One of my goals this year has been to ride across the Oregon Coast Range on the Old Toll Road. It was a goal last year, too. Now that I think about it, it was a goal the year before that. I’m not lazy. And I don’t put things off, at least not the things that really inspire me. In its own way, riding the Old Toll Road is a BHAG – a big hairy audacious goal – and you don’t knock down BHAG’s in one shot. You chunk them down into small pieces you can handle.

My fascination to ride the Toll Road is due in large part to the fact that nobody else has done it. But it didn’t start out that way. My motivation was to design a safer alternative of the Oregon Randonneurs’ Three Capes 300K. The Three Capes uses Highway 6 for the westbound leg, and Highway 22 for the east bound return. Both routes are glorious, but they expose riders to heavy, fast-moving traffic on narrow roads.

Nestucca River Road was a likely candidate for a new outbound leg, but in 2007, when I started mapping routes through the Tillamook Forest, the passage wasn’t so obvious. I couldn’t find a soul who’d been over it on a bicycle, though I heard it was used in the early days of the Hood-to-Coast ultra marathon relay running race.

I made my first trip across Nestucca River Road solo. The terrain along this route blew me away. The climb to the crest of the Coast Range out of Carlton is steep. Switchbacks make it rideable, but clear-cuts and southern exposure make it a hot ride on cool days.

The road is lightly traveled. In fact, once you reach the reservoir just beyond the ridgeline, the 30 mile run down to Highway 101 is desolate. The road is used mostly by intrepid campers, headed for one of primitive camp sites along the river below Dovre Peak.

Beautiful as it is, I didn’t want to design the route as an out-and-back. So I began searching for another way to link Yamhill and Tillamook Counties. It wasn’t long before I stumbled upon The Old Toll Road. About 24 miles from beginning to end, the road-bed appeared to cross the narrowest section of the Coast Range in Northern Oregon. It also appeared to be unbroken. But I was looking at the map on Delorme’s Topo USA, which doesn’t differentiate between gravel and pavement.

Could the Old Toll Road serve as the second leg of my new brevet? I saddled up the Atlantis and I rode out Yamhill to find out.

Alternatively referred to as the Old Stage Coach Road, and the Trask Mountain Toll Road, this forgotten highway to the Coast was the first and only overland passage from the Willamette Valley to the Oregon Coast. A commercial stage line made the crossing twice a week, carrying the US Mail and a few brave passengers. The less adventurous but safer route was by steamship, down the Columbia River from Portland to Astoria, and from there to Tillamook on horseback.

By 1911, when automobiles became the preferred mode of transportation, The Old Toll Road was abandoned; it was too treacherous for a car to navigate.  For the past 100 years, loggers and hunters have used portions of it. It is wild and rugged and it is said to be a refuge for elk, black bear, and cougar.

I have made several mapping rides on the Old Toll Road since 2007, chipping away at it from both sides of the Coast Range. I’ve ridden the length of the original stagecoach route from Yamhill to Tillamook now, except for a 14-mile stretch from Trask Mountain west to Murphy Guard Station, on the ridge above the Trask River. As you might expect, it is this section that is the most remote – and the most renowned. The condition of the Old Toll Road there is rumored to be awful, and confusing to those that have attempted to use it. The forest is so thick, they say that a GPS is of little use. Which is why the Forest Service and the Sheriff advises you not to go up there alone.

I have embarked on every one of my Old Toll Road expeditions alone – my only companion, a Delorme PN-40. Each time that I see the words “Old Toll Road” appear on the screen of that device, I feel the excitement and the fear that comes from knowing I am riding where nobody has ridden. I realize there is no room for error out here, because nobody is going to be coming down a dirt road like this any time soon.  Which is why I won’t attempt that final, 14-mile section without a co-pilot.

Connecting the Nestucca and Trask River Roads with the Three Capes Scenic Loop could make one epic brevet for the adventurous – and for those who love Oregon folklore. To get it designated as a 300 kilometer RUSA permanent, though, I’ll have to prove it can be ridden in under 20 hours.

Before that, of course, we’ll have to see if the Old Toll Road can be ridden at all.

For nearly a year, preparing for Race Across Oregon gave me an important objective. The thought of racing terrified me, but it also motivated me. Speed intervals, hill repeats, endurance training, RAO gave meaning to it all.

I reached for RAO knowing it lay well outside my comfort zone. Completing it made my comfort zone bigger. My second place finish in the men’s 50-59 Division qualified me to enter the Race Across America. What seemed unimaginable before RAO has become an opportunity that I must now reckon with.

Memories of RAO: from Maupin to Cooper Spur Ski Resort and the finish.

The descent into Dufur on US 197 from the summit of Tygh Ridge is eight miles long and straight as an arrow. It’s a welcome payback for the 7-mile climb up here from Tygh Valley. When I’ve ridden this section before, I usually sit-up, eat, drink, and enjoy the glide off the mountain.

But tonight, after 44 hours on the bike without sleep, the monotony of this road was causing me to doze. I had taken a caffeine pill about an hour earlier, near the bottom of the climb. That, and the lightning strikes along the north ridge, was enough to keep me awake while I was climbing.

I must have been doing close to 30 miles an hour on this descent because I was close to spinning out. I fought the urge to sleep. Every few minutes I would blackout, then snap-back. There was no traffic to speak of, so I steered the bike to the center of the slow lane and focused to keep it there.

Memories of RAO: from Spray to Maupin and Time Station 6.

My pace van rolled up along-side me. The passenger window was down. Justin was driving and leaning across to yell.

“Do you want the good news or the bad news?”

“Give me the good news,” I shouted back.

“Eric is right behind us,” he said.

That wasn’t good news.  I looked over my shoulder. Eric was coming down the road like a locomotive with a full head of steam.

In another moment, he was riding with me.

“Hey man,” he said. He was smiling but the lines in his face showed he was worried. “It’s gonna be close.”

Memories of RAO: from Dale to Spray and Time Station 5.

The sun was coming up when we reached the summit of Ritter Butte. The plain was golden and treeless. Its southern edge lay 10 miles in the distance, bounded by a mountain range much higher and steeper than the one we’d just come over.

The thought of riding into those mountains troubled me.

There was a wall rainclouds swallowing them up. It was so black it seemed like night was falling beneath them.  Above, the sky was blue and bright, but it offered me little solace. A mighty wind was blowing up the road right into me. The storm was moving this direction.