A steady rain today has brought to an end an almost unbelievably great week of mountain bike riding here in the Columbia River Gorge. Whether it’s due to global warming, or we are just lucky to not have the usual gray and wet until July routine this year, the late winter/early spring weather here has been uncharacteristically dry and sunny, allowing us to ride the best spots in the area with perfect conditions, without the summertime crowds.
A week ago today, the trails in the area that dry quickly started rounding into shape after a couple days of light rain. The sun was peeking in and out of the clouds of the clearing storms, everything was still damp and green, there were only a few easily avoidable puddles and mud on the trails but most of the trails were in just about perfect conditions.
After a warm day and clear, dry night, Don and I headed out to the Syncline again to find perfect conditions. A sunny day in the sixties, better still, the puddles and mud were pretty much gone from the trails and the condition of the trails could not be much better. Perfect for mountain biking.
We only saw a few other bike riders. We met one guy who was there for the first time, he wanted to tag along with us and wound up headed down Hidden Valley Trail, which is not exactly a beginner trail. He had a couple crashes, but quite an MTB adventure story to tell.
Another clear, dry night, so we hit it early to a local Hood River County trail to beat the weekend crowds. Turned out to be another perfect day with great trail conditions.
We stopped to check out this “bridge” we built a couple years ago because this section of trail was nothing but a mud pit. Still doing the job with no cost to taxpayers or the public at large.
We ran out of luck a little with the nice overnight weather, we had some pretty decent rain showers that left the places we rode the past couple days with perfect conditions too muddy to ride. Luckily, the rain did not make it far east enough for us to drive a bit and find more perfect riding conditions.
Deer Hollow is kind of off the radar, which is OK with us. It’s more rugged than most people like anyway.
We drove away from the gray and wet weather to the clear skies and sun of Deer Hollow for a great day of riding.
Had to take a day off of riding, not that I wanted to, but you know how it goes. The rain stopped and it was drying out quickly, so I headed a local trail system that is probably one of the best mountain bike riding spots in the Pacific Northwest, maybe in the whole country; Post Canyon. It is very popular with mountain bikers, as well as dog walkers, runners and hikers. Some the trails are open to motorcycles and ATVs. Post Canyon has something for mountain bikers of every level, it’s a great place to ride. It gets muddy in the winter and very crowded in the summer, especially on weekends. There are a few days a year you can really say that Post Canyon was perfect, one of those days could have been a couple of days ago and yesterday was even better than that.
Sunny, about 60°, a really nice day. There were some spots on the trails that were a little muddy, once again, easily avoided, most of the trails were in great condition.
Knowing that the trail conditions would be perfect, what could I do? There was no option to hit it again the next day.
Another nice day with perfect conditions. I spent a lot of time on the features on Family Man trying to improve my bike handling skills, then rode around checking out the many trails that wind around the Post Canyon area. Even though I don’t even have Family Man 100% wired, I felt good enough to have a go at one of the freeride trails.
I rode some of the trails that motorized vehicles use, usually, you can’t ride them because motorcycles and ATVs chew up the trail pretty good, making it hard to ride mountain bikes on them. It looked like some of them were a couple dry days away from being dusty, now they are one day of rain away from being mud again.
Other WatermanAtWork.com news; more photos and videos getting ready to hit the watermanatwork.com website, we are getting ready for the fishing season to start, there will be a new section on the blog for regular fishing action so look for a few changes to the WatermanAtWork.com blog. Also, we’ve been assisting the North Bonneville Disc Golf Association(NBDGA) with their website, so if you like disc golf and you happen to be in the North Bonneville, WA, check them out.