A couple straight days of heavy rain has brought to an end an incredible run of nice late winter weather here in the Pacific Northwest. Usually, the weather is endlessly wet and cold, but the past couple years, especially this one, have been drier and milder than normal. A wet spring may last until August, we’re hoping that is not going to be the case. Looks like bike riding on the local trails is off for a few days, at least. The weather forecast is for showers and rain for the next couple days, so it’s not looking like a quick turnaround. No riding means we have time to put some photos up, so here are some photos from the past week or so.
Started off by riding at the Syncline near Bingen, WA. The weather was a little cool, it is winter after all, but it was a beautiful day for the middle of March and the spring flowers were blooming
The trails were in pretty much perfect condition, conditions couldn’t be much better, especially this time of year
The Syncline is a great place to ride bikes, especially if it has been raining or snowing, but it can get really crowded on weekends.
There are some trails near the Syncline that are not as well known as others, probably because they are more technical with plenty of exposure; not for beginners
The next couple days we headed out to a trail in Hood River County that is normally too wet to ride this time of year. Because it hasn’t been raining much, this trail was in nearly perfect condition.
Most of the trail was in great condition, just enough to make it what they call “tacky”; sticking to that trail
The sun is getting a little higher in the sky, days are getting longer as winter fades away
Seeing the sun at this time of the year is pretty rare in the PacNW, we’ll take it anytime we can get it
There were still some wet spots and puddles, it was sad to see that bike riders have pretty much destroyed parts of the trail. We always walk around these really bad wet sections if we can, seems like plenty of riders don’t want to be bothered with preserving the trail. Ruins their “flow”, I reckon.
There was a quickly passing storm that dropped a little rain and snow on the area, so we headed to a spot that is not very well known but is a great place to ride when it’s wet and raining everywhere else. It did not rain(much) on us, but we encountered a couple pretty healthy hailstorms and even some sun
We don’t ride here all that much, but it’s a great set of trails, we need to get out here more often
Knowing significant rain is on the way, we headed out to the Syncline for one more nice day of trail riding
Looks like a few days of mostly inside activities, work will be speeding up on the WatermanAtWork website. Stay tuned.