i’m starting this on saturday. it’ll be the longest one of these i’ve done.
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Wow. That is some cool mapping. How far is it?
That’s a fun tool. I just built a course too. Starting at midnight so as to cause less drama with the boss ladies. Just waiting for the all clear. Only really 1 food source at 12-13 hours so will be packing some hi calorie snacks. Ditto with water. Might have to take some putrifacation tabs.
roundabout 350 miles or so, but that’ll probably go up with side missions
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I had a play with the Storymaps tool. Just the basic stuff, but you can do some cool stuff with it. The Big Finish Line Party
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has anyone here ridden the Dark Divide? I’m considering fast touring it with some friends this summer as part of the grand depart.
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I go ride mountain bikes in that part of Washington, just about every summer… It is incredible down there, you should absolutely go spend some time in those woods.
I imagine, though… That most of the roads are significantly worse than the single track, because the single track is wonderfully smooth brown Velcro (if you get them after the first rain of fall) through carpets of moss, and across fields of Beargrass, an alpine ridges.
Somehow, even the moto trails fucking rip. They are the definition of a fun, fast blue if you know what that is.
the route has 10 miles of singletrack Dark Divide 300 · Ride with GPS
just the southern 6 miles of Juniper Ridge, then 4 miles of Boundary Trail bailing out at a trailhead to descend 2000ft on pavement Juniper Ridge Mountain Biking and Hiking Trail
instead of staying on Boundary Trail singletrack up high either east to Mt Adams or west to Mt St Helens, or descending the rowdy Quartz Creek Mountain Biking and Hiking Trail to the smooth and endless Lewis River Mountain Biking and Hiking Trail
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I want to do this but probably won’t be in shape by August.
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I’d love to do something like this but I can’t lie to myself and think I’ll be in shape enough to actually do it any time soon
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There’s tons of different cool ways to ride between Seattle and Portland camping along the way and taking the train back. A branded route doesn’t really provide much, you can make it up as you go along, and stretch it out into more days with services every day!
I’ve wanted to do a version where I take the train to Kelso/Longview to skip a lot of familiar exburban miles and go straight in to Mt. St Helens to start, camping on the Plains of Abraham
Last year there was a big washout that might actually make the singletrack access from that direction easier, by eliminating the chance of user conflict with the school field trips and shit that used that visitor center
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Do you know for certain if you can roll a bike onboard at Kelso/longview? It’s only a 5 minute station stop and I know you can’t check any luggage there.
If it’s Amtrak Cascades yes you can board with a bike on the ten hooks that you book with your ticket
You can’t box a bike at unstaffed stations, but they’ll unload a box
I think the itinerary would work out way better as starting in Kelso anyway, to have the paved climb and washout at the beginning. If turned away from that entrance could go around via Randle, or there’s an old overgrown trail connection along the Green River at the bottom of the Goat Mountain trail system, both connecting to NF-26 and intercepting the Boundary Trail at Norway Pass
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Im pretty sorted for a 1500 km poop barn on march 4. Have been thinking about knocking 1 kg off my kit by ditching my new Big Agnes tent and using a bivvy. Mostly to avoid the faff of setting up and putting down the tent. That tent is pretty damn luxorious I have to say. Maybe I should practice my tent-fu and reassess. There seem to be lots of good accommodation options enroute as well, with farmers making their shearing quarters available etc.
On a kind of related note, l just got back from a 2 hour ride on my local trails where I rode with only my front load on, which is basically tent, matress and footprint. No rear bag. I was amazed at how good it felt on the singletrack. Pretty sure it felt better than no load at all on the technical DH. I know its a bit of a trend with bikepacking here but assumed it was just BS.
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so i’m planning to go with sup and his friends to do white rim next month. 100 miles and wed be doing it in 2 days, then doing a third ride on day 3, but we’d return to the cars so only need to carry 2 days of gear.
that said, there’s no where to refill water and it sounds like filtering water out of the green river is a no go (full of silt).
any tips on carrying water?
i dont have a frame bag at the moment, but was thinking one of these looks appealing just since it keeps the water super low:
ordered a few cargo cages and plan on putting one under the downtube to carry a big nalgene as well.
then a couple bottles??
3 L bladder + 48 oz nalgene + 2x 24 oz bottles would put me at about 6 L of water.
i’m not a huge sweater. can i survive off that? gosh carrying more than that just sounds so heavy.
i’m going to try to persuade them to start at mineral bottom so we can do the main climb first then refill water at the visitor center so we’d have at least 1 water stop, but the water stop would be 20 miles into a 100 mi loop, so i could just try to hydrate a lot going in and hopefully add another liter to the total for the two days?
we rode white rim in a day a couple years back, and i think we carried about 6-8 liters each? it was the most water i’ve carried on a bike, and i maybe only had 1 liter left after. I tend to drink a lot of water, though. starting at mineral bottom is the move for sure, that’s what we did as well. frame bag is definitely nice for water carrying. I know a lot of people who do white rim in multiple days tend to have car support or at least cache some water at the gooseberry camp ground, but then you’d need another day to hike it in.
Some good testimonials for the hard-sided cranktank in here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/bikepacking/comments/1b9jlcg/cranktank_34_opinions/
i suspect that breaking it into two days wont actually increase my water intake that much, but i do need some water for cooking dinner and breakfast.
i am not a heavy drinker, but i know i can easily clear 3L in a long ride in moab (have done lots of normal trail riding there). what i’m hoping is if i drink enough on the climb out then I’ll refill 2L at the visitor center?
not sure anyone is going to want to do that water hike in. the trouble is there’s 15 people in the group (yeah, it’s a lot), so one person couldnt hike in enough water to make it worthwhile for the entire group.
they want to cache water, but i am just not sure how they are going to do it unless someone drives the whole loop the day before.
re-thinking this after one thing i just read -
in our large group, we’ll have lots of vehicles.
we can do more than just refill at the visitor center - we could leave a vehicle with heavier items including extra water and climb out with a lot less weight and grab that stuff before we head down into the actual trail. this would make day 1 easier given where we are camping, we’re looking at 65 mi day 1 (mineral bottom camping area → visitor center → white crack camping) and 45 miles day 2.
This looks interesting but it costs a lot more than a bladder. I could also go budget and just get a longer hose from my backpack bladder and put it in the frame bag.
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