Bend, Ore., the city you’ll love to hate

“Paramount Studios’s mountain logo? That’s in Bend, too. Well, it’s actually the silhouette of both Washington and Jefferson mountains. But you can see both of those from Bend.”

— James Jaggard, general manager of Wanderlust Tours

Geography bears much of the responsibility for Bend’s embarrassment of riches. The city sits at 3,623 feet and boasts a high-desert environment that provides an average of 300 days of sunshine a year. Bend came into existence at the turn of the 20th century, largely because it was the easiest place at which to cross the Deschutes. Today the river serves as the city’s slow-moving artery as it meanders alongside downtown’s Drake Park, where families picnic and walk their dogs.

Head east and you enter the volcanic Eastern Cascade Mountains. The aforementioned presidential peaks lie to the northeast, while other iconic mountains, such as Broken Top and the Three Sisters, lie farther east.

Just below South Sister, 21 miles from downtown, stands Mount Bachelor. Here the ski season lasts eight months; Olympic athletes flock to the resort when the snow melts across the rest of the Northern Hemisphere. In the spring, you can spend the morning carving through fresh powder and the afternoon in town, tasting beer at an open-air brew pub.

Smith Rock State Park lies 25 miles north of Bend, a dramatic fissure in the high-desert floor carved by the Crooked River. Each spring and fall, climbers from all over the world flood into this climbing mecca with more than 1,000 established routes.

And by midsummer, when the high-desert sun makes it too hot to climb, the snow has melted on the roads leading to Bachelor, unveiling bouldering routes and literally hundreds of mountain-bike trails.

Or you could avoid the sun entirely by exploring subterranean Horse Lava Tube System or Skeleton Cave.

With all those options, outdoor enthusiasts with ADD should expect paralysis.

“Depression can be fixed in those hills.”

— Victoria Smith, owner of Alpenglow Vacation Rentals

But for some, mountain biking wins. You don’t get the hard-core, gravity-fed theatrics you’ll find in British Columbia, where cyclists wear body armor and cross narrow logs 20 feet off the forest floor. Instead, you get mellow routes that roller-coaster through the forest, carving through ponderosa pine, junipers and sagebrush.

Bend local Victoria Smith shares my passion for cycling. She moved from San Diego to Bend in 1994 and worked as a hairdresser until a fortuitous series of events led her to help a friend rent out their home to tourists. Four years later, she owns a vacation rental company with two part-time assistants and 19 properties. She still cuts hair, but only by appointment.

And she loves mountain biking.

Storm King served as her gateway drug; it’s eight miles of chill singletrack that sweeps up and down a north-south ridge. She first rode it alone, in late spring, and caught the perfect collage of Central Oregon weather: brisk temps and bright sunshine interrupted by bursts of fairytale snow flurries.