Mount Saint Helens Windy Ridge Ride

October 16, 2021

I was looking for more paved mountain rides this fall when my friend recommended Windy Ridge on Mount Saint Helens. He suggested starting in Randle, which meant spending nearly the entire time on paved forest roads with minimal traffic. Dale and I decided this would be an ideal fall ride with otherwise iffy weather around the state.

We got a leisurely start from Seattle, making it down to Randle and leaving his van there at about 12:30pm. The ride does a short climb and then about 10 miles of moderate descent before starting the real climb, which was a perfect way to warm ourselves up. We transitioned from the open farmland of Randle to the lush forest for much of our climbing. The road was in pretty good shape and we only encountered a couple of truck drivers who were perturbed by our very existence. We were able to ride side-by-side for most of the time, keeping up a good conversation and riding at a pace where we were working but could still chat.

At mile 20, we took the right up toward Windy Ridge, which continued to climb through the woods for another 4.5 miles before breaking out with our first views of Saint Helens. We had done about 3,200 feet of climbing by this point. We stopped at this viewpoint for a snack before charging into a blustery headwind that was lurking for us behind many of the bends in the road between there and the end of the paved section—another 11 miles or so.

The views of Saint Helens, Adams, and Hood were really spectacular and the fall colors really lit up the hillsides. It was crisp and brisk, but never too cold. And the road was a lot of fun, with frequent twists and turns as well as rises and descents. We had a ball. It took just under 3 hours to get from Randle to the end of the paved road at the Windy Ridge viewpoint.

We soaked in the sun and views for a few minutes and then headed back, taking our time for some photos while we were up high and then putting the hammer down once we were back in the forest. It took just over 2 hours to get back to the car. What a really lovely fall ride!

North Cascades Highway Ride - Newhalem to Mazama and Back

October 2, 2021

I’d been meaning to ride my bike over Highway 20 in the North Cascades for years, but hadn’t yet made it happen. My friend Will was a very effective instigator and, after a summer plagued with wildfires and heat waves, fall seemed like a pretty good option.

On Saturday, October 2, I drove up early we started our ride from Newhalem at about 8:30am. It was 45 degrees and a little humid, which made the air feel especially chilly. We didn’t expect it to warm up much over the course of our ride since we’d be at a higher elevation during the warmest part of the day.

Having driven the road so many times, it was really nice to slow down and experience the nuances of the road as well as the views and surroundings in much more detail. We tried to set off at a pace we could maintain for ~8 hours and were still moving at a decent clip, reaching Colonial Creek Campground in a little under 40 minutes at about 15 miles per hour. From here, we kept up a reasonable pace, chatting side-by-side when we could and ground out the climb up to Rainy Pass in about 2 hours and 15 minutes. The grade was really nice for keeping up momentum.

We descended from Rainy Pass, climbed up to Washington Pass, and then bombed down to the Mazama Store for lunch. This took a little over an hour and we were really cold by the time we made it into the Methow Valley. Thankfully some mochas, lunch, confectionaries, and sugary beverages lifted us back up.

From Mazama up to Washington Pass was definitely the toughest part of the ride. It’s a much steeper grade and it’s always tougher to get going again after a rest. After about 20 minutes, I thankfully felt back in the groove. This climb of 3,300 feet took us about 1 hour 50 minutes and we spent a lot of it marveling at the beautiful landscape and the yellow larches coloring the hillsides. After descending and then climbing again to crest Rainy Pass, it was (mostly) downhill from there. Will took some hero pulls on the descent. From WA Pass down was just over 2 hours averaging over 20 miles per hour.

Making it look a lot more intense than it was ; )

Twin Sisters Traverse

July 21, 2021

After our successful climb of Challenger at the beginning of Goran’s trip, we looked for an objective with less walking and more time on rock. We were also both not yet back to our pre-pandemic selves on difficult rock and so a long scramble across the Twin Sisters sounded like a good target to round out his trip.

We left Seattle a little after 5am with my mountain and gravel bikes in the back and started pedaling up at about 7:30am. We packed pretty light but didn’t want to get trapped anywhere and weren’t sure what the glacier would be like, so we had aluminum crampons, ultralight axes, a 30m x 6mm static line, and a few nuts. I cursed a bit on the ride up as the backpack made my lower back angry, remembering last spring when I’d come up way too early in the year for the South Twin to finish off the peaks in the area. Thankfully, the gearing on both bikes was low enough that we were able to ride all of it.

We stashed our bikes after 1:10 of riding at the base of the trail up to North Twin and fast-hiked the approach to South. It took us about 1:15 to gain the ridge where we put our brain buckets on and started scrambling. Unfortunately, there was a thick marine layer which made for dramatic views down low and then became a milk bottle whiteout as we climbed higher.

The West Ridge of South Twin was similar to my experience on the West Ridge of North Twin, perhaps a little less sustained and a little more loose. The whiteout made things feel a bit more serious, otherwise it would have just been an easy romp. We crossed the snowfield to the East at about 6,600 feet and then found our way up to the top 3 hours after we left our bikes at the North Twin trail. Everything was still socked in, but we could see the Northeast Ridge enough to feel confident heading down it after a quick lunch.

Whenever the Northeast Ridge steepened up, there was a magical ladder of blocky rock to bring us down. We quickly made our way to the saddle at 6,400 feet in about 30 minutes. There was a small moat here which we over-dramatically each jumped over to gain the Sisters Glacier, doing our best Vertical Limit impressions. The glacier was mellow enough that we didn’t need the rope or crampons and in less than 15 minutes, we were scrambling up the Southeast ridge of North Twin.

This ridge included some of the steeper and more exposed scrambling of the traverse, but it was never concerning and we never felt the need to break out the rope. From the false summit, we descended down a dirty couloir to the South slightly before traversing over to the notch between the summits and then ascending what looked to be pretty steep terrain up to the true summit and turned out to be very reasonable. This ridge took us about 45 minutes.

After another snack, this time on top of North, we headed down our fourth ridge of the day. It took a little under 2 hours to scramble down to the trail and amble down the switchbacks to the main road and our bikes. We then floated down the road, marveling at the invention of the wheel and comparing the impact on our bodies to the miles we’d walked for Challenger a couple days earlier.