The Dalles’ Best Roads

1. Dalles Mountain Road • 14.3 mi • 1863 ft

Dalles Mountain Road is the grade A, all-time, most excellent, most beautiful, best views, best climb, best descent, sickest-ass gravel road out there.

It climbs straight off Highway 14 on the Washington side of the Gorge near Horsethief Butte. The first bit is a nice enough climb up a cute little valley. Three miles in, the road gets out of the valley and cuts flat across the hillside through a historic settlement. The views begin here. Then they get better. And better, and better. The higher you climb, the more Columbia River you see below, with the Dalles across and the fruity hills behind and Mount Hood above. 

The climb is so good, that I always seem to forget that there’s also a rip-roaring gravel descent on the other side with its own great views of Mount Adams and Washington to the North. Keep following the road at the bottom as it heads east along the massive, slow-spinning windmills along the backside of the Columbia hills, and keep going to do the classic Dalles 60 route.

2. Skyline Road • 10.5 mi • 2038 ft

Anytime a road is called "Skyline," you know it's good—but this road is better. Skyline Road essentially rises from the center of town, climbs up and past the orchards above, and ascends to the high ranches and scrub oak transition zone below Mount Hood National Forest. Check out the abandoned house at the top

You can ride it up or down, loop it with 3 Mile or 5 Mile, come back toward town or keep going up to Mount Hood National Forest.

3. Moody Road • 7 mi • 696 ft

Did the namers of Moody Road forsee the intense emotions that cyclists would feel while riding it — or was it just someone’s last name? I’ve felt pure bliss finishing a huge ride on sun-drenched Moody, overlooking the Gorge. I’ve felt agony and frustration riding into headwinds with shattered muscles. Giddy, frenetic energy in a big group with fresh legs. And intense sorrow and guilt to be a white man looking down on the former site of Celilo Falls—once the oldest settlement in North America at 15,000 years old—now flooded by the Dalles Dam to make way for the electricity and “progress” that helps me buy expensive bikes.

Moody Road claws its way out of the mouth of the Deschutes River box canyon up a leg-breaking climb, then meanders atop an improbable shelf that at times looks straight down at the freeway and the Columbia River below. It feels like a cool little secret to be up there above the freeway as people blast down the gorge at 70mph below, no idea that you’re above them.