I looked forward to this ride for months, excited that I could check off 2 goals with 1 ride: Ride a National Park and bike an epic climb. I signed up for the century route, but didn’t properly train for it. So I ended up cutting the ride short to be safe, and kept all the best highlights of the route that I could. I loved this ride and would do it again in a heartbeat.

Ride Summary

Experience

• Super friendly riders. Every rider passing greeting me with a friendly good morning, and most shared some small talk. Even though I rode alone, I felt like I was riding with friends.

• Riders spanned from children, mountain bikers, casual cruisers, jeans on clunkers, bikepackers, ebikes, people like me, all the way to flashy cyclists and outright speed demons.

• While there were only 800 riders, I was always within reach of others on Hurricane Ridge.

• A large team of riders clipped a laminated photo on their backs, depicting a young and cheerful cyclist. He was a friend and ride organizer who passed from COVID just 2 weeks before the ride. I don’t know how they shared this explanation of him again and again without tearing up, because I teared up just hearing about it. When I shared this with B, he said, “Well, he should have been vaccinated”. THe thing is, maybe he came down with a COVID a month ago when vaccinations were available, but maybe he’s been in the hospital since January. I didn’t ask. COVID death is interested as it’s largely preventable by changing your behavior, but like all illnesses, he might have done everything right and still died.

• Riding through Elwha felt like the opposite, I was a tiny speck, alone in a vast wilderness.

• I awed at the wilderness of it all. I could see into underbrush and trees that probably doesn’t often feel the touch of man. I recently watched the Twilight movies, so I played the soundtrack for myself while riding. I longed for the large expanse of northwestern rainforest the movie depicted and was just out of my reach from the bike.

  
  

Weather

• Shore breezes added refreshing coolness and the blue sky allowed the sunny summer heat to come through. The early morning brought the first rain in weeks. This day had a little bit of everything, and it was all perfect. Just as I started to overheat, I’d turn a corner that opened up to the cooling sea. Just a I got to cold, the trees would open up and I’d toast a little in the sun.

Spotted

• Unusually large amount of insects, spiders, caterpillars and worms on the asphalt.

• Beautiful bald eagle in flight overhead

• Deer at the summit

Roads

• I think little fairies swept all the roads for us, there wasn’t a spec of rubble. The roads were lovely.

• Elwha was a little confusing. Permanent-looking signs said that this part of the National Park was not open to motor vehicles….and yet I stayed on a road the whole time. Why was the road there?

• The Olympic Discovery Trail made the route feel calm and safe, but the Waterfront Trails was confusing, poorly signed, haphazard and in poor condition.
  
  

Mechanicals

• My bike fell at the first rest stop. I now have 2 little scrapes on the paint job. The brake hoods are a little bent, and the fall added a slow, high-pitched squeak that followed me the rest of the way up the hill. I couldn’t figure out where it was.

• My pedals locked up during the descent. While far less concerning that brakes locking up, I did feel uneasy. Luckily I was able to release it without having to slow down.