Time for hot mountain biking, in more ways than one, from the Pacific Northwest. Things quiet down a bit after July fourth, but it’s summer. People around here know that the beautiful days of summer are short, so this is a busy time of year for outdoor activities.
For the most part, the weather has been pretty nice. Warm, perhaps a bit warmer than normal during the day, but still cool at night. Pretty good weather for mountain biking.
The snow is melting off Mt. Adams quicker every day. The cooler temperatures at night have slowed the melting, but with increasing night time temperature and more exposed black lava rock, it will be down to the glaciers in a couple weeks.
This road winds around Mt. Adams ending at the wilderness area.
Still a pretty wild area, there is a lot to see here.
After a week of catching up on computer work and setting up a couple new radios, we left the 100° river valley for the, hopefully, cooler mountains. You have to be careful what you wish for around here and by the time we were headed back to the mountains, it was raining.
The rain makes for sketchy driving at times, but it also leaves the mountain trails in mint condition. It dries out pretty quickly, but it’s good right now.
Just as the perfect trail conditions on a beautiful morning had created the perfect mountain biking moment when I felt the unmistakable “snap” of a broken chain. I always carry at least one chain tool, it’s a long walk back. I just lubed the chain with Tri Flo so it was especially greasy. I used to use silicon spray but it has gotten really expensive.
I took this photo of Mt. Adams from same spot as the earlier photo in this blog post. The first photo was from 7-7-24. The one below is from 7-19-24. You can see how much snow melts in a little over a week.
Always looking for a good photo.
In the morning before the sun rises above the tall forest trees, some of the trails are very dark. They are still somewhat dark at noon as well.
From the dark trails below, we ride up to the lower mountain peaks around Mt. Adams that are pretty well exposed by past fires.
A strange day yesterday following near record heat. Rain and some thunderstorms came up directly from the south and produced scattered rain and small thunderstorms. Red sky in the morning is usually trouble.
Lower altitude storms were blowing over Mt. Adams and the surrounding foothills.
The near record heat and warm rain adds to the melting of the mountain snow. We checked on the way back. The snow was still melting.
I’ll start filling the camera with photos again tomorrow, so check back soon!