Guides and Trips
Trips
Pleasant, mostly flat hike through old growth forest next to the Boulder River.
Moss Lake Natural Area
Lake Marcel-Stillwater, Washington, United States
Mountain biking | 9.5 miles
Mountain biking | 9.5 miles
Back for another Evergreen MTB group ride. I'm still hanging out in the back of the pack on the group rides (and probably will for some time yet), but at least I had no mechanical issues this time. It was fun to try out a number of the other trails, the overlap with the last ride was pretty minimal.
Wanted to give the Thrilla Route a try, after passing the turnoffs to the pipeline trails a number of times while riding the Sammamish River Trail. Was shooting for about a 20 mile ride, for which I had to do a little research and add some singletrack option along the way. I found a couple of .gpx tracks to keep me from getting too lost, and the route-finding through trails that wind...
Inaugural ride on my new road bike. Rode south from Kirkland along the Lake Washington Loop to Renton, where I got on the Cedar River Trail heading east to Cedar Grove Road SE. After climbing the hill, this road eventually ends at Issaquah Hobart Road, which I then took through downtown Issaquah and along East Lake Sammamish Parkway to Marymoor Park, where I stopped and had lunch. Rode the Sammamish River Trail to...
First trip to Summit Ridge since noticing the trailheads on my way back from snowboarding at Crystal Mountain this past winter. There were a few videos posted on the MTBR forums that made it look fun, so I decided to check it out. I rode Tribulation (definitely need to work on my bridge crossings) up to the freeride park. I thought about trying to find the connector to Henry's Ridge, but decided...
Picked up a map for Taylor Mountain a few months back at the Seattle Bike Expo (the map is posted on the King County website here), so it's been on my list of places to check out for a little while. Then this week someone posted videos of the Holder Knob/Ridge downhill sections on the MTBR forums, which was enough to get me to try it out for myself today. The views of...
Moss Lake Natural Area
Lake Marcel-Stillwater, Washington, United States
Mountain biking | 9.0 miles
Mountain biking | 9.0 miles
This was part of a scheduled group ride with Evergreen MBA. I'd been curious about the area since last fall when I explored Marckworth a bit, so I had to take the opportunity to try it out when I saw the ride get posted on the calendar for a non-weekday. I was definitely the weak link in the group - quite literally, I snapped a chain - but it was a good introduction...
I started the ride originally just planning on doing the top loop, but when I got to the turnoff for the 520 trail, I had a sudden burst of ambition and decided to loop around Lake Sammamish too. The last circuit of the lake I did CCW, so I was curious to try it out in the other direction this time; for the first half I was convinced this was the better...
We were looking for a trip that was around 50 miles without too many hills, and this one fit the bill pretty well. It starts and ends on the Centennial Trail, but breaks off onto roads starting at 84th St NE (not far past Lake Cassidy) and circles back through Granite Falls to rejoin the trail at Machias.None of the roads had bike lanes (or even a wide shoulder), but for the...
Second trip to Tiger, this time with a little better fitness (not to mention a much better bike). That initial climb is still a beast, but I at least managed to ride a good portion of it. It had rained the day before, so there was still a lot of runoff on the Preston Railroad Trail. In other words, I got muddy. Even with 1-2 inches of water running down the trail in...
This route is based on the half century route of the Seattle Century, the only difference being we turned right onto the I-90 trail from West Lake Sammamish Parkway instead of crossing the freeway and doing the climb in Eastgate. We ended up misreading the signage and actually riding onto the freeway on-ramp - and then right off again onto Bellevue Way, granted, but it was hairy there for a few minutes....
Started at Wilmot Gateway Park in Woodinville, rode the Sammamish Valley Trail to Marymoor, then hopped on West Lake Sammamish Parkway, circled around the south end of the lake to East Lake Sammamish Parkway, and back to the SVT via the Marymoor Connector.
First time back to Tolt McDonald since last August, this time on a better bike. Last time I largely stuck to the logging roads and considered the trip recon; this time I tried to ride as much on singletrack as I could. If trail names haven't changed, it looks like I hit part of Bob's Run, The Burn + Pearl, The Bypass, O.D. + Dancin', Go-Kart, MLR back to The Burn, and southern...
Walked from the train station at Prien am Chiemsee to the pier in Stock (it's possible to ride the Chiemseebahn this distance, but it only runs roughly hourly and I'd barely missed it), and took a wonderfully relaxing boat ride to Herren Insel. After touring the castle (modelled after Versailles; the Hall of Mirrors was particularly amazing), I decided to walk the perimeter of the island on the Rundwanderweg path. I thought I'd checked...
