search of better weather, we went south to Northern Paiute and Tenino lands (Eastern Oregon) to complete the route we had attempted last year. The landscapes along the drive are incredible. Coming out of Western Washington, the dense temperate rain forest fades into the drier high elevation forest which feel familiar since I grew up in Northern California. The forest evolves into the palouse and the stacks and stacks of fruit boxes in Ellensburg and Yakima are an astounding testament to this landscape’s productivity. On the approach to the Columbia Gorge hills get steeper and oak trees appear, and then disappear, into dense forest before reaching the steep slopes of the Gorge. South of the Gorge the sky opens up and the canyons flatten into rolling hills and huge expanses of hay fields, occasionally dotted with the imposing skeletons of windmills. Obviously I’m a landscape nerd, but the sheer number of landscape changes in this 6 hour drive kept me pretty entertained… in addition to the audio-book we were listening to — Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (the plot is effectively lesbian necromancers in space).

We reserved two glamp tents at the Service Creek Resort where we had stayed last year, and were happy to see they had made some cute updates! There is now a shower house and a grill shelter chock full of lawn games, a foosball table, and a fireplace. They replaced some of the original Rajneeshee tents the proprietors acquired at an auction with more weather-proof plastic tents and put the remaining Rajneeshee tents under awnings. The gals (Po’Boy, Bisque and I) stayed in one of the newer tents (below, bottom left and right) with queen, twin, and dog beds; the boys stayed in a cult tent with a king bed and a couch.

The route that Scampi found last year used part of the Oregon Scenic Bikeways route for the region, to which we added some bypasses for the Painted Hills and a burger stop. We set out around 9am full of anxious energy since we knew it would be a long day. Almost immediately, Po’Boy got a flat, and then a few miles later I got one. On that first ascent I had several moments of doubt — maybe we had chosen a bad day, maybe we were cursed, maybe the wind would be too much, maybe we didn’t have the right equipment. Luckily those were the only bike issues we had, but pushing our bodies to do all the elevation was another hurdle altogether. The first hill was a great warmup — a long low hill, about 10 miles with 2,100 feet of elevation gain at an average of 3% grade. After the first hill, we turned onto Rowe Creek Road which proved to be a false summit, and continues to climb another 300 feet when it finally drops down into a valley where we encountered real cowboys, cowdogs, and a great reprieve from climbing for about 12 miles.

Rowe Creek Road dumped us onto the banks of the John Day River (I called a couple places to find out the Sahaptin name for this river but could not get an answer). The river’s lush greenery contrasted starkly with the sandy buttes and arid prairie, and gave the river the character of a lively, pulsing vein snaking through the landscape. We took a few moments to regroup and marvel at the river from the little bridge. There was a junction on the other side, and luckily I made a mistake and followed the Oregon Scenic Bikeway signage instead of turning right, which would have taken us through the Painted Hills National Monument. The wrong turn was fortuitous as we got to wind our way through a gorgeous canyon, gaining about 1,500 feet of elevation on a pretty persistent 5% grade. It was hard, but worthwhile!

At the end of canyon, we intersected with Highway 207 and I realized I had made a mistake. The boys were in danger of running out of snacks and electrolytes, and took the opportunity to go north back to the campsite. They did a loop of about 46 miles and nearly 5,000 feet of elevation! Their loop:

The girls kept going to Mitchell, where we feasted on shrimp po’boys, burgers, and coleslaw. Eating in a rural restaurant during a global pandemic was a really interesting experience. We saw a sheriff’s deputy (barf) walking around with a cowboy hat (no cowboy boots) and no mask, talking to every person he could. All of the servers were wearing masks, but very few of the restaurant patrons were. A few diners were talking about the spread of COVID-19, saying it wasn’t a big deal because there had only been one case in Fossil (40 miles away). With the exception of witnessing these types of conversations, lunch was refreshing. As we were getting back on our bikes, one of the diners asked us where we were going and when we told him he muttered “animals” under his breath. I thought it was pretty funny, it appeared to be a pretty visceral reaction to hearing that we were cycling 25 miles, and when we told him we were going to do about 70 miles in total he nearly lost it.

We hopped back on our bikes… We had about 25 miles and four big hills with 2,000 feet of elevation to go. As we rolled out of town, Po’Boy reflected that it is easy to forget that by many standards, the cycling we pursue is extreme. It is really easy to either normalize one’s habits, or conversely, always see an ever-expanding horizon, that there is always something to be gained or explored. I used to be the latter type of athlete, never thinking I was good enough or strong enough or fast enough. I thought that way because I was thinking that way in all aspects of my life. It feels really good to know that when she brought that to my attention I was present in what we were doing, and at the end of our ride I felt really accomplished! It was the most elevation I had done in a day, and even though we made a ‘wrong turn’ and the group didn’t stay together the whole day, we all did what we needed for our health and safety.

As we cycled through this Oregon Outback, I noticed that there were a ton of invasive juniper shrubs dotting the sagebrush steppe and prairie. Western Juniper (Juniperus occidentalis) is native to Oregon, but like many places in the West settler colonists introduced non-native foragers like cattle and sheep and changed the ecosystem. Many western landscapes and ecosystems are fire-dependent. Numerous plant species in the American West evolved with fire and depend on fire for reproduction, and the balance of different species. Settlers’ cattle ate native grasses between the sagebrush, removing fuel for fires. In concert with two centuries of widespread efforts to suppress fire in the American West, juniper was able to creep down from its rocky habitat and take root in grasslands. Juniper out-competes native grasses and sagebrush by shading them and using their huge taproots to suck up what little water is available. This article provides a more comprehensive description of this ecological issue.

I noticed that some of the parcels along highway 207 were extremely overgrown, and some were undergoing active mitigation. The difference is incredible. In the photos below, the left photo shows the difference between land with no mitigation (left) and active mitigation (right). In the right photo, there are burn piles — juniper trees are cut down, piled on top of the stump, and burned. Native grasses are then seeded in the burned area to hopefully reintroduce sagebrush and native grasses, and increase the amount of habitat for native birds.

I think it’s important to recognize the ways in which humans manage and change landscapes. In the last year or so, I was introduced to the idea that wilderness is a racist term, especially virgin wilderness or untouched wilderness. These terms are racist because they create an ideology that some land is devoid of human influence or management, which is patently wrong and erases millennia of indigenous stewardship and management. As in many places in the American West, indigenous people managed landscapes through fire to create habitat for game and beneficial plants. Many plants and animals evolved with these anthropogenic regimens and stewardship. Using terms like wilderness for certain places — such as those that were taken by force and are now owned by the federal government, that are now only accessible by permit or fee, and are not managed in the way they had been for thousands of years — is anti-Indigenous. National parks and wilderness are a white supremacist invention which remove the idea of indigenous peoples and their stewardship from places deemed industrially or commercially beneficial in capitalism. I am not saying that settler colonists should not visit these places but if you do, give credit where credit is due and advocate for indigenous sovereignty even if it doesn’t benefit you directly!

Anyways, this is the roue we actually completed:

This is the route we were attempting: