WBDR Part 1

A couple of years ago some guys developed a primarily off-road route from the southern edge of Washington to the Canadian border.  They call it the Washington Backcountry Discovery Route (WBDR) and this is their website:  http://www.wabdr.com/.  The whole thing is 600 miles long, but the first part of it starts right in my neighborhood.  In fact, using some of the routes from my house that I have described earlier, it's possible to skip the very first few miles of the route which is all pavement, and ride mostly off-road to get to the start of the off road part of the WBDR.  This is what my riding budy Orv and I did this past Thursday and Friday.  We rode 50 miles over the local mountains to get to the Wind River Highway north of Carson where we picked up the first section of the WBDR.  The plan was to ride the route up to near the town of Trout Lake, where we would get gas and lunch and then continue on to Packwood for an overnight stay.  The next day would be a road ride home. 

The following pictures are from out ride.  I also took some helmet cam videos which I will attempt to post, but so far my posting of videos has not gone well.  There is a huge amount of data in a video, and our Internet provider is a satellite system with a pretty slow upload rate. 

This was our lunch and gas stop at Trout Lake.  Gas and burgers (good ones) at the same place.

Then we headed up towards Mt Adams.  At 12,227 feet, this is the second highest peak in Washington after Mt Rainer.  This was typical of the roads we were on, but some were much rougher.

The best view of Mt Adams is from  Takhlakh (I think it's pronouned Tok-lok) Lake.  Carolyn, Brian, Shannon and I camped, hiked and canoed at this lake shortly after we moved to Washington.  It's a beautiful place and quite popular. 

After leaving Takhlakh Lake, things got really interesting.  I had been navigating the route using my Garmin Zumo GPS, which would tell me all the turns ahead of time.  I had entered the route using the official WBDR map and knew that the distance to Packwood and our overnight was about 80 miles from where we got gas in Trout Lake.  That's a very comfortable distance to go on a tank of gas, BUT.
For some reason that I still can't figure out, the Zumo directed me to take a wrong turn.  After awhile it became obvious that we were not heading in the direction we wanted to go so we stopped to regroup.  Fortunately, Orv had brought along a Forest Service map (how quaint) and after finding a landmark that was on the map we discovered we were making a giant loop back to where we were two hours ago.  The gas situation quickly became uncomfortable.  In fact, I think I detected a hint of panic coming from Orv, who gets worse gas mileage than me.  I think he was ready to kill me.  So we basically said screw technology, and with Orv leading and both of us using the lightest throttle possible, we followed the map and some road signs back toward Packwood.  We made it to Highway 12 just west of Packwood and Orv ran out of gas before getting to the town.  However, planning for such an event, he had brought along an extra pint or so of gasoline in an empty Seafoam bottle and that got him in to the gas station.  We went about 120 miles on that tank of gas, and my bike took 1.7 gallons to fill up.  Orv's took 1.9 gallons even after adding the extra.  The bikes have 2 gallon tanks.  Thankfully the little KLXs get good mileage.  I tried to convince Orv we had just had an adventure, thanks to me.  An adventure is when you survive and a disaster is when you don't. 

The hotel where we stayed was recommended to me by a friend as "quaint and historic", and that it was.  It was built in 1909 and it's claim to fame is that Teddy Roosevelt stayed there when he came to dedicate the Mt Rainer National Park.  That was the historic part.  The quaint part was that it had bathrooms down the hall shared by everybody, squeeky floors, lumpy beds, and no air conditioning.  Since it was sort of warm, we had to leave the windows open, and I bet Teddy would not have been happy if he had 18 wheelers storming through town all night long like we did.  But one thing about lodges like this where you share facilities is that you meet some interesting people.  In our case, it was a guy, probably middle aged, who was taking a day or two off from hiking the Pacific Crest Trail.  He had started on April 22 at the US/Mexico border and still had 300 miles to go.  He was an Israeli who was living in Canada during the summers, and Israel during the winters.  Unfortunately, he was lamed-up from a swollen ankle and was fearful that he would not be able to go further.  He shared a gallon of ice-cream he had bought with all of the guests present. 

When we returned from dinner a little while after checking in, this bull elk was grazing in the field next to the hotel.  We saw him a couple more times that evening and came to the conclusion that he was trained by the town of Packwood to hang around and provide "character". 

After a restful night's sleep on my part.......Orv, not so much.......we got an early start with a hearty breakie and headed out for the road ride home.  In two days we had a little adventure and a lot of great riding and I would like to do the rest of the WBDR as soon as I can find another willing victim...I mean partner... to go along with me.