Smith Rock Loop

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Madras, OR, US

Route Overview

Cycle Oregon

Building Community Through Cycling

64 mi.

3,035 ft.

“High Desert Highlights”

Start the morning taking in breathtaking views of Lake Billy Chinook. Cruise past rich agricultural tracks through Culver, and then test your vertigo looking over the steeply carved sides of Crooked River Canyon. From there it’s off to world-renowned Smith Rock State Park, where craggy spires rise from the riverbank and climbers look like tiny specks on the walls. Enjoy a little-used stretch of the Old Culver Highway on the way back to Madras.

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Route Details

Oregon’s Parks and Recreation Department (State Parks), with partners of Cycle Oregon, ODOT and Travel Oregon, manages a Scenic Bikeway program.  This program, initially created with impetus from Cycle Oregon, currently has eleven scenic bikeways throughout the state.  Wouldn’t you know it, the newest, Madras Mountain Views Scenic Bikeway, is a thirty-mile loop from Madras.  When designing a route from Madras, you just have to include the local scenic bikeway, especially one that has almost no traffic.

The route follows the scenic bikeway for twelve miles past the @point[Round Butte Overlook Park](372,0.407), which is down a short hill from the main road.  This PGE Park is above Lake Billy Chinook, formed by the third dam (Round Butte) in the Pelton Round Butte hydroelectric project on the Deschutes River.  Other viewpoints along the route also offer great views of the lake, and arms of rivers feeding the lake, and a possibility of seeing eagles and other raptors.

The route leaves the scenic bikeway at @point[Culver](618,0.147) and then travels south on@slice[ U.S. Highway 97](643,161) for seven miles.  **This highway has a high traffic volume, very good shoulders that everyone will surely use**, and is used because it leads to two spectacular spots.  The first is the @point[P.S. Ogden Wayside](813,0.375) at the Crooked River Gorge.  A highway bridge spanning the gorge is nearly 300 feet above the river, but the route avoids all the traffic on the highway and instead takes a short paved bike path from Highway 97 to cross the gorge on the old bridge, no longer used by vehicles.

After a stop at the state park wayside, riders must walk across a very short grass and gravel area to arrive at the northern end of a county road – Wimp Way.  **To get onto Wimp Way, go to the rock wall at the edge of the gorge on the north edge of the park, and @point[walk under the railroad overpass](826,0.783) (south) to the paved road**. This allows cyclists to avoid traveling on Highway 97 to reach Terrebonne.  At @point[Terrebonne](919,0.589), the route **crosses Highway 97** at a caution light, and then travels to @point[Smith Rock State Park](973,0.232).

Smith Rock is world renowned for sport climbing, traditional climbing, multi-pitch climbing and bouldering, and is generally considered the birthplace of modern American sport climbing.  There are several thousand climbs in the park, with more than a thousand bolted routes. The park also offers hiking and mountain biking trails and possible sightings of golden eagles, prairie falcons, mule deer, river otter and beaver.

When able to tear yourself away from the views at Smith Rock, the route travels back to Highway 97 for a short distance on county roads.  After riding two miles north on Highway 97, ***everyone then gets to dismount and @point[walk through a highway right-of-way fence](1122,0.369)*** (at least no one has to climb over it) to access a lightly traveled county road to return to Culver, after @point[crossing Highway 97](1276,0.893).  The route then joins the scenic bikeway to travel through the community of @point[Metolius](1367,0.809) before returning to Madras.

Smith Rock Loop

Route Overview

Route Details

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