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Biking and Camping through the Ochoco Mountains
Riders on Good Bike Co.’s Ochoco Overlander Bikepacking tour | photo Good Bike Co. LLC

The first rule of gravel riding: Always carry a first-aid kit. And salami. Oh, and a fly rod if possible.

The glory of riding Oregon’s forgotten gravel and forest roads is their remote beauty. But they are indeed remote. Yes, bring that extra PayDay and backup gauze, because anything is possible. 

Last June, looking for a buddy trip that wasn’t too far from our homefront in Bend, my oldest friend and I plotted a bike-camping trip in the Ochocos out of Walton Lake. 

A brief interruption in our story to define bike-camping: It’s not bike-packing, as we set up camp at the lake and did a pair of gravel rides that each day brought us back to our basecamp. And our burgers. And beer. Bike-camping is a fantastic way to get in some gorgeous backcountry miles and still eat and drink well after a full day in the saddle.

Fishing the Little Crooked River
Fishing the Little Crooked River | Photo by Beau Eastes

Back to the story: the riding—and more importantly the adventure—in Crook County did not disappoint. On day one, after driving the sixty-six miles northeast from Bend to Walton Lake in the early morning and luckily grabbing a lakeside campsite when some campers left early, we tackled a nearly sixty-mile loop put together by the gravel gurus at Dirty Freehub, affectionately titled Mitch & Walt. What a spectacular way to start the weekend. We eased downhill out of Walton for about two miles before making our first climb, giving our instant coffee plenty of time to kick in. Riding gravel on what was essentially the Old Ochoco Highway between Prineville and Mitchell, we jumped on an early climb of about 600 feet over five miles, taking us as high as 5,300 feet elevation. We had spectacular views looking north and east of the Ochocos, through the carnage of the Bailey Butte Fire from 2014. From that high point, it was a ten-mile, 2,300-foot descent that might be one of the most enjoyable stretches of gravel anywhere in the state. Even the eleven miles of pavement, the majority of which are on Highway 26, is bearable because you know there’s a Doc Hawk Northwest IPA waiting for you at Tiger Town Brewing in Mitchell.

Rested and refueled on Tiger Town’s beer and muffaletta sandwiches, the Mitch & Walt route took us up approximately 2,500 feet over fourteen miles before things started to level off, showcasing high alpine views more commonly associated with Colorado than Crook County, Oregon. An abundance of streams and mountain meadows practically begged us to stop and take a post-salami and marinated olive salad nap midway through the clockwise loop back to Walton Lake. The whole loop totaled fifty-seven miles with a little more than 4,800 feet of elevation gain, two beers drank from a hidden gem of a brewery, and zero—I’m not making this up—cars on the route in the last 30 miles from Mitchell back to Walton Lake.

Biker on the trail for the Ochoco weekend jaunt
Lucas Alberg, Beau Eastes’ oldest friend, traveling companion for the Ochoco weekend jaunt, and fellow Bend Magazine writer, heads uphill on the Summit Road/NF 2630. | Photo by Beau Eastes

And again, here’s the beauty of bike-camping. By the time we finished our loop, we still had plenty of time to cool off in the lake, grill bacon cheeseburgers—calories are goals, not concerns on a bike trip—and plot the next day’s adventure before nightfall.

Where day one was flowy and meandering early on, all along a definite trail, we mixed things up a bit on day two. Again basing our loop off a Dirty Freehub suggestion, the Big Summit Prairie route, we quickly made a detour to avoid doing part of the same trail as before. It might have been our best decision of the trip. 

Ochoco Overlander in the evening
Photo Courtesy of Good Bike Co. LLC

Riding east out from Walton, we jumped off the Big Summit Prairie loop less than two miles into the route and headed north towards the Bridge Creek Wilderness, which eventually took us to the ridge of the Ochoco Divide. From this point, water flowing north of the divide drains into the John Day River, while water going south makes its way into the Crooked River. The top of the divide featured sweeping views to both the north and south, before we headed south to circumnavigate the 55,000-acre Big Summit Prairie the route is named after. This fifty-mile ride had it all—a surprise fire lookout, an unexpected wreck where that first-aid kit came in handy, random historical markers, and a mid-day fishing break. We just missed peak wildflower season, for which Big Summit Prairie is best known, but turning our lunch break on the Little Crooked River into a fishing opportunity with our uber-portable Tenkara fly rods (they break down small enough to put into bike jerseys) quickly became one of the highlights of the trip. We recorded afew bites, multiple poor casts, and made way too many The Great Outdoors movie references.

The loop ended with a northern climb on the east side of Big Summit Prairie, where our pace was slow enough to enjoy the views of the wildflowers that were on their last legs, similar to us after two days of more than 100 miles in the saddle.


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Bend on the Big Screen — Old Movies Filmed in Central Oregon
On the set of The Way West starring Kirk Douglas, Robert Mitchum, Richard Widmark, Sally Field, Lola Albright and Jack Elam, 1967.

Midway through 1955, polio vaccines finally made their way to Central Oregon, American military advisors began training troops in “Viet Nam,” the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs commemorated the 100th anniversary of their treaty with the U.S. Government, and a windstorm just before July 4 swept through Bend and wrecked the Mirror Pond arch, the anchor piece to the iconic Water Pageant.

But no event garnered as much attention from the Bend media that summer as Kirk Douglas and his film The Indian Fighter, which was shot throughout Central Oregon. 

The high desert had been used in movies before—Marlene Dietrich starred in Golden Earrings, a 1947 World War II spy/romance flick which filmed around the Metolius River—but The Indian Fighter put Central Oregon on the map as a location for big, wide-open spaces that were perfect for Westerns, adventure films and even an Animal House-meets-Porky’s-on-the-water comedy in the mid-1980s.

On The Indian Fighter film set with Kirk Douglas, 1955.
On The Indian Fighter film set with Kirk Douglas, 1955.

“You’ve got to remember, back in the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s, we’re still super rural,” said Kelly Cannon-Miller, executive director of the Deschutes Historical Museum, which currently has a cinema exhibit that features The Indian Fighter and other movies filmed in Central Oregon. “We have some nice, lovely landscapes where you don’t have to edit out power lines and a lot of other modern things, and you can still get sweeping vistas of a Western frontier. Film producers still had access to wild places pretty easily.” 

Playing a key role in the area’s development as a film destination was the Bend Chamber of Commerce’s decision to fund Fort Benham for $30,000. A 200-foot-by-200-foot replica stockade by Benham Falls, Fort Benham was built specifically for The Indian Fighter but also with the goal of attracting other film productions. 

“United Artists, not the U.S. Army, built the stockade known alternately as Fort Benham and Fort Laramie in 1955,” the Deschutes Historical Museum said in an exhibit devoted to Bend’s cinematic history.

Kirk Douglas and Elsa Martinelli on the set of The Indian Fighter, 1955.
Kirk Douglas and Elsa Martinelli on the set of The Indian Fighter, 1955.

“We’re really at a place where everyone is looking at what else is out there from an economic development standpoint,” added Cannon-Miller, who points out the Shevlin-Hixon Mill had closed five years earlier and Bachelor Butte’s transformation to the Mt. Bachelor ski area was still three years away. “Our shift to tourism is still very much in the planning stages. People wanting to make Bachelor Butte a world-class ski area are realizing you need more hotels, more gas stations, a better road up to the mountain. The area’s really looking to create a new industry following the loss of Shevlin-Hixon and the business community really stepped up. Hollywood took notice that Bend’s open and welcome (for film production), and businesses are willing to support this new emerging industry.”

The films Oregon Passage (1957) and Tonka (1958) both used the fictional fort, as did several episodes of the TV show Have Gun, Will Travel, which aired from 1957 to 1963. (The criminally underrated Day of the Outlaw was shot in the same time period, but didn’t use Fort Benham, and was instead filmed in the snow at Dutchman Flat Sno-Park and Todd Lake.) Unfortunately, a fire in 1962 damaged much of the area around the fort, and it was later demolished as it became a fire danger itself (and a bit of a house of moral disrepute, according to locals).

Despite the loss of Fort Benham, Central Oregon continued to attract major Hollywood pictures. Mara of the Wilderness (1964) (think female Tarzan set in the Cascades); Kirk Douglas and Robert Mitchum in The Way West (1967); the Disney comedy The Apple Dumpling Gang (1974); and John Wayne’s True Grit sequel, Rooster Cogburn (1974) all staged scenes in and around Bend in the 1960s and ‘70s.

While Westerns initially dominated movie productions in the area, the 1980s ushered in an era of unintentionally hilarious, yet really bad films. St. Helens (1981) attempted to depict the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption—yep, that’s the Pine Tavern doubling as the exterior of Whittaker’s Inn—but instead the volcanic ash looked more like the Nothing from The Neverending Story and the romantic storyline felt like something out of a rejected Northern Exposure episode.

Paramount Studios, Rooster Cogburn shooting in Shevlin Park with “The Duke” John Wayne and Katharine Hepburn, 1974.
Paramount Studios, Rooster Cogburn shooting in Shevlin Park with “The Duke” John Wayne and Katharine Hepburn, 1974.

Just as bad, but not nearly as serious, was Up the Creek, which featured a 36-year-old Tim Matheson, of Animal House fame, as a 12th-year college student who is essentially blackballed into entering the national collegiate whitewater championships by the dean of his school. (Yes, that is the basis for the entire movie.) Heavy on recycled jokes from Animal House and Porky’s (and light on plot), Up the Creek did not earn the adoration of the cinematic world.

“The only thing good about this movie is Chuck, played by Jake the Wonder Dog,” wrote Washington Post film critic Rita Kempley, who called the film a “moist smut movie.” “Chuck has all the best scenes. Still, that brave little pooch is Up the Creek without a dog paddle.”

Since Matheson guided fictional Lepetomane University to immortal whitewater rafting fame on the Deschutes, Central Oregon has seen Chance, Shadow and Sassy try to make their way home in Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey (1993); Kevin Costner and Tom Petty trek through Smith Rock in The Postman (1997); Steve Zahn awkwardly pursues Jennifer Aniston in Madras in Management (2008); and Reese Witherspoon finds herself out of water in the Badlands east of Bend, which was transformed into the Mojave Desert for Wild (2014).

Stay tuned, as more films will surely make use of the beautiful and diverse Central Oregon landscape in the future.

Kurt Russell’s Short-Lived Term on the Bend Rainbows Minor League Baseball Team

For one glorious summer fifty years ago, the computer who wore tennis shoes played second base for Bend’s first minor league baseball club.

photo deschutes county historical society

Yes, before he escaped from New York as Snake Plissken, before he got into big trouble in Chinatown as Jack Burton, before he led the charge against the Soviets as Herb Brooks, and before he teamed up with Doc Holliday as Wyatt Earp, Kurt Russell hit .285 over fifty-one games as a 20-year-old infielder for the Bend Rainbows in 1971. 

“He was a lot like me…just a smart player,” Russell’s Rainbow teammate Tom Trebelhorn, who went on to manage seven years in Major League Baseball, told
MiLB.com in 2019. “Kurt knew the game, he played it well and was a good teammate.”

The son of longtime Hollywood actor Bing Russell, Kurt grew up in the business and appeared in more than a dozen TV shows as a child actor, including classics such as Gilligan’s Island, Lost in Space, The Fugitive, The Virginian and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. By the time he made his first appearance at Vince Genna Stadium in June 1971 (it was Municipal Ball Park then) Russell was a household name, starring in a series of charming but forgettable Disney teen movies, most famously The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes. Russell missed the first game of the Rainbows’ 1971 season finishing up production of The Barefoot Executive, a film whose plot revolved around a beer-chugging chimpanzee who could predict TV ratings. Released the same year as The French Connection, The Last Picture Show and A Clockwork Orange, somehow The Barefoot Executive was shut out at the 1972 Academy Awards.

Kurt Russell and David Janssen in The Fugitive, 1965. Photo ABC Television, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

“The local theater won’t be the only place that will showcase Hollywood actors in Central Oregon this summer,” the Bend Bulletin wrote on May 6, 1971, announcing Russell’s signing. “Young Russell’s decision was not a complete surprise. Baseball has been his ‘first love’ for years, and he even had a stipulation put in one of his television contracts that he be through work early enough in the day to play baseball.”

While Russell’s signing absolutely wreaked of a publicity stunt—the Rainbows had struggled with attendance in 1970, their first year in Bend, and would eventually leave for Walla Walla, Washington after the 1971 season—Russell more than held his own in his first season of pro ball in a league that included Trebelhorn and multiple future big leaguers. Arriving directly off the set of The Barefoot Executive with no pre-season preparation, Russell led off and started
his first game with Bend at second base, promptly going 2 for 5 with a double
and two runs scored. A switch hitter with a good eye but not much power—he walked almost as much as he struck out and finished with a .385 on-base percentage—Russell made the Class A Northwest League all-star team in 1971, a league made up mostly of recently drafted high school and college players, and helped Bend go 42-36, the best record in the NWL’s South Division.

photo deschutes county historical society

“If I could have everything my way, I would play pro baseball and produce movies,” Russell, who in his teens played competitive semi-pro baseball in southern California, told The Oregonian that summer.

Batting first or second most of the year for manager/pitcher Ed Cecil, a Bend native who went on to coach American Legion baseball in the area for decades, Russell built off his solid 1971 season in Central Oregon and hit .325 in twenty-nine games for Walla Walla in 1972, again earning a spot on the NWL all-star team.

“My picture commitments at Disney now revolve around my playing ball,” Russell told The (Louisville) Courier-Journal in 1972. “I’m really lucky to have so much freedom in my filming schedule.” That same year Russell starred in Now You See Him, Now You Don’t, a Disney comedy in which a college chemistry student invents an invisibility spray that a local crook tries to steal. One of the unintentionally hilarious taglines Disney used for the film was, “It’s the invisible vapor caper of the year!”

The Bend Rainbows team, circa 1971. Russell is in the first row, second from right. Photo deschutes county historical society

Russell opened the 1973 season at Class AA El Paso, just two rungs below Major League Baseball, and was hitting a blistering .563 over six games before tearing his rotator cuff turning a double play, effectively ending his baseball career. Later that summer he played twenty-three games for the Portland Mavericks, a club his father owned, as a designated hitter, but his days in the field were behind him. 

Russell continued his string of Disney teen comedies for several years after he injured his arm before earning widespread acclaim in the 1979 TV biopic Elvis, which was helmed by the up-and-coming director John Carpenter of Halloween fame. Carpenter cast Russell as the lead in Escape from New York in 1981 and again in Big Trouble in Little China in 1986, by which time the former Bend middle infielder was a bonafide action star. Despite playing just 110 games over four seasons, Russell’s pro baseball experience left a lasting mark.

“I still look at the world through the eyes of a ballplayer,” Russell told the baseball history organization Society for American Baseball Research in 2019, more than forty years after his last at-bat in the minor leagues. “On a (movie) set, I want to make the team. If necessary, I’ll carry this team.” 

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