The views make this rugged Oregon Cascades road worth the three-hour crawl

Описание: NEAR BEND, Ore. -- If you’ve driven up to the Todd Lake parking lot and trailhead off the Cascade Lakes Highway, you’ve experienced the first mile of Forest Road 370. It’s pretty rough.

It gets worse — much worse — after that. Drivers are wise to heed the signs warning that the road is not maintained for passenger vehicles, but for people driving high-clearance, four-wheel drives, it’s kind of fun.

There are sections on unmaintained mountain roads where you have to gap over the ruts. The ruts are created where people have been driving and fill with running water that erodes the road. They get so deep that if you drive in the ruts, you will get high-centered. You can’t drive in the ruts, so you have to span and gap over them. That means switching back and forth across the lane a lot. It’s nerve-wracking but also a fun challenge.

Forest Road 370 runs about 20 miles along the boundary of the Three Sisters Wilderness from Todd Lake to Three Creek Lake near Sisters. This is spectacular high-mountain country that few people get to see.

Some folks drive up here to reach the Crater Ditch and Broken Top trailheads for outstanding hiking experiences in the high Cascades. It’s also a popular route for hunters. They all come prepared with spare tires, shovels, winches and tow straps.

“It’s very quiet. Very scenic,” said Eric Schaleger, who was driving a Honda Ridgeline pickup with a 2-inch lift. “The road condition is not that great compared to last year. There are some spots like right here where it’s not bad at all. Most street vehicles could go over it. There are sections where we stopped and had to check out a line. I wouldn’t recommend bringing a Subaru up here but, other than that, any four-wheel drive I think can make it.”

I did see some Subaru Crosstreks, which have more clearance, driving successfully on Road 370. The average speed on this road is 5 miles per hour because you have to go so slow in some parts. Several washouts occurred on the road during winter and spring, making conditions very rough. There’s still water running across the road in places.

Take your time. If you have to, stop, get out and study the road before driving over a rough section.

On a narrow, one-lane mountain road you have to look ahead and make sure nobody is coming down. The practice is, if two cars meet on a one-lane mountain road, somebody has to give way. It’s supposed to be the person who is coming downhill because they can back up and see what’s behind them. A person backing up downhill cannot see what’s behind them.

It is at least a three-hour drive to cover the 20 miles on a road that was built in the 1920s and hasn’t had much maintenance for the past 100 years.

Closer to Three Creek Lake, I encountered Tracy Page from Grass Valley, California, driving a Jeep with his wife, and we stopped to chat. Page attended high school with some of my older siblings, proving again how small the world really is.

“This is the 4600 Road I believe, and there’s a junction ahead where we can go east on 4601 to Skyliners Road. That seems to be pretty easy and runs us right back into Bend. Maybe we’ll get some Deschutes beer,” Page mused.

After a long, bumpy, dusty drive, that seemed appropriate.

The Forest Service does not have plans to improve Forest Road 370, opting to spend its limited funds maintaining other routes that provide high-traffic access for multiple uses. That means Road 370 will get harder to drive as time and weather take their toll on one of the slowest, but most scenic routes in Central Oregon.