Mountain Bike Bill, The Dirt on the Dirt

Tag: Washington

Basecamp Puget Sound, Washington

I started this week with a shift of basecamp up up to the Pacific Northwest on the east side of Puget Sound for a work project for the next five weeks.

This is certainly not the most optimal time of year for riding in the Seattle area and the descent down into area look like I expected to.

Luckily all the luggage made it (not always the case).

With the slow economy and the it being the off-season coupled with the length of my stay and some crafty negoitating skills I was able to score a sweet beachfront rental.

Bald eagles are frequently see from the dinner table and it pretty easy just set back and watch the sound.   During this few days I have seen Bald Eagles, Otters, and Whales.

Good stuff to see from the deck.


The view from Day Two.  I should be able to work under these conditions 🙂  This was the last sunny, dry and generally non-icky day of the trip so far.

The steed is ready to go and there is some ridinging my future.   Either the weather will get better or I am going to start sacking up and deal with the ick.   

More to follow……

Ranger Creek and Palisades Loop (WA)

So I finally got around to getting a page put together for the Ranger Creek – Palisades Trail Loop near Mount Rainer in Washington State.    I did this ride a couple of times in August and it is a fantastic mix of awesome trail, views and and some lung busting climbs.  The route described on the page included an out-and-back to Noble Knob which resulted in even more awesome views and brought the ride up to around 21 miles with about 4,000 feet of climb and a day full of smiles.

While it is covered in at least a few of snow this time of year, if you should find yourself in Washington in the summer months, it is well worth your time to check out this loop.

Here is all the rest of the information on the Ranger Creek and Palisades Trail Loop.

Washington Riding

Man do I have a lot of catching up to do.    My six weeks in Washington went by really fast and I was really busy with work.   I did get in quite a bit of riding but much of my other work trips in the past, it is often tough to find time to work, ride and blog about.   I’m sure you can guess which one I set to the side.   I am going to get the story and pictures of   the cool rides I get in up on my site once my schedule drops back down to “normal” but here are a few pictures of these to come.

The furtherest trail away from my basecamp on the west side of Puget Sound was the Devil’s Gulch trail in the northern central area of the state.  It is often touted as one of the best XC trails in the state.  While I would have to ride all the singletracks in the state to be for sure, this is one really awesome trail.   I did about 14+ miles of mellow forest road climbing to get to the top of this trail and was rewarded with 12 miles of singletrack awesomeness.

Since I was in thea area I strung Devils Gulch and the Red Devil Trail together.   The Red Devil trail has a devil of some climbs to it and it fully polished off my leg after the Devils Gulch loop.   The grand total for the day was 36 miles,  4,500 feet of climbing and enough joygasm smiles to make my face hurt.

I made a total of two trips out to the “410 Area” east of Mt Rainier to ride the Palisades, Ranger and Noble Knob trails.  There is some stout climbing to be done but trail and the view are well worth it.

Got Wilderness?   The Noble Knob trail takes you right up to the edge some impressive looking wilderness.

Got Sunlight?   I could have used some at the end of this ride.

Google Duthie Hills, it is Seattle newest Mountain Bike Park.  It is a 120 acre park dedicated to mountain.  It offers something for everyone from tame,

to insane.  This place is a city park that is 100% legal.   Bottom line Washington gets it while SoCal is still in the stone-age.

Not everthing was an adventure to get to.  There were a handful of places that filled out the weekday ride schedule.  Like Port Gamble.

Green Mountain (Where is Waldo’s Shadow?) as well as other spots.

Like I said, I’ll get them up before long, but first I have quick work project to take care elsewhere.  I might get in some riding there too 🙂

The Opening Week in Washington

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.

Celebrating the End of the Day

There is nothing like a little celebration and the end of an awesome day.  It is great to reflect on day well spent with family and friends. One of my favorites is when there is a bit of great mountain biking in the mix as well.    I have been really fortunate to have lots of those days.    Today the celebration was for different reasons.

The day started off like some of my other work trips that have had some awesome mountainbiking through in as well.   Asunrise communter flight to LAX to catch a connector.  The connector in this case was Seattle and I have plans for a good bit of riding during my month long stay up here.   Once we got about the marine layer I was treated to pretty pictureque scene below.

 

 One of the other guys I will be working with on this project was going to drive up versus fly.  He has plans for some post-work vacation/roadtrip.   He offered to drive my bike up so I was more than happy not have tear in down, put in the bike box and lug it around the airports.   Shortly after getting off the plane in LAX and into the terminal things started turning for the worse.    I got a phone call from by work bud.  My Intense 6.6 had been stolen off the back of his truck.  Somebody in Kelso WA cut the fairly beefy cable lock and took off with my cherished rig.  I did have a long enough of a layover that all the phone calls were taken care of with the Kelso Police Department as well as make a few points online about the event.     Needless to say I was good and bummed.

My Baby when she was new (The shock has seens been replaced with a Cane Creek Double Barrel coil shock)    The setup of this bike is fairly unique and considering that “Works” translucent paint allows the unique weldmarks to show through, the underlying marks on this paint is a vittual fingerprint for this bike.

Hopefully this along with frame serial number will help it recovery.  I don’t expect I’ll see the bike again.  

Needless to say that I was not in a good mood when I got on the flight to Seattle.    I was however fairly comfortable in seat 5C.   Short BEFORE take off, the little five or so year old “princess” in row 8 started screaming crying and wailing.      It was freaking blood curdling and I could see the tightening shoulders and clinched jaws of everyone within my view.  Mom made good effort to try and calm the little princess down….for all of about five freaking minutes, then she just became pretty oblivious to her little freaking scream box urchin.    We were given the okay to use the portable electronics you should have seen the mad scramble everyone was making to fire that those things up to try and drowned out that the baby terrorist cell.   The scramble was enough that the flight attendant actually smile and had to hold back some snickers.    Even with the music pumping you could still here the screaming.   Now I know the difference between a kid in pain and a kid being a pain.  There was not ear ache, no upset stomach, this kid was just an urchin.  Come on Mom, do something, NyQuil, Sleeping Pills, Pillow across the face,  sock in the mouth, something!    The descent was pure torture once we had to turn off our electronic mufflers.   I was fit to be tied when I got off the plane,   luckily I have a couple hours of driving to do and was able to chillax a little.

Because of the length of my stay here I was able grab a condo rental for the same price as a hotel stay.   I was pretty freaking stoked with the accommodations and location.  It was well into the afternoon by the time I was finally able to set down and relax for good with a tasty Pacific Northwest cold one.    Somedays you celebrate a day well spent, today I was simply celebrating the END of this day.    The good news about this Monday is there are a lot of people out there who had something truly tragic happen today and I was not one of them.     Thanks everyone who acknowledged the bummage of my day and offered encouragement and help.   You guys Rock!

Washington Area Added to the Website

I have finally gotten around to compiling all of my pictures and notes from my April trip to Washington.  It was enough stuff to add a Washington section to the site.   If you have been following the blog a good portion of the stuff will not be completely new to you.  I have however added more pictures and in some cases some maps and GPS files.   So click away.

Puget Sound Area Overview Page

Galbraith Mountain Video

I finally got around to pulling together the footage I took on  Galbraith Mountain back in April.  Putting this video together was an awesome way to relive the great freaking riding there is on that mountain.  You may find the music a little aggro for your taste but these tunes got stuck in my head while riding these trails so it only seemed fitting put them on the vid.  

Right Click on the image above to download the 115MB video that is 8 minutes and 17 seconds long.

Galbraith Mountain – Bellingham WA

Last Sunday I went up to Bellingham WA to check out Galbraith Mountain as I had heard it had the goods.  The folks who gave me that 411 were right on the money.  This place RULES plan and simply.    I got in a week’s worth of stoke in a single day.  This was a good thing as work this past week has been a real beater that consumed all of my physical and mental energy.   Luckily the tidal wave of work had moved on by this past Saturday evening.  This Sunday I found myself once again heading north to enjoy Galbraith Mountain once again.

The place is sorta broken up into two areas, the Lakeview Drive side and the Galbraith Lane side.  There are miles and miles of good trails all over the place here with most of the XC oriented stuff on the Lakeview Side and the DH/Freeride stuff over on the Galbraith Lane side.

The weather on both days turned out to be killer but both started somewhat cloudy and progressively got better.   Once you get inside the dense forest it really does not matter wither the sun is out or not as the forest canopy renders the light in some spots just a few levels dusk.   Nothing but yellow or clear lenses if you are going to ride here.

The first day out here I started on the Lakeview side and rode a series of trails over to the Galbraith side.  One fun trail was call Bob’s Cedar Dust as there are a ton of skinnies of various difficulties to dare you into trying them.  You see so much of this stuff you just have to give it a try.

If you choose to, you can spent most of your climbing on forest roads and then catch a series of singletracks back down the mountain.  Getting to the top of Galbraith is where the real fun starts.  There are several north-shore style trails coming off the top that will get your fix on if you are into that kind of thing.  Most of the riders I met heading up to the top where on beefy downhill and freeride rigs.

The rewards for your efforts are some really killer black diamond level trails that will peg your stoke meter or scare the crap out of you.   There is a good chance that both may happen at the same time.   The first day out here I hooked up with a couple of local young guys.  They were too old to be “groms” but they did talk about calling there mom to come pick them up near the end of the day.  I’m guessing somewhere around 16-18.   I bring it up because following these fearless young bucks was feeding my mojo and I started hitting stuff I would normally balk at or stop and think about first.  Small to medium gaps, tabletops, kickers and 4 foot drops where just happening.  Now I was not transformed into some hucker that day, but a new level of comfort was obtained on this type of terrain.   Riding with these folks who were more than half my age certainly made me feel half my age.   Mountain Biking is just freaking great!

One of the most killer trails out here that I rode was Evolution.  It has an incredible mix of ladders, berms, gaps, log rides and other BC inspired stuff that just rocks!   The Korn song of that same name popped into my head and it has been stuck there ever since.

I’m pretty sure you can not get all of the trails bagged in a single day out here.  It would take at least three humps to the top of Galbraith to get in the really cool stuff near the top.  The last section to the top gets steep and it will put some hurting on you.  Granny and me had it going on during both of my visits here.

As far as what trails to hit, the general consensus on the All-Mountain scene are: Evolution, Mullet, Cheech and Chong’s Wild Ride, Not Shawns, Meth Lab, Scorpion and SST are “Da Bomb”.  I rode all of those and then some with the exception of SST.   On the cross country scene, the Whoopsie Woodle trail way in the Southwest back 40 of Galbraith is pretty darn cool.   Have no idea what I’m talking about?   Well when you roll into Bellingham swing by one of the shops (I hit up Fantik) and pick up a map printed on waterproof paper.  They were $8 and they are really nice and the profits help out the local advocacy group.

Bellingham is also a really cool town with an awesome vibe.  The Boundary Bay Brewery and Bistro is not to be missed for post ride goodness.   Thier IPA is killer and the Rueben sandwich is to die for.   Killer trails, Great Brews and Yummy Food  — I’m digging this place!

Whistle Lake Goodness

Saturday I ventured north to check out the Whistle Lake area of the Anacortes Community Forest Lands.  I had been to the Cranberry Lake area the week before and I was ready to check out some more of the goods in Anacortes.

Man there was some fun single track out by Whistle Lake but there are no freebies.  You have got to earn them.   The good news is what goes up must come down.    The number of trails in this area is simply bewildering and it is hard to go more than a third of mile without having a trail junctions to think about.

While on one of the trails near the top of “Sugar Cube”  I had an incredible critter encounter.    As I rounded a corner a bald eagle flew up from the trail where it had recently whacked some small furry critter and had it for lunch.   It flew up into a nearby tree and started checking me out. 

While it looked concerned with me a first, it soon seemed to figure out that I meant it no harm and seemed rather comfortable with my presence.   Over the next five minutes I would go through a series of snapping pictures and moving a little closer until it decided it had better things to do.    

This eagle is bigger than it looks.  I’m guessing that those talons if out stretched would be about the size of an average man’s hand.  Simply impressive.

An hour or so later in the ride I would once again have another cool critter encounter.  This time it was with a spotted owl and the sequence of events was similar to that the eagle. 

I love checking out the “Back 40” wherever I go.  On this day that looked to be the south side of the lake.  The trails over here were much steeper and trickier with more roots and rocky sections.

It would be a really big feat to ride all of the stuff in a single day as it takes multiple loops of climbing to the top of several hills that can work the legs over really well. 

I did as many climbs up the hills as I could stand and still did not get to all of the trails.  I finished the day with my legs thoroughly shot and a big smile on my face.