Gong!

Today was a weird day. I had to wonder if there was a full moon or if there was something strange going on with the stars. Two of my coworkers are really into astrology and blame lots of things on Mercury being in retrograde, or the moon or other stuff like that. Sometimes when things just don't make sense, it's kind of nice to have a fall guy that isn't human, and I don't mind saying, "screw you, stars!" So, I'll have to ask them tomorrow if anything weird is going on up there.

Some friends and I had planned to go on a pretty different ride (for me) today. We were going to shuttle Kachess Ridge out east of the Cascades. I rarely venture to the other side of the mountains. The temperature goes up and the rednecks appear from the woodwork. It's a weird place. But I'd heard Kachess was a beautiful ride and now that I've got a trail bike I'm all about experimenting on new routes. Scott and I packed up the truck and set off to meet up with two friends around 1:30. As we were entering the I90 tunnel we heard a loud screech of tires followed by an even louder crash. It was that unmistakable sound of crunching metal. I turned around just in time to see a truck drive up on the embankment of the tunnel, only 2 or 3 cars behind us. Silly us, our first thoughts were, "Phew! Our bikes are safe!" Shaken, we continued on our way.

After a bit of a gong show with traffic we eventually met up with our friends. We set out the 70 miles to Kachess in two trucks: one to shuttle in, and one to be used to retrieve. We got to Kachess around 3pm and all piled into one truck. The drive up was about 30 minutes of steep, sketchy fire road; it would be grueling on a bike, no doubt. It took us a while to find the trial head as nothing is marked and we were going off of an archaic map. After several stops and head scratching sessions we finally found the plateau that held the trail head. Excited and stunned by the incredible views, I scampered off to take some photos for my "bike" album. Massive rock spires that you can't see from the freeway poked out from the northern faces of the mountains. It looked like Mordor, except sunny and immaculate. Massive snow fields drifted down the flatter sides of the mountains. The air was cool and clean. There were few clouds, and the sun warmed our faces as we all took in the sites.

As we were getting ready a friend asked if I had a pack. I hadn't really thought to bring one because shuttles are usually just hot laps where if something bad happens, you can just walk out without an issue. Turns out, this was a hell of a long descent (around 10 miles) and I could have been really screwed had something bad happened. With that in mind I decided to keep my phone on me as my lone weapon for survival. Two of the boys had packs with water and the necessary tools to fix a broken bike. Scott and I were pretty useless and and crossed our fingers that nothing scary would happen.

After snapping a few photos we all dropped in to the trail. It was dry and rutted and flowy. Very different that the wet loam I'm used to, but exactly what I needed to prepare for my Peru trip. I took things slow as the bike is still new to me and the trail was completely foreign. After about 1 minute I encountered a couple patches of snow, where I caught up to the boys gingerly walking their bikes across the slick parts. We got back on and descended a bit more (at this point we'd only been riding for about 5 minutes total, so not long, thankfully.) until we reached a snowfield that stretched as far as we could see. Interestingly enough, when we were talking about doing this ride, our biggest concern was that the road may be washed out on the drive up, not that we wouldn't be able to ride due to massive amounts of old snow.

While the temperatures were noticeably cooler in the shady snow regions, it was still quite pleasant. I snapped a couple more photos while Scott hiked where we thought the trail may go to see if there was an obvious route down. The other two boys consulted their maps to see if we would be on the north side of the mountains the entire time. I started thinking this may just be a total loss. After about 10 minutes Scott came back and asked how long the trail runs along the north side of the mountains. The guys responded with a sullen, "the entire trail is on the north side." We were totally hosed. We had no choice but to hike back to the top of the trail. It got me to thinking how lucky we were that we hadn't ridden miles before we encountered an impasse. How would we have gotten out of it? Would we have really turned around and ridden singletrack back up? Even if it was really steep? Thankfully we didn't have to make that decision. The hike out took maybe 10 or 15 minutes. No big deal. But, what a bummer it was to go all that way and then not be able to ride.

After writing the day off as a total biking loss we decided to all meet in downtown Seattle for dinner. Thai food was sounding good so we all headed that direction. The drive was long. We were getting tired. All we wanted was some food. Scott and I arrived at the restaurant first and as we approached the front door, we saw that it was closed. Seriously. What else could happen today? We decided that it was probably best if we just headed home and called it a day.

Nothing catastrophic happened (to us at least. Can't say the same for the poor bastards in the car crash.) The adventure out to Kachess was actually pretty fun, albeit disappointing that we couldn't ride. I always enjoy hanging out with my bike buddies, even if we don't always get to do what we want. I learned to be better prepared, as you just never know what might happen. I just couldn't believe all of the strange things that happened today. Seriously - it must be the stars.