Mount Hood is full of great mountain biking. The art of Mountain Biking Mount Hood is making a route that delivers a fun route (thats not gonna kill ya), amazing scenery and is accessible, all while being on a loop.
This route is a cross country style killer and about all that and only a few minutes from Government Camp. The route takes in Benett Pass – a double track jeep road, along with Gunsight Ridge Trail #685, an old school mountain bike / hike trail and a spicy forest clad descent called Gumjuwac Trail #480.
This killer ride can be broken into 5 main sections, with a water stop roughly in the middle.
Benett Pass
Benett Pass is a nice start and finish to the ride. It’s an easily accessible trailhead being just off the highway 35, has a large parking lot and even a vaulted bathroom. It eases you nicely into a day of mixed mountain biking. 5 miles long with a gradual up Benett Pass gives you easy access to the west side entrance of of Gunsight Ridge Trail 685. Along Benett Pass there are some really nice rock formations and sweeping views of the west valley of White River and also east toward East Fork Hood River.
Gunsight Ridge
Gunsight Ridge is a West to East ridgeline trail, a hiking trail that undulates over 6miles and skirts an elevation of 6000ft for the most part. It’s old school mountain biking with some challenging techy rock laden climbs and a few scree field crossings. The early sections of the trail are in the chill in woods but soon open out to alpine like ridge running with mind blowing looks, before descending the last part. There’s a hidden viewpoint at the top of an early scree field with great views and interesting rock formation, it’s marked on the ride with gps map. Gunsight is by far a cross country classic with views, terrain variation and skinny trails. Toward the later half, Gunsight trail pops out onto a gravel service road for a brief moment then dives back into the woods on the left.
Gumjuwac
Gumjuwac trail is famous for Gumshoe Jack, a French Canadian sheepherder who always wore gum shoes that traversed these parts. It’s a steep trail in the woods with a ton of switchbacks, some of the straight-aways are long and you can gain ridiculous speed, be careful though the exposure is pretty steep, better to brake check than fall off the hill. Also be thankful we are riding down this and not up :-). Here we descend 1600ft in 2miles. The bottom of Gumjuack puts us at the Highway 26.
3540 (Pocket Creek)
At the exit of Gumjuwac trail is Highway 26, not a lot to say here, but we ride up it for 1 mile on wide shoulders at a gentle gradient before taking the turn up Forest Road 3540 which eventually takes us all the way up the to the ridgeline of Benett Pass forming a loop. At the very bottom of 3540 you cross a bridge with a few campsites, this is a great place to refill bottles from the East Fork Hood River. The lower parts of this 5mile climb are paved and deeply treelined, mellow in grade and not so bad in the heat.
At about 3.6 miles in, the wide road turns to wide loose gravel and shortly gets pretty steep. Soak in the views to the left before making a sharp right and the gravel road pitches up to 18% for the final climb. It’s all walkable, but yeah its a bear. The reward is a spectacular vista at the top and the peace of mind that its the last significant climb.
For the stats 3540 is a 5mile climb with 1450ft ascent and avg gradient of 5% with the last pitch before the vista being the hardest and the one you will definitely be swearing at me for.
After “that” gnarly climb and soaking in the views at the Vista you are rewarded with some easy , flowy, descending back down Benett Pass the way you came in. Here again are some killer pretty rock formations and views of Mount Hood, Rainer and Mount Adams. This section is about 3 miles back to the car and mainly downhill.
On a hot day this is a 4 bottle total ride, we filled two bottles at the water stop on 3540.
MTB Gear I like :)
Be prepared with the Dynaplug Tubeless Repair Tool, compact , sturdy and uses dynaplug tips for the best tubeless seal. : https://amzn.to/3RY5PPw
Osprey Savu 5l Hip Pack, has room for 2 waterbottles, nice design with good breathability on the lower back, everything you need for bigger mountain bike adventures or just carrying a lot of sandwiches: ) : https://amzn.to/45TNDw4
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