Riding the WBDR in Stages

Last year Orv and I did the first day of the Washington Backcountry Discovery Route (See Blog entry for Aug 26, 2011).  The first three days of this week I did the first day, the second  day, and then rode home on the third day.  My nephew Jon wants to do at least two days of the route and I wanted to see what it was like and make sure I could do the first two days without getting lost, since Jon has no extra days in his vacation to spend wondering around lost in the Washington Cascades.

From several sources I got the impression the second day was going to have some difficult sections.  For one, the official WBDR map labeled one section as difficult, and had two different places with alternate easier routes provided.  I also saw pictures on a website that showed some very steep rocky sections and provided a third alternate easy route.  All of these could be relative to the ability of the riders and the type of bike being ridden, but I also had a first person account from someone who I know from personal experience to be an excellent rider, who said it was rocky and he wouldn't want to do it again.  So, with that information in hand I entered all the alternate routes into my Garmin Zumo and planned to attempt the official route and use the easy routes as backup.

The first day was all on the West (wet) side of the Cascades with lots of lush forest and cool shady roads.  Here is a one-minute video of one of my favorite sections:

I actually met three other riders on this section.  They were riding big BMWs and having a bit of difficulty with the potholes and water filled ruts.  I passed two of them and as I was approaching the third he hit a pothole and his soft luggage broke off and tangled in his rear wheel.  So I stopped to have a chat while they worked on a fix.  Two of the three planned to ride the whole thing, but I never saw any of them again.  They should have gotten ahead of me when I got lunch and gas at Trout lake.  On the way back to the trail from Trout Lake I stopped at an ice cave, but without a flashlight I couldn't do any exploring.  I did take this picture of the sign explaining the history of the cave:

There were some spectacular view of Mt. Adams on this day and I took several pictures:

I stopped in at Takhlakh Lake and took the following picture.  There were lots of people camping there, but even with all my gear on, including helmet, the mosquitoes were bothersome.  I can't see how camping would have been fun with that hassle.

I arrived in Packwood after about 220 miles for the day and checked in to my room at the Packwood Hotel.    I wrote about this hotel in the post from last August and how it was not the most pleasant of nights due to trucks going by on hwy 12 all night long.  It was also hot, so we had to keep the windows open (no air conditioning), which made the truck noise worse.  This time the Packwood Hotel was fine.  The temps were much cooler.......I actually had barely enough blankets to keep warm, and I heard no trucks at all.  I set a  new record for cheap motel too, $31 for the night.  However, the room was really small.  I had to open the door and stand out in the hallway to get the first of these two pics (bath was down the hall):

When I arrived at the hotel, there was a guy sitting on the porch having a cigar and a drink who turned out to be waiting for some friends who were also riding the WBDR.  After I cleaned up and we talked for awhile, the guys had still not showed up, so Bill and I went to dinner together.  As we were walking back to the hotel the rest of them arrived.  It was after 7pm.  They didn't start out from Carson until after noon, and one of the riders had not been on a bike for 15 years and was going slow.  They turned out to be an interesting bunch.  Two of them were Catholic priests from Southern California, one was the brother of one of the priests, and was a physician, and the fourth guy was, I think, from Utah.  They were planning on riding the whole WBDR and were taking turns driving the support vehicle which was a pickup with a trailer.  The priests were amazingly regular guys and had ridden dirt bikes for many years in most of the same haunts I had ridden when I lived in SoCal.  If I had had a pastor who was a dirt bike rider when I was a youngster I might have stuck with religion longer than I did.  We chatted late into the evening and they invited me to ride along with them the next day.  It sounded good to me as I was heading alone into some uncharted territory that was supposed to have some difficult parts

The next morning we got started around 9:30 and headed west up hwy 12 towards White Pass.  We had a 31 mile road ride before we took off north on the next unpaved section.  We got out of town and the speed limit went to 55, but the lead guy was going 50.  I thought maybe he was relying on a typically inaccurate motorcycle speedometer (mine was showing 55)), but my GPS was giving a true speed of 50.  So I passed the lead guy and tried to indicate that we could go faster, but he didn't get the hint and they slowly faded into the distance.  After awhile I stopped at a viewpoint and eventually Bill came by and said the other guys had stopped to put on warmer clothing.  We waited for awhile and they didn't show, so I took off and told Bill I would be waiting at the start of the dirt section.  While we were waiting, Bill took this picture of me:

That was the last I saw of any of them until about 7pm when they finally showed up in Ellensburg with tales of woe.......bike problems, wrong turns, running low on gas and water, and bike drops.  I waited for them again at the turn off of hwy 12, and then again before the section that had the "difficult section" marked on the map.  This was about 29 miles from Ellensburg and I was hot, tired, and out of water.  I didn't want to tackle that section without backup, so I lay down in the shade for an hour waiting for them before I decided to take the easy alternate route and not risk it.  I got in to Ellensburg about 3:30.  My total mileage to that point was about 320.  After the guys showed up I went to dinner with them and we "bench raced" late into the evening.

The second day was definitely more technical than the first.  There was one section of rutted jeep trails that I took the following video of:

For the most part, though, the difficulty was due to rocks and heat and they kind of went together.  The rocky parts would slow me down and cause more exertion, which increased the heat and decreased the airflow.  Wearing the backpack made it worse because the straps closed the vents in the front of my jacket and the pack itself blocked the exit vent in the rear.  My jacket normally vents very well, but not with a backpack.  When I got to Ellensburg it was over 90 degrees.  It didn't help that all of the route was on the east side of the mountains with fewer trees for shade.  Still, though, it was a good ride.  I sort of got in the go mode and  didn't stop much until I took the lay-down waiting for the other riders.  However, when I'm in the "go mode" I don't stop for pictures.  I had no drops and never got lost.  The Zumo worked perfectly.

The next morning I got an early start to avoid the heat and took off on what promised to be a tedious road ride on a 250cc dirt bike.  The bike was perfect for the off road parts of the WBDR, but not so much for the paved parts.  I'd rather have it that way than try to muscle a big GS BMW over the rough spots.  By the time I got back to Packwood after 120 miles or so and was eating breakfast, I had had enough pavement.  I got the brilliant idea of riding the WBDR route into Packwood backwards to hwy 90, rather than stay on 12 to Randal.  Only problem is, the Zumo doesn't seem to be able to reverse a route, so I tried navigating a new route and got directed to a couple of dead ends and some roads I had never been on before.  I got home at about 2pm with 552 total miles.  All in all, a good ride on some good roads.