Mountain Bike Bill, The Dirt on the Dirt

Tag: Green Mountain

Green Mountain State Park

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.

 

More Green Mountain

A had another good week of getting in some good afterwork rides in out at Green Mountain State Park. Most of the week I focused on zipped over the west side of the west side of the park to get to know that side better. Plenty of trail on that side as well.

Got Beaver?

On the Tin Mine Trail.

Tin Mine shaft.
Baby waterfall

Green Mountain SP

I have been getting in some good after work rides out at Green Mountain State Park. This place is my current “local” trail with the trailhead just 10 minutes away. For my first ride back out here I kept it simple doing and out and back on the Wildcat trail to the Green Mountain peak. Round trip was 8.4 miles with 1,740 feet of climbing. The views included the Olypmics Mountains, Mt Rainer and downtown Seattle. Later in the week I was reminded that trails can come and go on timber land and following one of the trails I remembered from eight years ago netted me a solid 10 minutes of bramble bushwacking at the bottom of the far side of the mountain from where I started. I was not exactly chasing daylight at that point but once you get under the trees it seems much later in the evening. I found myself putting a bit more gitty up on the pedals to get back to the trailhead just to realize I had more daylight left than I expected. Good times!

Dirt Time in Washington

So I have been in Seattle for a couple of weeks on a work gig but just managed to hit the dirt. Man can not live in the dirt alone so I have been enjoying some of the other wonders of the Pacfic Northwest, thier great microbrews. In addition to the 10+ brewpubs in the Seattle area I have swelled hoppy goodness at, I attended the Bremerton Beer Festival. The following weekend was spent in Portland for the 24th Aniversary of the Oregon Brewer’s Festival. In addition to the madhouse that was the Brewer’s Festival some of the local goods were also sample directly at the source. Deschutes, Bridgeport, Widmer, Tugboat and Amensia Brewing were on the “tour”. Needless to I was stupidly happy about sampling some of the best beers around. My liver on the other hand felt differently after taking more than one for the team.

So I have been in Seattle for a couple of weeks on a work gig but just managed to hit the dirt.    Man can not live in the dirt alone so I have been enjoying some of the other wonders of the Pacfic Northwest, thier great microbrews.    In addition to the 10+ brewpubs in the Seattle area I have swelled hoppy goodness at,  I attended the Bremerton Beer Festival. The following weekend was spent in Portland for the 24th Aniversary of the Oregon Brewer’s Festival.    In addition to the madhouse that was the Brewer’s Festival some of the local goods were also sample directly at the source.  Deschutes, Bridgeport, Widmer, Tugboat and Amensia Brewing were on the “tour”.   Needless to I was stupidly happy about sampling some of the best beers around.    My liver on the other hand felt differently after taking more than one for the team.

As part of the MTBBill Liver Recovery Act of 2011, it was time to get some pedals turning.   The I-5 Colonnade MTB Skills Park is less than 10 minutes from where I’m staying so it is always good for a quick afterwork fix.

Working part of the weekend is part of the work gig for this project, but Green Mountain was close enough to where I was working to allow for some grunting and grinning in the dirt after work.

Air Time

Duthie Hill Mountain Bike Park is the Seattle areas second MTB Skills Park and it is simply awesome.   With 120 acres to work with they are produced a trail network that caters to nearly all types of riders.  Wither you are looking to get your wheels in the air…..

Or wither you want to get that natural outdoor experience on a meandering trail through the trees.   This place has all of that right in Seattle’s backyard.

 

One of the lines I did not hit out here 🙂  I believe this trail was Semper Dirticus.     The freeride double black diamond trails here are quite impressive.  On this trip it was mostly from a spectactor perspective.   I got the bike, I just need to develop the skills and get some testicular growth happening.   I did hit some of the stunts and tagged my largest gap to date to thier is hope that I will get intouch with my inner hucker at some point.

One of favorites from a trail with features perspective was Ryan’s Eternal Flow.  It is more of XC trail with stunts and features more so than a series of features with a trail between them.  Considering how close this place is I will certainly be back a few more times before this work trip is done.

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.