Outside

For the second consecutive year hundreds of “mature” bike racers will flock to Central Oregon for the USA Cycling Masters Road National Championships. This year it’s a five-day affair that will kick off Wednesday, Sept. 5 and run through Sunday, Sept. 9. Unlike last year, however, this year a “masters racer” is defined as those aged 35 and older. In 2011 the youngest master’s category was the 30 to 34 age group.
Other notable changes for this year’s edition include new courses for the time trial and for some of the crit races. Rather than race another time trial up and down the broken pavement of Skyliner’s Rd., race organizers elected to hold the race outside Prineville on  the Crooked River Highway that will take racers upstream and into the Wild and Scenic Crooked River canyon.

Hiking up the trail along the east fork of the Lostine River into the Eagle Cap wilderness in the Wallowas is one of the most perfect fly fishing pools imaginable. Enough off the trail that you might miss it, the pool comes at the base of a short rocky drop in the river. After the drop, the water flows quietly in a 20-yard-long by 10-yard-wide pool that’s no more than four feet deep at most. Since the river bottom here is sandy, wading barefoot is easy. There’s also no fear of snagging on a backcast as the trees are well set back from the pool’s edges.
The only reason I made a recent trip into the Wallowas was to fish this pool and to bask in the joy of wading deep in cold water and casting to eager Brook Trout. Note that the pool’s brookies aren’t huge but are ready to take traditional dry fly patterns, like an Adams, Royal Coachman, elk hair caddis and humpy floated on the surface, or pheasant tail and bead head nymphs.
Arriving at the pool after a two-and-a-half-mile uphill hike, I took my boots off and rigged up my four-piece backpacking rod. Reel on, I reached into my pack for my fly box and found it missing. Despair ensued. I’d forgotten to pack the box.

Bend already lays claim to the title “Bike Town U.S.A.,” but it may be time to add “Ultra Runners ‘R Us” to our town’s moniker.
Bendites dominated the recent GORE TEX Trans-Rockies Run, a 120-mile, six-day stage race in Colorado that concluded on August 18. Bend sent eight runners to the race, which started in Buena Vista and finished in Beaver Creek and included approximately 20,000 feet of altitude gain, and each day all eight Bendites made podium appearances.
Zach Violett and Stephanie Howe returned to the race hoping to improve on last year’s third-place finish in the “open mixed” category. The couple, now experienced in the ways of stage racing, blew the other co-ed teams out of the water and won the six-day race in 17 hours, 47 minutes—two hours ahead of the second place team.

For the last few years Super D races have been the darlings of the mountain bike world. Super Ds, which feature both cross-country and downhill segments, are relatively short and staged on mellow enough terrain that they attract a broad spectrum of riders—cross-country and downhill racers dig them, as do the casual all-mountain riders. The popular races often attract riders who’ve previously never considered entering a bike race.
So how is it that European-inspired enduro racing is threatening to dethrone the beloved Super D?
Lots of reasons, as it turns out.

Come early August dedicated steelheaders know that what happens on the lower Deschutes stays on the lower Deschutes. And I won’t break that confidence.
However, it’s no secret that the annual steelhead pilgrimage has begun on the Columbia River, which has fish junkies like myself trekking north in hopes of intercepting some of the early arrivals, including the strong push of wild fish that make up a good chunk of the early “run” on the Columbia and tributaries including the lower Deschutes.

Stand-up paddleboarding on flat water is the equivalent of going for a lunch-hour jog—it’s good for you, it probably makes you feel better, but it doesn’t exactly get you into the red zone. As a result, it can be hard to get motivated. You could say the activity is short on ‘psyche.’
Wait, before anyone gets their board shorts in a wad, let me say this: getting exercise, no matter the format, is always preferable to getting none at all. Also, there’s nothing wrong with flat-water stand-up paddle board (SUP) sessions, or flat water anything else for that matter. But given that stand-up paddling traces its origins to the Pacific Ocean, it’s worth noting that there’s much more to the sport than what we see from the banks of the Deschutes River.