Cascadia, Eurostyle — Black Diamond Edition

Willkom­men to Seat­tle! We’ll pick you up in the morn­ing either at the air­port, in down­town Seat­tle or in Issaquah before head­ing to our head­quar­ters to get fit­ted on your Giant Trance (unless you opt to bring your own bike). Once bikes are tuned and ready to go, we will load up and head over Sno­qualmie Pass to the dry side, as “Wash­ing­to­ni­ans” call East­ern Washington.

Your first ride is an old clas­sic, Kachess. This ride will start with a long flat fire ser­vice road next to a lake which will tran­si­tion into a climb up 3000 feet over 4 miles. Enjoy the view of peaks, lake and the majes­tic Mount Rainier before we drop in. From here, except for a short dou­ble-climb, it’s bliss­ful down­hill sin­gle track through mead­ows, across streams and a few tech­ni­cal sec­tions back to where the ride began. Over­all, a spicy blue square ride. 

Lunch will be on top of the ridge before we descend or along the trail depend­ing on your ener­gy lev­els. After a cool­er raid at the creek next to the pick­up point, you will have a scenic 1 hour shut­tle over anoth­er pass before we land in Leav­en­worth, heart of the Cas­cades. Check into lodg­ing and it’s time to eat. Wel­come to lit­tle Bavaria. 

Leav­en­worth is easy to love. Tourism has been the dri­ving indus­try in this small moun­tain vil­lage since the log­ging work came to a halt in the 50s. As a means of attempt­ing to keep a dye­ing town from becom­ing a ghost town, the city coun­sel took a leap and added a façade to the front of a cou­ple build­ings down­town to mim­ic Bavar­i­an archi­tec­ture. It worked, very well. Today Leav­en­worth is packed year-round with vis­i­tors look­ing to shop and stay in this out-of-place gem. So, what do we want to do there? Leav­en­worth hosts moun­tains and rivers on every side with excep­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ty to ride, kayak, fish, hike, climb, ski, and most impor­tant, ride moun­tain bikes.

Today’s ride will start with a ped­al to break­fast tacos and cof­fee. Fol­low­ing we make a gen­tle warm up climb through neigh­bor­hoods to Ski Hill. Depend­ing what we want to accom­plish for the day, we will either start with a steep climb, or a very steep climb! Either way, we have a great set of options as we hit a net­work of trails rang­ing from smooth flowy and wide, to steep, nar­row ridge lines.

After a fun morn­ing on the oblig­a­tory Leav­en­worth trail sys­tem, we coast to lunch back in town. From here, we have options. Kick back and enjoy the vil­lage? We could also take anoth­er lap on Rosy Boa or any num­ber of options.

Eat a big break­fast, this will be a big day of rid­ing. Shut­tle van will make a half hour dri­ve up to our drop point. We will be tak­ing full packs of fuel; we are get­ting our there today.

The van will drop us with most of the climb­ing done high above Swauk Pass. This is a rarely rid­den ridge­line, due to it’s remote loca­tion and tricky logis­tics. The over­all ride is 7000 feet of descend­ing with 2000 feet of gain over 35 miles. Yes there are vari­a­tions we could con­sid­er that could include a hot descent with the option to run it twice, but the planned ride is going to be a tour. You will spend a long day on ridge­lines con­nect­ing tech­ni­cal sin­gle track by way of remote 4x4 roads to a seg­ment of the Dev­ils Gulch, tran­si­tion­ing to Mis­sion Ridge for a steep fin­ish to the pave­ment. You can hop in the shut­tle if you must at mile 25, but we rec­om­mend coast­ing the gen­tle chip seal the last 10 miles through peach orchards to the Wenatchee riv­er. The ride is just amazing. 

You won’t like­ly want a post ride, ride, but if you do, we will be ready. Din­ner is going to taste extra good tonight!

By day 4, you are like­ly wak­ing up sore. Sleep in and extra hour, or join us at the riv­er for stretch­es and choice yoga pos­es. We still have 2 days of rid­ing ahead. After break­fast and cof­fee, hop in the shut­tle rig.

We are head­ed 30 min­utes to the Colum­bia Riv­er then head­ed up to the Num­ber 2 Canyon trail­head. Tucked around a moun­tain block­ing your view of the riv­er, we will hit the trail. Today’s ride will be less intense both tech­ni­cal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly than the last, to bal­ance out the chal­lenge from the epic on Tronsen. 

The trails at #2 are most­ly smooth hard clay with com­fort­able inter­vals of shade until we hit the down­hill por­tion which will present long views and lots of sun expo­sure. Frist up, Stair­way to Heav­en. The grade makes for fast climb­ing through the pon­derosa pines and tall grass­es with the occa­sion­al basalt out­crops. We will climb until we hit our first view of the riv­er, then poten­tial­ly decide to add a loop drop­ping back to the trail­head and regain the ele­va­tion again before fin­ish­ing the climb to the summit.

From the top, there are 2 “sum­mits” so we will ride to each try­ing to decide which is high­er. After pho­tos, a refill and flip­ping switch­es on sus­pen­sion, it’s time to descend. 

The ride down is 4500 feet of flowy, fast, snake-shaped trail. We will take breaks to let the arm pump relax and use it to name peaks and geo­log­i­cal fea­tures eas­i­ly seen from this van­tage. Glac­i­er Vol­cano over there, The Enchant­ments just to the left, wheat fields of the east­ern side of the state over there… This view presents a sto­ry of Cas­ca­dia. The great Colum­bia Riv­er is rough­ly where a micro con­ti­nent col­lid­ed with North Amer­i­ca. The “seam” we are look­ing at is an ocean­ic trench, pinched by col­lid­ing con­ti­nents, filled in with basalt flows and cov­ered by soils import­ed from our friends in the Koote­nay Rock­ies. These rugged moun­tains pro­vide a play­ground for moun­tain bik­ers, with a var­ied his­to­ry geol­o­gist are only begin­ning to under­stand.…. So yeah, we are tak­ing photos! 

As we get close to the Colum­bia Riv­er and the town of Wenatchee, we will have seg­ments of exposed sin­gle track and tight­ly twist­ing trails through the grass­es and sages. 

We will fin­ish the ride coast­ing through town to a pub where our van will be wait­ing. Back in Leav­en­worth we will head out for our last din­ner of the week and hit the sack, or, enjoy one of many great venues for some after din­ner gela­to, cock­tails or brews. 

The shut­tle back to the Seat­tle area is 2.5 hours from this point. We will pack up in the morn­ing, eat some more amaz­ing break­fast tacos, drink great cof­fee and cross to the oth­er side of the Cascades.

We are not done rid­ing yet; we need to hit Rag­ing Riv­er. This new trail net­work hosts enough sin­gle track to keep you busy for days. So we will go right in for the pri­mo selection. 

Ride the one way climb trail for the first half of the moun­tain then hop off to the for­est ser­vice road for the sec­ond half so you can spend more time talk­ing with your new friends on the way up. From the sum­mit, we will see deep into the west­ern slopes in one direc­tion and Mount Rainier in the oth­er. That is unless, you get the win­ter view of grey. Sounds bleak, but the fog in the dou­glas firs is noth­ing to apol­o­gize about. 

Ready to hit trail? We are start­ing with Canyon Creek Down­hill. This “Blue Square” is packed with roots, cor­ners, berms and lines in a dark for­est of loam heav­en through hem­locks and firs. The low­er seg­ments give to faster trail and a cou­ple fun hips with land­ings in just the right place. When we come out, we will need to tack­le a stiff climb for 1000 feet. Fol­low­ing this last climb of the week, we will hit the most pop­u­lar trail in the state, Pop­pin Tops. This flow line is so fun. Dou­bles, tables, berms, views. A per­fect con­clu­sion to a week of rid­ing hard. 

From here guides will break down and pack your bikes, unless you used ours, while eat­ing lunch in the park. We will be back in Seat­tle to drop you off for an ear­ly after­noon flight out of town, or you could hit up our favorite hotel in Seat­tle, The Thomp­son, to wash off the ride and enjoy the evening over­look­ing the Puget Sound.