Doug and Jen Trost, Bill Arnold, Doug Goodenough ride Eagle Creek.

When Scott and Doug come up with a route, it's always a doozy. The pics show the most beautiful scenery I've seen this year, Owyhee not withstanding. I actually thought about going along. I think Sean and Carol did some of this last year. I figured gravel roads, but, of course, the pictures show them riding across what looks to be farm fields. Sometimes I can make out a faint outline or an overgrown road.

Doug does a pretty good job detailing the descent. He doesn't seem nearly as interestsed in explaining why many of those later pictures show everybody pushing? What's up with that?

See Doug's Slideshow.

We started the ride at 9 am at the top of Eagle Creek Road. We were all bright eyed and bushy tailed in anticipation of our adventure.

Eagle Creek started with a fairly steep and rocky descent. When they call it Eagle Creak road they mean it as some of the creek was in the road......doh.

So we were able to get pretty muddied up right out of the gate and get that good mtn biker look going.....woohoooo.

We took turns leading down the road with quite a bit of quick decision making and maneuvering required. I was quite pleased with my decision to bring my full suspension bike.

Scott, hit a rock and heard his rim take a hit. We stopped and found his rear tire was low on air. We pumped up and continued without issue.

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The last half of the Eagle Creek descent Jen took the lead was hauling butt pretty well down the "road." We reached the salmon river and stopped at the corner there that had a nice view of the river and canyon.

After this stop things got "interesting." Bill headed out first followed by Jen, then Scott and myself. I stopped to take some pics of them going round the first bend and saw a cloud of dust come up and Scott shouting something.

Jen had hit some loose rocks and sand and had gone down hard. She was shaken and scraped up in several spots on her right side. The worst being her right forearm that had a long gouge in it.

Luckily Jen had insisted that Scott bring along a full first aid kit which we opened up and proceeded to patch her up a bit.

The bike took some slight damage to the rear derailuer that caused her some shifting issues the rest of the ride.

We mounted up again at continued down river at a somewhat slower pace taking pics along the way as it was really pretty in the canyon and a great day for shooting pics. Next I come up and see all three pulled over with Bills bike upside down getting some attention. Seems Bill’s bike has not been shifting well since it fell off of his truck rack a few months ago. I noted that his rear pulley was riding on his low gear sprocket and we backed that off some which helped a little bit. Bill has never replaced his cables so we think they are corroded and not releasing tension like they should.

We Started off again with our next stop being a section of the road that was underwater due to the spring run-off. It came up to about knee high on me at the deepest point. Bill was the only one to try to ride through this section and we were ready with cameras for his inevitable fall. But he let us down big time as he made it across without incident.....c'mon Bill!!!!

We continued to ride until we came to the Fish and Game homestead at the base of Zaza road. This was a very pretty spot were we decided to stop and eat lunch as well as pump water to refill us for the climb out of the canyon. We were very happy we did this as we still almost ran out of water before getting back to the truck. The ranger came out and chatted with us for a while. We told him of our planned route out Zaza road. He looked at us with raised eyebrows and proceeded to tell us our fate. He said the road was quite steep with a max gradient of over 30% for about a mile. At this point we exchanged looks of trepidation amongst ourselves. Well, at this point there were not a lot of options so we decided to proceed up Zaza rd.

We were able to ride the first ½ mile or so with our hear rate monitors registering in the upper ranges. I think I hit 184 at one point which exceeds my warrantied maximum for the 44 year old Doug model. At the ½ mile mark the gradient became to much and we started a long arduous hike a bike for about 3 miles. The ranger had not lied about the gradient. Scott saw a huge rattle snake that I must have walked right by without seeing. I am glad they are not to aggressive in this area. As we finally approached the top I looked back and saw Scott pushing two bikes. I have not seen him look quite so tired in a loooooong time.

We finally got to the "top" and took one last sit down break before hoping on the bikes and riding the last 12+ miles back to the truck. The views all day were great but the this section had the most incredible view of the snake, salmon, and grande ronde river canyons.

There was still plenty of climbing on this last section so we were all quite worn out when we finally made it. Bill was so intent on riding that he rode right past the truck and I had to holler at him to come back.

Bill made up for his earlier lack of falling during the river crossing by producing a cold beer to each of us.....thx Bill!

All in all it was quite a adventure and workout. I was down 5+ pounds when I weighed myself at home. Jen says thx but not thx to anymore rides involving the salmon river. I am betting we can talk her into something again though....hehe!