First off, let me say a big thank you to everyone for having some patience with me and sticking around while I rebuilt Bike Like a Brewer. It’s a brand-new installation of ClassicPress, and while I’m not going to get into the technical details of what all that entails, it’s been an effort to get this thing to look the way I want it to and bring it back to a look reminiscent of the classic blogs of old. But here we are!
With that, let’s recap a bike ride I did yesterday on one of my favorite trails in our fair state that sits right in my backyard.
I am a big fan of the Willapa Hills Trail in southwest Washington state. It’s the perfect place to ride a bike to your heart’s content without having to worry about traffic, and you’ll almost always be blessed with great scenery to boot.
Speaking of scenery, autumn is arriving to our region, albeit much slower than at this same time last year. It’s still incredibly pretty, and the turning of the green to yellow along lengthy stretches of trail indicate the real show will begin any day now.
Yesterday I waltzed out to the Willapa for a solo ride on my Giant Revolt gravel bike to see if I could catch any good autumn scenery, and while the vibrant oranges and reds weren’t there in any major capacity, it was still a stunningly beautiful ride. The weather was as you would expect on an autumn day in the Northwest: the last bits of warmth radiating from the sun, with the shade offering a more progressive chill as the ride rambled on.
On this day, I would originate my ride from the Adna Trailhead, nearly five miles west of Chehalis. When I want to ride primarily gravel, I’ll skip the paved portion between Chehalis and Adna — and just start directly at the Adna trailhead, which hits gravel just a mile west from there.
About a month ago I swapped out 700x40c Maxxis Rambler tires for 700x50c (2 inches wide) Schwalbe G-One Ultrabites for a bit more stability and grip on tougher terrain I plan to ride this winter. On the hardpack surface of the Willapa, they work really well, but I do find myself working a little bit harder than I normally would have. My sweet spot for a tire on the Willapa is about 700×35 unless I’m riding in the far western reaches of the trail that aren’t improved just yet, but for the winter I’m gonna keep the Schwalbes on. No need to keep switching out, I’ll just try to become a stronger rider this season.
Wind wasn’t too bad, although it was blowing out of the north and wouldn’t be of much help as the trail primarily goes in an east-west direction. On the return leg, I’d find the lack of tailwind a bit difficult, but nothing I couldn’t work through. One big plus with the lack of wind was that stopping to take the occasional photo here and there didn’t leave me freezing at all even though there’s that autumn bite in the air.
Before I knew it, I had burned through Pe Ell about an hour 20 after leaving Adna. Usually I’ll stop to use the restroom or top up my water at a local convenience store, but there was no such need yesterday. It wasn’t long before I would begin to climb the grade to Pluvius, where my turnaround point for the day would be. En route, some of the more colorful fall scenes of this ride made themselves present especially in Rock Creek, at the mile 25 mark (pictured above).
Climbing to Pluvius isn’t bad at all. You start about a mile and a half west of Pe Ell and settle into a cadence over five and a half miles, climbing 400 feet over an average grade of 1.5 percent. It’s not bad, and when you think about how this is the way trains once carved their way through the Coast Range, you begin to think it was a stroke of genius how some folks in the late 1800s found this passage at the lowest point of the mountains to send trains through.
I turned around at a spot known as the Buffalo Farm (yeah, there was an honest to God bison standing right there staring at me at mile 29), and realized as I began to descend that there was a slight headwind coming back. There’s almost always a tailwind from west to east because the Pacific Ocean is about an hour or two west, but this wasn’t the case yesterday.
Coming home wasn’t bad though. The headwind didn’t last, but it didn’t give way to a tailwind at any point heading back. Again, that’s super rare on the trail, but I took it as one of the unique ways the Willapa can give you any sort of conditions on any given day. It’s part of the reason I love this trail so much.
Every one of my trail excursions requires a stop at a local store, restaurant or watering hole of some sort. Yesterday I made my way to Jones Creek Brewing, and I’m always pleased to partake in their non-alcoholic offerings and grab some food as well. The entree of choice on this day would be avocado toast along with a Henry Weinhard’s cherry soda. Odd pairing? Sure, but it was tasty.
From there, it was only 17 miles back to Adna. It was getting a bit close to sunset, so I decided to pick up the pace a bit. Before long, I saw my friend Clint at Ceres Hill just a few miles from the finish, and we rolled back to the end together.
All in all, a gorgeous day in the saddle, and 50 miles just about on the nose. It was a good recon ride for this upcoming Saturday’s annual Willapa Hills Trail Fans Autumn Ride, and it’ll be good to be back out there in a week to see some friends and make some new ones.
