Devil's Gulch - first ride 2013

Heading upAaron, Kendall and I headed over to the Gulch on Saturday, June 15. This is our favorite mountain bike ride, bar none - it kicks your butt with 14 miles and 4000' of climbing (on the road, the easier way up) then rewards you with 12 miles of sweet, sweet singletrack downhill. We were eager to understand the condition of the trail given the extensive forest fires we had last summer - the trail was closed in late August for that reason. June is early to ride the gulch, but there was no snow even up at the top of the Mission Ridge, and the trail was smooth and dry.
  We were surprised to see the road closed to cars just after the access road turns to dirt, and we couldn't figure out why because it was in good condition all the way to the normal parking area. We rode up the road (the trail is for manlier men than us - it takes significantly more energy to ride up), and the second leg was still severly washed out in several places.

Aaron and Kendall at the lower Devil's Gulch trailhead

 

With sore arses, we reached the top of the Mission Ridge trail and dropped in. The forest service had done  a great job of clearing the trail - many blowdowns had to be cut to open it up.

Aaron riding through a scree section on the upper trail.

We quickly came across remnants of the burn, most of which were on the upper (Mission Ridge) trail. The trail was as good as it gets - not too dry so minimal dust kicking up and a perfect 70 degrees. We rode the whole thing in about 4 hours, and finished up with a beer and the fantastic barbeque at Country Boys in Cashmere

 

Ready for the down!

 

 Kendall on the trail, Tronsen Ridge in the background.

Mt. Adams, June 9.

Mt. Adams is about my favorite annual event. We usually hit it in July, so this year was a bit different to go in early June. The road to Cold Springs is open if a bit rutted at the top. Kerwin, Aaron and I rallied down on Saturday and showed up about 10pm. After a typical brief night's sleep, we got up at 5:30 and were hiking by 7. We hit snow and started skinning by 8 under clear skies and consistent wind. We trended left at the start to avoid the crowds and extra distance on the summer trail, and only had to use boot crampons once to get up a steep bowl.

We were a bit worried that things would not soften up given the wind and icy conditions we found on the way up, so we timed our descent for 3:30. We felt pretty good, took it slow and made the false summit at 2. Then on to the true summit over nasty ice (not surprising though, that section of the climb is always firm, even in July). We started down the Avalanche Glacier right away - very windy on top (est. sustained 30mph and cool). The top of the run, in the gap between the true summit and the northern peak, was firm ice. It quickly turned to nice corn though just before we skirted over two cracks. These, interestingly, have only been visible in the last two years - we skied this run in 2010 and there were no visible cracks.

 Here's Aaron shredding the glacier. It was great all the way down when usually it gets sloppy at about 9000. We whooped and hollered all the way down the glacier and to the end of the line where we went down to the round-the-mountain trail and picked our way out. We were able to skin all the way back to the main trail, with only 1 or 2 "skis  off" situations. Car by 7pm and back in Seattle at 1! Moving a bit slow on Monday but a fabulous trip.

 Me taking a break.

Route details