Archive-URL: http://search.bikelist.org/getmsg.asp?Filename=touring.10008.1203.eml
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 08:01:48 -0700 (PDT)
From: alex wetmore <alex(AT)phred.org>
Subject: quick trip report

This is a quick summary of our trip before I put together a webpage
(which will probably be a few days, since I have not had my film 
developed yet).

Quick summary - 4 days, ~220 miles, 15-18k feet of climbing, 6 
passes, almost no traffic, almost no towns.  

Larry and I had a fantastic trip.  We ended up taking a different
route than expected, but it worked out very well.  We were dropped
off in Winthrop on Thursday August 24th and spent the night there.
On Friday we rode with his friend Chris along SR20 and over Loup
Loup pass.  Chris said goodbye there, and we started the descent
down into Omak.  At Omak we turned onto the Colville Indian Reservation
and started heading up SR155 to Disautel Pass.  We camped most of the
way up the pass about a mile past Disautel Town (town is a real stretch,
this was a town of 4 houses).  

On day 2 we finished the climb to the pass and descended down to
Coyote Creek Campground where we filled up on water, ate breakfast,
and did other morning stuff.  From there we finished the descent
down into Nespelem.  In Nespelem we talked to a couple of locals,
fixed a flat that I had, and then turned off of SR155 (around the
Colville Indian Agency) to Cache Creek road.  This started up a
long hot hill, then levelled out through some farming country.  At
the end was a pretty steep climb up to an unmarked pass, but the
trees reappeared which was very nice.  The descent from here was
amazing -- no cars, 7% grade, great road, and curves of just the
right steepness to mean that we didn't need to use the brakes.
And at the bottom there was an resturant with ice cream!  Touring
doesn't get any better than that.  At the resturant we talked to
a very helpful guy about our route, and then accidently left our
very nice road atlas in the resturant!  Oops!  We took a left onto
SR21, and then a quick right onto Bridge Creek Road.  Bridge Creek
road started climbing immediately, and we stopped to camp just
before mile marker 6, right next to the creek.  It was a great camp
spot, and details on finding it will be in the full trip report.

Day 3 started with the rest of the climb.  The climb stopped at 
mile marker 12, and then we had 5 or 6 miles of really fun rollers.
The descent into Twin Lakes (eastern side of the rez) was almost
as good as the Cache Creek descent.  From there the descent into
Inchiliam wasn't quick as steep and traffic picked up, but traffic
meant 20 cars an hour instead of 4 or 5.  We stopped in town to
get food and then took the ferry across to Gifford.  At Gifford
campground we cleaned up, refilled on water again, and talked to
a well meaning and chatty but not always helpful fellow.  We then
started the climb up Addy-Gifford road and took this into Chewelah.
Addy-Gifford was yet another unmarked pass and had about 10-15 
miles of climbing followed by a long descent.  I think that this
was the hardest climb on the trip (Disautel pass might have
been it too), because it was not well shaded and you could always
see the road a mile or two ahead and much higher up.  Larry and
I both seemed to prefer shady climbs with lots of turns that
obscure what is coming ahead.  The descent down the other side
was fantastic though, and we saw the only other person doing
excercise that we ran into on our entire trip.  We ended the
day at a motel in Chewelah where we had some well deserved R&R 
(and showers!)

Day 4 started with yet another climb, but our last one of the
trip.  This went up and over Flowery Trail Road/Pass.  This
road is mostly used in the winter to access the 49 degrees
ski area, and in the summer the road was pretty much empty.  I
think that this was the best climb on the trip -- very steep
and challenging (8% grades according to the signs), lots of
shade, windy roads, many great views.  At the top we found a
great place to eat lunch -- sitting on the porch of a very 
fancy winter vacation house and looking over the valley that
we had just climbed out of.  The descent down the other side
was the best yet -- very fast, lots of turns, and into pretty 
farmland.  The horses and cattle seemed to look at us in
bewilderment.  Flowery Trail road took us into Usk, where we
turned onto Le Clerc road and took this to Bead Lake.  There
was one final climb up to Bead Lake, and then a well deserved
day of R&R at Samantha's (Larry's girlfriend) cabin there.
I'm not normally good at sitting around and doing nothing, but
I was good at it on Tuesday!

The original plan was to get a ride back to Lake Easton with
Samantha, and then ride from there back to Seattle (that would
have been 2 days more of riding, but over much easier grades).
Circumstances changed when we got into a minor fender bender
in Spokane, and were not able to leave the scene until after
6:30pm.  By the time we were nearing Easton (9:30pm) it was
dark and we were both tired, so we decided to skip portion
two of the trip, and finish it another time.  For those who
are counting, this is the second time that we've skipped the
Iron Horse trail portion of our tour -- two years ago we
were also going to return this way, but I had to bail because
I had injured my achillies tendon.  Hopefully we'll do it 
on the next trip!

I really can't state how great our trip was.  I really believe that
the route that we took across WA state was about as good as it
gets, especially if you are into the adventurous side of touring.
There were few services and we sometimes ran out of water, but the
views were fantastic, the lack of traffic was great, and the people
were very nice.  I would highly recommend it to anyone who is
willing to carry a lot of water (we carried about 6l between us,
and that wasn't always enough), lots of food, a water filter, and
doesn't mind finding their own camping spots.  We crossed through
many different types of environments (forest, desert, farmland,
etc) and saw parts of the state that I had never visited.  I have
not taken SR20 across the state, but I believe that our route had
much lower traffic.  We picked up SR20 for about a mile near the
end of the tour, and it was a huge change from seeing a few cars
an hour on most of the roads that we travelled.

alex


_______________________________________________
Touring mailing list
Touring(AT)phred.org
http://www.phred.org/mailman/listinfo/touring