Green Mountain State Park is located within about 15 minutes of where I am working here in the Puget Sound area so it is part of the post-work ride rotation.
The Olympic Mountains seen along the fire road climb.
There are plenty of way to ride the trails out here at Green Mountain State Park. I have not created a dedicated page on my site for this place yet. Here you can find some of my previous posts on this area.
Most of the trails in this area are on Trailforks.com. The Wildcat Trail is one of many trails out in the area. It is well worth a look see for the network out there.
The Wildcat trail is one of the hardest ways to get up the mountain and it will certainly test your lungs and how well you can handle redlining into the anaerobic end your cardio reserves. Lately I have been taking a longer series of fireroads up to the top of the mountain and then take Wildcat down. Well mostly down there are some uphills even on the descent to keep you honest.
Downtown Seattle in the distance as well as Mount Rainier peaking out in the distance.
A great workout with good views on clear days. A good way work out the stress of a solid day’s work.
So I am working in the Puget Sound area of Washington for the next few weeks. This is a great time be up in this area of thr country. Last year I went out to Mt Saint Helens and rode the Ape Canyon and Plains of Abraham trails. It was a pretty incredible ride but the weather did not cooperate so my views were quite limited. Here is report from that day
On the top of my MTB list for this trip was a return outing to here when the weather was clear. My first weekend here and the weather report looked good so I pulled the trigger. Boy was I rewarded for it.
Along the Ape Canyon trail looking at the south fsce of the mountain.
I saw a lot more of the mountain than last year even before I got to the trailhead. The climb up Ape Canyon was fantastic and the further up I went the better things got. The tops of Mt Adams and Mt Rainier were even visible in spots.
The view from the top of Ape Canyon
The view when you reach the top of Ape Canyon is incredibly impressive. In the pan shot above you can see the Rainier, Adams and of course Mt Saint Helens.
The south-southeast slopes of the mountain.
It is crazy to think that much of the foreground was forest before the eruption in 1980. The mountain used to have a typical volcano shape to it but the eruption blasted off 1,300 feet off the top. This is just the non-blast side of the mountain.
From here I rode the Plains of Abraham trail over the eastern slope of pumice and lava rock. Riding through here I once again felt very small seeing what the power of Mama Earth can do. There were also lots of wildflowers and other low growing stuff.
The northestern slope as seen on the fireroad out Windy Gap.
The trail takes you around to the northeastern area of the mountain where you can get your first view of the side of the mountain that was blown off. In the picture above you can see the trail in the ridgeline.
Spirit Lake and the “log raft”
The singletrack dumps you off a ridgeline and onto a dirt forest service road. I took that out to Windy Gap and the onward to the Smith Creek trailhead. Here I was treated to a nice view of Spirit Lake and the “Log Raft”. The lake took the brunt of the blast and most of the water was thrown up into the higher elevations in the form of a wave estimated to be about 850 feet high. When the dust settled and water drained back into the lake it was a much larger and shallower lake that had 40% of it surface area covered in the floating trunks of the trees between it and the mountain. Check out this wikipedia article on it. Moat of those trunks are still floating on the lake.
I thought about dropping the Smith Creek trail to do a more epic loop, but I wanted to retrace my steps and descend Ape Canyon to finish the ride.
In the trees of the Ape Canyon Trail
Retracing my steps was plenty of work but I was once again rewarded with killer views and the descent down Ape Canyon was the source of multiple joygasms. What an opener for this trip!
So my youngest son, Jake has been accepted to Humbolt State University to finish off his degree in Forestry and Wildland Fire Management. We decide to take the travel trailer up there for a week to get the lay of the land and find him a place to live out in town. First stop along the journey was a overnighter to see my oldest son who lives south of San Jose. It was really nice to have both of my not so much boys anymore in the same spot.
The next made the rest of the way up north and setup shop in Trinidad at a campsite nestled between redwoods.
So everyday we had some chores to do which mostly included scoping out rooms for rent and doing interviews with the landlords/owners.
But that stuff took up less than half of each day so we were about to checkout some stuff.
As luck would have it a good friend, JD, has a brother who lives in nearby Bluelake. After some emails and phone calls his brother Tim took Jake and I out for a tour through the local woods. We even started right from the HSU campus. I do believe Jake is pretty stoked about this.
The last day our planned stay up there we ended up finding “The Place” and put some ink to paper. The next morning we headed out but this time we decided to take a different route we took us inland though some mighty pretty country side. I’m not so sure SoCal is ever going to get Jake back.
We made our way down to Fresno and had enough time to check out thier MTB skills park. It was not bad. I would not make a special trip for it, but if you are passing through, go for it.
The next day we mad our way back to home. A very productive and fun trip.
My final outing on the mountain bike for this trip to Japan was to head back out to the Takatori area east of Zushi. I passed through here on my lasting outing but it was mostly a transit through it. This time I wanted to futz around a bit.
Coming in from the south
I did some street riding from Yokosuka to make may way over to the entrance of the trail system. Like most of the trails in the area, you have to do so grunting immediately after the leaving the streets.
Trail Goodness
I entered the trail system were I had exited on the last outing and I was planning on retracing my way back up to top of Takatoriyama. I was however going to investigate all of the various spurs that split off of the main trail I was on.
There were a few spurs of particular interest to me as I remembered them as being really cool during my last time on them more than a few moons ago.
I just love these kind of locals helping folks signs.
So much steeper and slick than it looks
I was armed with my GPS loaded up with my personal archive of adventures in this area. The goal was to jog my memory and avoid a few of the spurs that will quickly dump you off the mountain resulting in pain and/or hike-a-bike to get back up to the prime riding stuff.
Trails old enough to have worn notches through the peaks of the hills.
On my way up to the summit, I did find the junctions that I wanted to hit on the return half of the route. I even came across about five other mountain bikers out on trail. One interesting thing I noted about this group was that while most of them while had rather high-end new bikes (Within 2-3 years), none of them were running single chain rings up front. Actually most them were running triples up front. My theory is that most them ride their bikes to the trailhead which according to where you live on the peninsula you can easily end up being 7-10+ miles on the streets/roads. While my rental rig is pretty much old and has seen better days I find the big rig to be a really welcome feature on it.
Once up to the summit, I hooked up with one of the trails that I used as part of the Takatori to Sengen-yama (Duckpond) connector. I was not going to take it all the way out to the duckpond trails today but it took me more a couple of minutes to reorient myself at a couple of the trail junctions. That section was just a good as I remembered. This was also my first time on the trail during winter so I was able to see a more things than in the past as most of the foliage was dormant. There were a couple of spots were I had never noticed that I was riding along a ridgeline that was less than 10 feet wide with extremely steep slopes on both sides with homes 100 plus feet below. Other times of the year the trail is just in a tunnel of green.
More cool Nippon signs
The particularly trail that I chose to peel off on led me to the top of a long series of stairs back down to a street. Riding these are just part of the mainstream skillset for riding here on the peninsula. The rental hardtail added some additional fun to this descent.
Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da…
After knocking out the stairs, I did a bit of street riding to make my way back over to the north side of the Takatoriyama area where I then made my way back up to the summit.
Climbing is what this spot is really known for in the area
From the summit I retraced my way (the trail was really fun in this direction) back the spur I had scoped out earlier in the ride. This trail worked it is way towards the east along a series of ridgelines between two communities/towns. There are several exit trails off of these ridgelines and according to my archives there was at least one I had not done before.
It is my understanding that most of this section of trail has a history of being a primary pedestrian route between several of the local communities. (I suspect trains/buses my have lessened that usage in modern times). One interesting bit is that there are long sections of this trail which have about an 18″ wide section of concrete walkway poured down the middle of it. Pretty weird to have a “singletrack sidewalk” through the middle of the woods. The trail/sidewalk in the woods eventually took me off the ridgeline and in an area of the peninsula I had not been before. It was a bit of an adventure to find my route back to familiar streets which included traversing more topology than planned but it was all good stuff.
My final week of work in Japan end up being more work than I thought it was going to be so I did not get back out onto trails again. Well one thing is for certain, my fondness for riding a bike in Japan has not diminished after this visit.
After a week full of nasty rainy weather the sun was out! I headed to a trail system in Zushi colloquially known as “Duck Pond”. I have been there numerous time before but it has been about eight years since my last time here. I have a GPS track on how to get there, but I intentionally did not have my GPS turned nor did I look at a map to refresh my memory. Instead I opted to use the Swartz on this adventure. I enjoyed aspect of the retracing my steps. On this day I knew I had a right to make somewhere after getting on the backside of the Zushi train station. In this case a barbershop pole jogged my memory and it was smooth sailing from there to the trailhead. I find spinning through the small streets of Japan and route finding to be just as fun as the trails sometimes.
Using the Swartz
The cheery blossoms were going off of the trees at trailhead entrance.
Chery Blossoms thinking about spring
Ye Ole Duck Pond
Duck Pond
To get up on the ridgeline where the trails are require some work from Duck Pond. Nothing like some hike-a-bike get you going.
So much steeper than it looks!
Once up on the top the rolling sometimes contouring singletrack started.
Got Roots?
I was thoroughly enjoying myself getting reconnected with this “old friend” of a trail system. You get to see more stuff during the winter months when the foliage is sparser. In addition to seeing some of the exposure which is otherwise hidden you have more opportunities for distant scenery. On this particular day Mt Fuji could be seen.
Mt Fuji making an appearance along the trail
I did take one trail that started dropping elevation off in a hurry. By the time I realized this was really not the way I wanted to go down, I really did not want to go back up. So I took the trail down to the bottom and would get back up another way. I got back up onto the ridgelines by climbing the Asaina-kirodoshi. It is one of the seven greater notches through the mountains leading to and from Kamakura. Kamakura is surrounded on three sides by steep mountain and the notches served as defensive passages and passes through the mountains back in “the day”. “The day” in this particular case one was 1241. I climbed up from the west and I was quite satisfied with my performance through the technical sections of this climb. The picture below is from the saddle.
From here I did some more exploring/reconnecting with the trails up on the ridge that included passing by the back side of the Kumano Shrine.
Backside of the Kumano Shrine
When done on the trails up top I would come back by this shrine again and connect up with another trail that would drop me down into Asahina. The bottom of this trail rolls right through a community farm space which always makes me feel like I’m sneaking through someone’s backyard.
The trail going through a community farm
From here this was have been a good time just cruise back along the streets. There was however plenty of daylight left so I decided to go through one of my other trail systems I am fond of Takatoriyama.
The road route to get over there was not particularly straight forward. I decided to give Google Maps a shot at getting me over there. After selecting the walking route I was on my way. Well the walking route was the most direct route but it did include a bountiful amount of stairs. Once the route become clearer to me, I turned off the guiding voice of pain in my pocket and worked my way along the streets.
Off the beaten path treasures at Takatoriyama
As I climbed up the street on the north side of the mountain, I pulled off on a side trail I recognized to check out some of the shaded relief carved to the walks of this old stone quarry.
Off the beaten path treasures at Takatoriyama
My legs where getting pretty well cooked at his point so I opted to settle for a long distance view of the budda vice committing to the work to get over to it. Below is a closeup from my 2009 visit here.
The Takatoriyama Budda as seen on a 2009 ride through here.
Once at the quarry/peak it took me a minute or two to get my bearings straight for the connector I wanted. Twenty seconds down the trail I knew I was on the right trail as I recognized the spot where I had one hell of an endo in 2004 which left me with a cracked sternum. The Ghost of Biker Injuries Past has a long memory.
A section of trail on Takatoriyama
I had worked my way south along what seemed like half a dozen plus trail junctions. I ended up resorting to loading up my old GPS files as my legs were doing some serious wanking at this point and I was not up for more bonus mileage. Turns out I was less the 100 yards for popping out where I was expecting too.
It’s not a train!
The final bit was descending some steep little residential streets and then going through one of the largest pedestrian/cyclist tunnels I have ever been through. It is wider than the street I was on. After that it was about 6 or 7 miles of street riding back to the hotel.
For my second outing on the trails near Yokosuka, I paid a return visit to Ogusuyama. When I lived here in Japan for most of 2004 this was my twice a week lunch time loop. On this trip I was loosely going to follow that same route. That was the plan anyway. Things went a little off kilter right from the beginning. I am staying at a different hotel than I have in the past. Instead of riding from my hotel back to the my well known starting reference point I decided to just cut through some side streets and connect up to my known route “mid-stream”. So off I went cutting this way and that, cross checking with my phone. (More on the phone in a future post). After working through some unfamiliar side streets, I came out to a junction where the memory banks fired off and I knew where I was at and which way to go. I stopped looking at my phone at this point. As I am rolling along, visual cue, visual cue, bang, bang, bang, I have been here before kept clicking in my head. I was rolling. A fair ways down the road I noticed that the route had not turned uphill yet. I should have been climbing by now. I checked on my phone and realized I had been going off a tangent for over three miles. Looking at my phone I realized there was no corner to cut to get back on track. Three miles and change back the way I had came was the quickest way. WTF happened came to mind. How did my eyes fail me? A bit of further reflection and it dawned on me. I was following the visual cues from memory towards the wrong trail system. I had clued in on the streets I taken in the past to head over towards the Takeyama Trail System. That is what I get for being too cocky about my recollection of the streets and roads of this area.
So after backtracking and getting onto the route for the trail I wanted to ride on things started clicking properly. There was climbing to be done and the good news was I was warmed up.
Visual CuesBamboo along the side of the street
One thing about riding on the residential street here in Japan as you start getting up in the hills they often will be single lane. I kind of did a snicker while shaking my head at the thought that many of our San Diego County multiuse “Trails” are nearly twice as wide as these residential streets in Japan.
Ogusuyama looking to the west towards Segami Bay
Once onto the dirt I made my way over to the summit that included some hike-a-bike up some stairs. Once on top I was surprised to be treated to some signs of spring. This was quite a contrast to the beginning of the week where it had snowed.
Cherry BlossumsSigns of Spring
After getting my fill of the sights on the summit I backtracked a bit and got on what was supposed to be my main trail to shed off some elevation in nice single track fashion.
I was quite bummed to see the trail I was looking to take was well blocked off. None of the other options I knew were appealing as they would put me on the other side of the peninsula, involve hundreds of steep steps carrying a bike or go back the way I came.
Ain’t No Engrish here!
There was a map nearby that clearly laid out in Japanese what to do with the situation. It was a real bummer to see how much of the trail was closed. I was hoping that the reroute would not be some hike a bike down BS. Just when I was about to roll out a hiker came up and was looking bewildered into her phone. She clearly asked me for directional help but my Japanese has atrophied down from his highpoint of bad some number of years ago. After a couple of rounds of international charades and collective pointing at her phone I figured out where she wanted to go. The trail down the mountain she needed to take was no shown on her phone. It was not much of a back track for me so I rode back with her following and got her on the right trail. I remembered the trail as it is a calf burning hike-a-bike on the way up that is not easily forgotten.
My reroute goes through here
My good deed for the day done, I started off on my reroute. The trail it took me on started out quite flowing but soon turned quite steep. Luckily it was not also slick so some technical roots and crotch riding the rear wheel took me down to a street. The reroute then took me through what looked like somebody’s backyard farm before I was back on a micro-sized residential street. After a bit on the street I was off onto a single track and then back to gravel road. Shortly thereafter I popped out at the bottom of the closure and familiar ground. While I was bummed about the section of trail I could not ride, the forced route finding and new bits of trail I went on was a nice bit of unplanned adventure.
Such a nice bit of trail
The next section of trail was just as nice as I remembered it and it popped me out near the entrance to a couple of shrines and temples. Checking these out were not on the agenda today (I have toured them before) so I continued along the remainder of my old lunchtime loop route.
The remainder of the ride was street riding back to my hotel. There were not further navigational misdeeds on my part. It was great day to be wandering around on Nippon dirt!
It has been quite a few moons since I was last in Japan, and even more since being in Yokosuka. Work has brought me back for a few weeks and I am pretty stoked about. In addition to catching up with a couple old friends and reacquainting myself with the culture I was excited about revisiting some the trails I have fond memories of.
The rent-a-wreak
All of the mountain bikes at my local rental place were out when I first arrived. I really did not have much to ride anyway as there was plenty to do with getting the work project rolling. The second weekend a couple came in and grabbed one.
A mighty fine looking tree
The Fugatoyama trail system I hit up is near Zushi and the route would take me up to Fugatoyama. I had uploaded some of my old track into my GPS. Well so I thought. Turns out I gooned something up and while I had plenty of tracks for the other trails in the area, I did not have the trails I planned on riding.
I love this section
I have ridden the trails numerous times so while not having my “safety blanket” of old bread crumbs I felt confident about being able to find my way around.
Shrine/marker along the trail.
I went to the trails system near the Arden Hills are of Zushi and was soon it old stomping grounds. I had no issues with the figuring and the six trails junctions need to get my way up to the peak of Fugatoyama.
The trail has been around long enough cut a notch through the ridgeline.
After getting to the peak I retraced my steps back to the main junction that was going to take me down to the east side of the peninsula. There are a handful of opinions to get down from where I was at. The downhill was pretty awesome just as I remembered. I got to one trail junction I had real tough time figuring out which way to go. Either way would work but one of them was better than the other and extended your time on the dirt.
I pondered at the junction for quite sometime before picking and I picked…WRONG! The route I took dropped me out of the woods way too quickly. You also shed off so much elevation that I was not about to hike a bike back up to the junction. I guess I’m just going to have to go back!
After some snack Nippon style it was time to cruise back to Yokosuka and my hotel.
Another trail from “The List” checked off today. The Mckenzie River Trail was simply amazing with pretty much everything I think a singletrack connoisseur would want in a trail. This excursion is in the discussion of the best 25 miles of trail I have ever been on. Props to Nichol for shuttling me to the trail and showing up at end with beer!
The north end of Clear LakeThe south end of Clear LakeSuperb lake-side section of trailSahalie Falls is just….WOW!Koosah Falls is also amazing!So much of this killer forest stuff!You get plent of this cool log crossing stuff along the way.
Tomorrow it time to head home but we are most definitely going to be back to Bend!
We were digging the scene in Bend so much that we extended our stay in Bend for a few more days.
We are vacation so no need to rush out too early.Tumalo FallsTumalo creekHappy bikes waiting for a shuttle up to the base of Mt Bachelor.
We did another super fun ride that included Dutchmans Flat, Flagline, Swampy Lake, Swede Ridge, Area 16, Upper and Lower Whoops, Phils Marvin Gardens and COD. It was a 35 mile day on tasty singletrack. A great day to be on a bike.
I think I can I think I can! Starting up the Flagline trailNearing the top of FlaglineNice spot for snack breakCool trail art!
My work project completed on schedule and Nichol flew up with her bike to start our play project. Saturday we bolted from Washington to Bend Oregon for some MTB fun for a few days before heading to parts further south.
Nichol setup us up with a nice pad for the stay.
Wasting no time hitting the Bend Ale Trail
The opening day ride was a shuttle up to Swampys where we did the Swampy Lake loop to Swede Ridge, Area 16, Upper and Lower Whoops followed by some Phil’s and Bens.
On Swede RidgeHmmm I wonder where Nichol came up with the idea to put a beer in her ice filles camelbak bladder?
So I had told Nichol that route was 25 miles long. This was indeed true. At the Phil’s trailhead it was 25 miles. I neglected to mention the ride from the trailhead back to town. So for the last five or six miles Nichol accused me of trying to kill her.
Artwork along the Marvin Gardens trailKiller trail signThe girl knows her limits!
I think she did pretty darn well today and I did not hear to much protesting on the last few miles. (I did however ride a little further ahead which maaaay just have been slightly outside of earshot!
Once back in town all was better as we recounted the days awesomeness over tasty beers.
