Biking In The Columbia River Gorge: Life Can Be Beautiful

Latourell Falls

View From Women's Forum of Vista Point

Me on a boulder next to Latourell Falls (Photo by Courtney)

Latourell Falls with a long exposure (1 second)

Latourell Falls with a short exposure (1/400 seconds, I think)

Shepperds Dell Upper Falls

Bridal Veil Falls

Me taking a picture of Bridal Veil Falls (Photo by Courtney)

Obligatory Multnomah Falls photo, short exposure

Upper Multnomah Falls with the bridge, long exposure

Sunset at Cascade Locks

Me at Cascade Locks in the cloudy morning (Photo by Courtney)

Cascade Locks in the cloudy morning (Photo by Courtney)

Me on the bike path between Cascade Locks and Eagle Creek (Photo by Courtney)

Around the same time as I was researching Düden Falls in Turkey I started checking out the waterfalls close to my American home. There are a couple very interesting waterfalls in the San Francisco Bay Area, but I soon learned that many of the best waterfalls in America (besides those in Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, and Yellowstone, of course) can be found in the Pacific Northwest. And quite a few seem to clump together around the Columbia River Gorge that divides Oregon and Washington, about 30 miles away from Portland. And as it just so happens I'm in Portland visiting Courtney for my summer vacation. So naturally we started planning a trip to the Gorge early on.

All right, before I go on I have to say something about the formatting of the blog lately. Apparently I've been flung into a beta version of the Blogger editing software and I'm still having some trouble formatting the text properly. I'm learning fast, though!

The trouble with our plan to visit the Columbia River Gorge was that neither of us has a car (and I don't even have a driver's license) and the trip to Oregon's king waterfall, Multnomah Falls, from Portland is roughly 33 miles. Now, Courtney has a bike like most true Portlanders do and she's in great shape from riding it everywhere she goes, rain or shine. She also has an extra bike that just didn't sell on Craig's List, too big for her but just about right for me. The thing is, I ride about 12 miles per hour in the city (you know, level ground), which would mean it would take a bare minimum of 3 hours to get to the waterfall. And that's just one of many beautiful waterfalls along the Gorge that I wanted to see. It looked like we were doomed to spend the night. We chose a town, Cascade Locks, 13 miles east of Multnomah Falls, to stay the night.

We took Historic Columbia River Highway 30, which, as the maps and online directions failed to explain, added quite a bit of mileage to the trip that could have been avoided by taking I-84 - estimates from friends range from 40 to 50 miles. You know what else Highway 30 added? Altitude. Take a look at the photo taken from Women's Forum. We biked up there from sea level, that huge cliff of insanity. We shared the narrow shoulder with frustrated drivers waiting to whiz past us and pitying bikers wondering at our heavy packs, our lack of padded gloves, our blowing T-shirts instead of neon tights, and our looks of hilly exhaustion as they pedaled easily past us. It felt like death. But it was so beautiful!

After Vista Point and Women's Forum the ride started to flow downhill, which was almost as bad because the shoulder disappeared, the road became worn and bumpy, and the increased pull of gravitational potential energy made it harder to control the bikes - I crashed into the mulch-soft natural wall once when my tire got caught in a ditch, and a gang of motorcyclists stopped to ask if I needed help (I didn't).

The steady downhill came to a nice resting point at Latourell Falls, visible from the highway where it crosses the waterfall's river. Actually, many of the Gorge's waterfalls are visible from Highway 30, thanks to the donations of landowners back around 1900. That means that all the hikes to these waterfalls were very short - the longest we took, to Bridal Veil Falls, was 2/3 of a mile round trip.

Part of the purpose of the trip for me, besides experiencing the beauty that is waterfall and pushing my body's limits in the physical endurance of such a long bike ride, was to practice taking pictures of waterfalls. I'd finally bought a cheap but sturdy portable tripod and I'd read some waterfall photographers' blogs and was excited to take better photos than I had at Düden and haven't yet gotten the chance to at Yosemite. The popular technique for photographing waterfalls and rivers is to set up a tripod with a long exposure (letting light into the camera for longer than, say 1/15 second), giving it that milky, graceful look. You can also take a quick exposure (something like 1/1000 second) and try to freeze the water, which usually makes the waterfall look unnaturally still but sometimes works well (like for Yosemite Falls or the upper half of Multnomah Falls).

At Latourell, I realized that I didn't want to do either. As fun as it was to use the tripod and set my camera to a full second of exposure without making a blurry photo, it didn't look like a waterfall. It was beautiful and silky and elegant, but it added body and weight to the falls that wasn't there in person. When I changed the shutter speed to 1/125 second (I think) I got a picture that looks much more like how the falls looked in person, complete with those little tufts of misty water throughout the body as the falls starts to break apart towards the bottom. The challenge of photographing waterfalls is managing that distinction between the elegance, eternity, and grace

with its powerful energy and true body. I think I did a decent job with the medium-exposure of Latourell Falls, but, as you'll see, I don't think I was so successful with Bridal Veil Falls.

After Latourell Falls there are quite a few waterfalls even before Multnomah Falls, and Courtney and I stopped at a couple along the way before she got so tired that if I even said the word "waterfall" she'd give me an evil look. Right after Latourell Falls was the tiny Shepperds Dell Falls, so unassuming that the path didn't even lead to the falls' major drop, stopping at the quaint brook leading to the fall we could kind of see through the foliage on the short forest path. Then was Bridal Veil Falls, a much more beautiful falls than I had been prepared for, a double-decker fanning out gracefully at the top and throwing itself triumphantly at the bottom. Maybe that's why I didn't feel at the time that my photos were dishonestly adding so much body to the lower falls, but to be fair I was more concerned with the lighting; the upper falls was under direct sunlight while the lower falls was in the shade. I think Courtney's picture of me taking a picture of the falls is more honest than the picture I was taking, and she was just reaching the point of fatigue-induced withdrawal.

Finally we made it to Multnomah Falls and took a break. Seeing as it was the main purpose of our trip I feel I should say something special about it, something emotional, but it didn't touch me the way the other waterfalls did. I think that's just the way big touristy waterfalls rub off on me, the some reason I don't care to see Niagara Falls. the crowds of people make it hard to have a close, intimate relationship with a waterfall. But Multnomah Falls handles its fame differently than other popular falls. It almost seems out of place being adored so, although the bridge packed full of tourists over the lower half does give the falls a complete-feeling shape. But the falls itself is gentle and inconspicuous, like your rare celebrity plucked from obscurity and able to retain its humility. It's both a piece of cake and a headache to photograph. The lower half looks better and more accurate with a long exposure while the upper half is best with a short exposure (the photo I included here of the upper falls is a long exposure shot, but again it doesn't look quite like the same waterfall).

After Multnomah Falls came the worst part of the entire bike. I'm not just talking about how we had to ride in the shoulder of I-84 next to the 65-mph traffic. I'm not just talking about how there was an accident on the interstate so we had so go another 3 and a half miles on shoulderless Highway 30 with unnecessary hills that made us sweat through our every pore. I'm not just talking about biking right past the beautiful Horsetail falls (in view from the road!) and the trail head for the Oneonta Gorge and its 3 waterfalls without having the time nor energy to stop. I'm not just talking about dodging broken glass when we finally made it to the shoulder of I-84 (the only way to get to Cascade Locks by bike) and, for a small bridged portion where the shoulder shrank to almost nothing, chanting the mantra "I will not spin out" to myself and not caring what shards of glass I biked over. I'm talking about getting past all that and finally arriving at the 2.5 mile-long bike path at Eagle Creek that led to Cascade Locks and staring up a hill steeper than any we'd climbed thus far; almost out of water, we were on the verge of tears.

Writing this now makes me feel like I must have been insane. Who knows, maybe I was. It was by far the hardest thing I've ever done. But rest assured, I'm not the first biker who's made this trip - in fact, it was the recommended rout in the Multnomah Falls visitor center's bike map, a pair of bikers we talked to during lunch in the tiny town of Corbett between Portland and Vista Point, and the online site Rubber To The Road. I guess there's a first time for everything, no matter how physically exhausting or mentally terrifying. But as scary as it was at some points, I know that we were perfectly safe because people do that trip all the time and only people without common sense get hurt. Luckily, Courtney has common sense.

Cascade Locks, as Courtney put it, was "the most beautiful place in the world," though she wasn't talking about the gas stations, cheap motels, RV parks, ugly metal bridge ironically named Bridge of the Gods, local market, roadside cherry sellers, or the two or three restaurants. I don't think she was even talking about the sunset, though it was pretty amazing. But there was out motel, and after three or four times of thinking that we wouldn't be able to make it to the end, there we were. The trip had taken about 9 and a half hours. We quickly showered and forced a gross diner dinner into our exhausted stomachs at Char Burger and didn't say a word, just laughed whenever we made eye contact and saw the fatigue in the other's eyes, mixed with the fear of wondering how on earth we'd be able to get back to Portland tomorrow.

The next day my helmet was still damp with sweat. I'd already ruined yesterday's white shirt with sweat; the straps of my backpack had left matching yellow-brown splotches along my shoulders and under my arms. We'd stretched and massaged each other for an hour before bed the next day, but my hamstrings were still so tight in the morning it was hard to stand up. But there was good news: Courtney's friend was coming to meet us at Multnomah Falls so we wouldn't have to climb the deathly Highway 30 hill again. We were saved! I know that knowledge helped us sleep better and pedal harder out of Cascade Locks.

A part of the bike path we called the "Enchanted Forest"

Courtney biking in the Enchanted Forest

There had been a thunderstorm the night before, and while it wasn't raining when we started out it was still cloudy and damp. We had time and energy this morning to stop along the bike path from Cascade Locks to Eagle Creek (where we'd have to go on Interstate 84 again) and take pictures of the mossy trees that canopied above us like a secret hideaway. Bad news is that the wet road plus the bumps made by tree roots were a little too much for me at one point and I fell again, this time with Courtney right behind me, crashing into me as I feel. We sprayed across the road. Luckily we were at Ruckle Creek, a good stopping point anyway, and we escaped fairly unscathed - just the bicycles were hurt, the chains of each falling off.

Biking back is much easier than biking on the first trip because you've seen everything already and you know what to expect. Also you know you can do it because you've done it before. Also, when you ride west with the river's flow you're always on a slight downhill instead of a slight uphill. And, in our case, we knew we had a ride waiting for us. And because we had seen all of this beauty in the Columbia River Gorge and it gave me the feeling that there's so much beauty in the world, that life can be beautiful if you look for it, if you make it, and if you see it.

Ruckle Creek