Top Ten Extreme Touring Memories

Last summer I biked from Santa Cruz to Portland, Oregon, traveling nearly 900 miles in nine days with many hills along the way.  Early on we joked that we were doing "extreme touring" and the longer we rode the more the label stuck.  Eventually everything became "extreme," and while it was a form of humor, there was also some truth in the sentiment.  Because of course there are many types of bike touring and not all of them should be classified as extreme.


I don't think there is any definitive classification for what extreme touring is, but I can think of a few general guidelines:

• There is no van.  On my first bike tour from Santa Cruz to San Diego we were passed by a group of riders with fancy road bikes while we were in Big Sur.  We were all passed by their van. While they no doubt had a great time on their trip, it's not extreme touring if someone is carrying your stuff in a car and is following along to fix any problems that you might have.  
• You have a tent.   Arriving at your campsite at dusk or later; setting up tents, cooking dinner, going to sleep and getting up early and repeating the experience the next day is a hallmark of extreme touring.
• You aren't in Western Europe.  This is a bit of an over generalization and there are plenty of touring options in Europe that are more extreme than anything I've ever done. But in America bikes, trains, and public transportation are grouped together in a category called "alternative transportation."  It's called alternative because American society is largely structured around cars.  It's harder to classify touring as extreme when you are traveling along dedicated bike paths with idyllic villages spaced along your route every 20 or less.

My parents touring in Germany.

• You are pushing your limits and expect the unexpected.  The most important characteristic of extreme touring is the sense of adventure that comes from trying something new and being able to adapt when things don't go according to plan.  I was incredibly under prepared for my first trip traveling from Santa Cruz to San Diego, but that experience prepared me for the much more challenging trip that I did up to Portland the following summer.  And having that experience makes me more confident about the challenge of biking across America in a couple of months.  Even though I know that this will a new experience and certainly more challenging than what I've done in the past.

With this in mind here are the top ten extreme touring experiences that I have from doing two short weekend trip and two longer week long trips during the past two years.

10) Santa Cruz to Mt. Tamalpais State Park.  I planned this with Matt as a quick weekend trip to prepare for our Portland trip.  It was supposed to be an easy hundred miles up to Marin traveling along Skyline Drive through San Francisco and across the Golden Gate Bridge.  We had perfect weather and everything was going well and the trip would never have qualified as extreme if it weren't for Google Maps.  To make a long story short we ended up pushing our bikes uphill along an overgrown single track path for a little over a mile.  It didn't help that I was pulling a trailer and when we finally got back on a road we still had about 10 miles till our campsite.

Google that's not a bike path

9) Sacramento to Chico on our Portland trip.  This violates one of the rules of extreme touring because we were staying in houses on both legs of the trip.  But we did a hundred miles of biking on a scorching hot hundred degree day in the central valley.  So it makes the list, but barely.

Roger passing the time on a long hot ride

8) Eugene to Portland.  Another ride where we stayed in houses on both legs of the trip.  But it makes the list because it was the last day of the Portland trip so we were pretty tired, and we also rode 120 miles into a headwind that didn't stop all day.

7) Santa Cruz to Big Sur on the San Diego trip.  The ride wasn't  too challenging and we started out fresh because it was the first day of the trip.  But it was also our first time touring and took us longer than we expected.  Our estimate was based on riding road bikes, and we quickly learned that loaded touring adds a lot of time to the trip.  We had a memorable moment dealing with the woman at the front gate who could not find our reservation.  We also made the mistake of planning to eat at restaurants, but the only place around was the Big Sur Lodge, which was more expensive than we planned for, but fortunately we were able to get lots of free bread.

Arriving at Pfeiffer Big State Park

6) Big Sur to Morro Bay on the second day of the San Diego trip.  This was the most spectacular day of the trip.  But what made it extreme was that the day started out with several thousand feet of climbing and we still had over 40 miles to go at 4pm.  Fortunately the ride flattened out at that point and we took advantage of a strong tailwind to cover the ground in just a few hours arriving at our campsite at Morro Bay just after dark.  Then we rode downtown and found an all you can eat Chinese buffet. We got money's worth that night, making up for the overpriced food in Big Sur.

Views in Big Sur

5) Santa Cruz to Big Sur during spring break.  My most recent bike trip was this past March when I retraced the ride from Santa Cruz down to Big Sur during spring break.  If I were doing this trip by myself it would not make the list for extreme touring, but instead I had convinced one of my friends who had never done any touring to come along.  The longest ride she had done before the trip was 55 miles, but the most direct route to Big Sur was about 80 miles and it included several thousand feet of climbing.  The first 50 miles down to Monterey were very smooth, but after that we started hitting hills and she slowed down.  Around 3 PM I started to worry that we might not get to our campsite by dark, but fortunately she was able to keep a steady pace and once we made it past the last big hill around 5pm we were able to finish the last 15 miles by 6:30 PM.  Even though we brought food with us, it turned out it wasn't enough, and so I had another really expensive meal at the Big Sur Lodge; once again taking advantage of the free bread.

Sophie taking a break before the last big climb

4) Crater Lake on day seven of the Portland trip. This was reminiscent of biking through Big Sur on the second day of the San Diego trip, but, like everything with the Portland trip, it was more extreme.  Crater Lake offered the most spectacular scenery of the entire trip, but the day started off with a cold morning.  But we warmed up pretty quickly once we started a 4,000 foot climb up to the rim of Crater Lake.  When we finally arrived a the top we got some lunch at an overpriced cafeteria in the park.  By the time we were done eating it was close to 2:30pm and we still had about 50 miles of riding to do.  Fortunately it was all downhill to get there, but we were still pushing it to make it in to our campsite by dark.

Biking past snow in the summer. That's extreme.

3) Lassen to Medicine Lake. On the fifth day of the Portland trip we left from out campsite at Lassen and proceeded to bike nearly 100 miles for the day.  The first 40 miles were all downhill but the next 60 miles were nearly much continuous uphill and we had roughly 6,000 feet of elevation gain for the day.  What made this most extreme, for me, was that I kept waiting for the downhill ride to the lake.  Eventually I realized that this wasn't an East Coast lake, instead it was a volcanic lake.  We rode uphill right until the end of the day when we reached our campsite.

Not actually this steep but it felt like it after biking uphill most of the day

2) Manton: On the fourth day of our Portland trip we rode from Chico to Lassen.  But the experience that really epitomizes extreme touring was the ride into Manton.  We started early in the morning because we knew it was going to be a hot day (high over 100) and we wanted to cover as much ground as possible.  The riding in the morning was very smooth and we have ridden over 40 miles by 11:30 AM.  But then we started riding up some rolling hills on our way in to Manton.  We were hoping to fill up on water there and eat lunch.  As we were riding we started running low on water and one of the riders in our group was having trouble with overheating.  We were stopped about 5 miles outside of Manton trying to figure out what to do when a woman in with a pickup truck was driving by.  It just so happened that a school bus was approaching in the other direction, and so everyone came to a stop.  I asked the woman if she could give my friend a ride up to Manton so we could meet him there.  To make a long story short he ended up taking a few days off from the trip to recover and met up with us later on.  Meanwhile when we arrived in Manton the only restaurant in town was closed for the day.  My lunch consisted of an avocado that I bought from the town's general store.  We got back on the road around 3:30 PM and had 35 miles, with several thousand feet of climbing, some of it on unpaved roads.  We finally arrived at our campsite around 8:30 PM when it was already dark.  Then we set up our tents and made dinner.  All in all it made for a rather extreme day.

1) Point Mugu: The most memorable extreme touring experience will always be riding along Highway 1 on a dark foggy night trying to locate Point Mugu.  The root of the problem was once again Google Maps.  We started out the fourth day of the San Diego trip riding 10 miles from our campsite into Santa Barbara.  There we stopped to do laundry and restock on supplies.  Then we headed south for Point Mugu State Park.  It should have been a relatively easy ride, but we were all tired from the previous three days of hard riding.  And as we got closer Matt wasn't exactly sure where the park was located.  Instead of being on the coast his iPhone had a marker many miles inland.  Eventually Matt became convinced that the park was actually located up in some hills that we saw in the distance.  So we turned away from our coastal route and headed inland.  It was supposed to be a flat day, but now Matt was psyched for a couple thousand feet of climbing to end the day.  As we approached the hills we could see the sun setting in the distance.  But when we reached a stoplight that should have been our intersection (according to Matt's iPhone) the road we wanted was nowhere to be seen.  Finally Matt decided that it was probably an unmarked dirt road that we saw off to the side.  However, I was not too keen on that idea, and as we stood debating what to do I saw another person riding by.  I flagged him down and we asked where Point Mugu State Park was.  Fortunately he knew the answer to our question, it was on the coast off of Highway 1 about 10 miles from where we were.  Which is how I got to have the experience of riding down Highway 1 on a dark foggy night.  Fortunately everything worked out fine and we made it in to our campsite well after dark, cooked dinner, and went to sleep.

Sun setting and we were lost