Don’t ride muddy trails! Oh wait, we’re not in Dallas anymore. So what do you get when you combine mud and dirt bikes on a trail? Plus add in some climbing. Of course…nothing but fun!
This weekend we went to ride Fish Hook Flats in Cle Elum. We left Seattle in the morning and drove over Snoqualmie Pass to get to the trail, which is in Snoqualmie National Forest. Typical morning weather, but was beautiful when the sun came up!
Of course…the start of the ride is climbing up a dirt road. Only about 2 miles of climbing though. I think we missed some of the trail initially, but staying on the dirt road didn’t matter since it all went in the same direction and we could jump on the trail again later.
This trail is open to dirt bikes and horses. We saw plenty of dirt bikes out there, but no horses. Guess what dirt bikes do to trails…they tear the shit out of them! Some mud and climbing made it a fun challenging ride. The only other mountain bikers we saw was a group of 3 guys, also from Seattle…and one of them was riding a hardtail. So I’m not the only one!
We also saw hunters. Found out later that it was the first day of hunting season for deer. Some of the dudes looked pissed off about us being out there. I bet, plus with the added noise of dirt bikes it probably scared off all wildlife in the area. I’m wondering why they’d want to hunt in this area with all the commotion, but like one of the hunters told us…there’s plenty of idiots out there.
We decided to put on some bright clothing when we stopped for lunch. Kari did mention that shooting mountain bikers might be pretty lucrative since they could then take and sell the bikes.
As usual, there was plenty of climbing. Some of it wasn’t too bad, but some of it was more difficult because of slick/muddy/rutted sections. Damn dirt bikes!
Saul has a book by John Zilly with lots of mountain bike rides in Washington. We followed directions in the book to get to the trailhead, and ended up parking at a different spot. No problem, we just cut out a couple miles of paved road riding. We missed the first part of the trail, but staying on the dirt road wasn’t a bad thing since we ended up intersecting the trail later anyway. We finally got to the start of the singletrack after a few miles of climbing, and it was marked with trail numbers just like in the book.
So the book says the loop is about 19 miles and 1440 feet of elevation gain. Hahaha! It also says we’d cross a creek several times where only one crossing would be on a bridge. Well…we did about twice the climbing and crossed many bridges. Last copyright date in the book was 1998, so I’m thinking the info is a little outdated by now, but at least the directions to get to the trail were still accurate.
The trail was pretty good on the last half of the ride. Nice flowy singletrack through the woods and riding along side a creek for most of the way, with some roller-coaster ups and downs. There was nothing technical on the trail, unless you consider riding in slick mud as technical. The trail would have been great if it wasn’t so muddy.
There are more options out there to hook up with other trails and get more mileage, so this is a good ride only that it’s about 1.5 hours away. We’ll be out here again I’m sure.
