- (reporter) This road is special.
In the spring, you can only travel it by bike.
We arrived at highway 242 early in the morning,
but bikepackers Jim Kephart and Ben Dake
were already on their way down.
They'd come up the wet, western side of the pass.
- That's it, that's what they want.
They want to talk to you and find out how you're doing
and if you're still breathing
and, you know, all those things.
- Well, for an old fat guy,
- Yeah, yeah.
- I'm still mobile.
- (reporter) It's a world class ride.
People come from all across the country to do it.
Jim McGee came out after hearing his friends,
Vaughn and Nancy talk about it.
- This is Jim.
- McGee
- McGee, no but,
- friend
- normally known as LG which stands for Long Gone.
- Yeah, and for me, I hustled across the country.
I was in Vermonet doing some rides with some friends
and hustled across the country
'cause I've been wanting to do this ride
for about four years.
I thought you closed the road specifically for us.
I didn't know it was a snow clearing thing.
(laughing)
So it's not quite as beautiful as I thought it was,
but it's still a wonderful thing.
- (reporter) It's sort of a fluke
that this road is open to cyclists at all.
It's only possible because
the Oregon Department of Transportation plows a single lane
and lets the sun and the heat do the hard work
of melting the rest away.
- We like to make the highway available for everybody
so what we try to do is find that mix
that allows folks to come up and really enjoy,
this is beautiful up here, I mean, come on,
you know, coming up here on a bicycle is wonderful.
There's no place else like this in Oregon, for sure,
and maybe in the United States.
This is unique.
- (reporter) From the moment they plowed the pass
until the snow melts out, and cars can drive the highway,
cyclists own the mountain.
- This is one of my favorite rides in Oregon
especially in this time of the year when there's no cars.
- It's really nice to be up here without cars.
- I don't have to worry about cars.
- No cars.
- (reporter #2) And no traffic.
- (cameraman) and no traffic.
- And no traffic.
- (reporter) With an endorsement like that,
the field guide team had to give it a try
and ride the highway ourselves.
- Alright.
- (reporter) The road starts in an open ponderosa forest.
I'm definitely gonna have rubber legs at the top of this.
- (reporter) Riding your bike, filming with a go-pro
is harder than you think,
especially going uphill.
- I was going to do an upside down shot.
- (reporter) The climb took us up through forest
burned by old fires and through the scars of the Milli Fire
which ravaged the area in 2018,
leaving it prone to mudslides.
- In 2018, we had a tremendous rainstorm
and what that did was took a hillside
and basically brought it down.
- (reporter) Now, cyclists compete
with construction crews as they shore up the hillsides.
We kept climbing, our lungs and our legs burning.
Eventually, we past lava flows left
by cascade volcanoes thousands of years ago.
Finally, at 5,325 feet above sea level,
we hit the summit,
marked by the Dee Wright Observatory,
a castle built from lava rock.
When you reach the top, the only other people up there
are as crazy as you.
- We smile a lot more going down.
- It's a definite accomplishment
when you get up here, yeah.
You feel like you've really done something,
I think, spectacular, you know,
to reach the top of Oregon.
- (reporter) Some of them came up in large groups,
some made friends along the way.
- (Man) Others definitely grew a sense of comradery,
group of riders getting together to accomplish something.
- Who's that guy in the back?
- (reporter) Others came up alone.
- It's kind of meditative, you know.
Again, you're out here just kind of on your own
and you can kind of just zone out, which is always nice,
and if your heart rate's high enough,
you really can't think about anything else
except keep peddling.
- (reporter) Regardless of how you get up,
the feeling at the top is the same.
- Oh yeah, it's, it's funny, every time I've been up here,
everybody's sitting around, sharing things.
It's just a lot of fun.
I mean, it's just, everybody is for the same reason,
to get up here and have a nice bike ride, so...
Always good people.
- (reporter) We took a moment to catch our breath
and enjoy the incredible Oregon landscape
and then, best of all, we got to ride back down.