Whitehorse Mountain from just north of Darrington
Looking to mix things up from climbing and hiking, I decided to hitch a ride with Erica and Anjuli on their way to Hidden Lake Lookout with my bike in the car and have them drop me in Marblemount with the intention of riding home via the Mountain Loop Highway and Barlow Pass.
They dropped me at 9:30am and I got to work. The first set of ~26 miles from Marblemount to Darrington went quickly (1.5 hours) with relatively little traffic headed South in the morning. It was fun to see Whitehorse Mountain come into view and think back on my climb and ski of the mountain earlier this spring with Kelsey. I stopped at a gas station in Darrington to inhale an ice cream bar, a gatorade, and a coke—a shock to the system, but very much needed in terms of calories and cooling. Then I set off for the adventure part of the ride.
I’d scoped out the Mountain Loop Highway to see how fast folks did the ~14 miles of gravel climbing up to Barlow Pass and decided, despite knowing that I needed to conserve energy for the rest of the ride, that I wanted to push myself on this section to see how I could do. It was fun blasting on well-packed dirt for much of the ride, especially the sections that flattened out. I was on my old road bike with 25mm tires and racing gears, so the steeps and loose sections were especially tough, but the flats were awesome. I nearly kept up with some motorbikes for a while and then finally hit the grind up to Barlow Pass, slowing considerably 50 miles into the ride.
Thankfully, the highway turns to pavement at the pass and leads to a long descent towards Granite Falls, 30 miles down the road. I stopped there for more ice cream and drinks—I must have looked a bit haggard scarfing calories in the gas station parking lot all kitted up.
The ride went smoothly from there. I’d ridden to Granite Falls and back from home earlier this summer, so I knew the way. Snohomish was 100 miles into the ride on the dot. A bit of climbing before Woodinville and I was on the home stretch, riding the Burke Gilman trail around Lake Washington and then finally up Capitol Hill for 133 miles and 5,400 feet of climbing. Really fun to do a point-to-point ride and cover so much ground in the mountains.