Last week was really busy. While work was plenty busy, I did have enough time to get out and about on some trails. After starting the week out by finding out with my bike being stolen, I was able to get my hands on a rental hardtail on Tuesday. Wednesday after work I hit up Banner Forest. I had hiked a small slice of this area in December of 2008 but this was the first time on the bike. This places is a lot of fun. Lots of the twists and turns and quick up and downs on nearly all singletrack. Quite the fun XC playground.
Wednesday was supposed to be a quick afternoon ride at Green Mountain near Bremerton. The trail was billed as well marked out-up and back-down. Just a few miles into the climb I spied and sweet looking narrow singletrack heading off to the west and someone had made a wooden arrow on the ground pointing to it. For those that know me, know what happened next. Yes I took the sweet looking singletrack that was not on my map. This was indeed a really awesome singletrack saw much less traffic the the one I started on. This trail lead to another and another and the next thing I know I was much futher out than I had planned on being. I had to dust off some orienteering skills that I had not had to use so thoroughly in quite sometime. When all said an done my 12-14 miles afternoon spin ended being a stout 21 miler that ended in the waning moments of the day.
Saturday it was raining the Seattle-Tacoma area so I headed inland to the east of Mt Rainer to ride the Ranger Creek and Palisades trail. The 20 miles of pure singletrack did not disappoint. I am going to get back here when the sun is out.
Sunday I headed out to the Olympic Pennisula for a ride that is considered a Washington Classic/Epic. The Lower Dungeness to Gold Creek Trail loop. For much of the ride I was in the clouds which made the fantastic singletracks take on a primordial rainforest feel. The cloud ride in thick old growth woods was sometimes spooky and I often found myself whistling so as not to surpise any critters further up the foodchain.
I’ll get some proper ride reports put together when I get some downtime, but for now it will just be the samplers.
