Cycling Sojourner

[Mr. Coffee]

I recently found these two well-written bicycle touring guides (for Oregon and Washington). If you live in Oregon or Washington and are looking for inspiration on how to adventure on your e-bike these guides are not a bad place to start.

Some of the tours literally start in downtown Seattle. Some of the tours are out in extremely wild and isolated parts of eastern Oregon and Washington. Sprinkled within the book are ideas and inspirations for other tours, whether an S24O or linking several tours into a grand and ambitious adventure all over the state(s).

Excellent cue sheets are included.

The Oregon guide was published in 2012 and the Washington guide was published in 2014, so some of the information is a bit dated. If you plan a trip do your own research! But both of these guides are an excellent starting point to planning the best Summer (or Fall, or Spring) vacation ever. The guides are entertainingly written with an eye towards someone who is going to be camping out, but good references to hotels, motels, resorts, and hostels for the credit-card tourist are also provided.

One thing I like is that the author Ellee Thalheimer is smart enough to realize she didn't know everything so she had an amazing number of guest contributors which both fleshed out many of the tours and gave a different perspective of some of them as well.

Cycling Sojourner

Highly recommended.

I'm posting this because I have been asked, both publicly and privately, how I figure out where to go on a bike trip. Guidebooks like these are a great example4 of how I do that.

 

[Alaskan]

Thanks. Ooks like a great resource. Where are the books actually available? I didn't find a purchase option on the site.

 

[Mr. Coffee]

Ooops! Here is the link:

By The Book

 

[Cowlitz]

Thanks. Ooks like a great resource. Where are the books actually available? I didn't find a purchase option on the site.

Click on Store at the top of the page. It's a bit to the right.

I camped near a large group of cyclists who were on a loop trip. The folks I talked to were not familiar with the route, but it started in Oroville, WA and went up Hwy 20 to the Bonaparte Lake road and on that to the resort campground. The next day was over to Curlew. The next was to somewhere either Grand Forks BC or something, then back around and back across to Oroville.

Hwy 20 out of Tonasket is considered to be a bike route, but I would not like riding on it. There is very little in the way of shoulder and some nasty blind curves. As I was passing the bicycle group, I was happy to see that all were in single file and keeping very far over.

 

[Mr. Coffee]

Hwy 20 in Washington is part of ACA's Northern Tier route.

I agree that many sections of it are very poor and somewhat dangerous riding. But with a little research and if you are willing to tolerate gravel riding and some extra distance there are great alternatives.

The Cycling Sojourner guide has a tour that starts in Tonasket, goes through Loomis, Nighthawk, and down the Simalkameen River Valley to Oroville, then steeply up to Chesaw and Curlew, then South to Republic, then from Republic climbs over Wauconda summit on Hwy 20 then ends with that screaming downhill back to Tonasket. Nice country to ride in. There are now bike trails connecting from Curlew (actually from the Canadian Border at Danville) almost all the way to Republic.

 

[Cowlitz]

Hwy 20 in Washington is part of ACA's Northern Tier route.

I agree that many sections of it are very poor and somewhat dangerous riding. But with a little research and if you are willing to tolerate gravel riding and some extra distance there are great alternatives.

The Cycling Sojourner guide has a tour that starts in Tonasket, goes through Loomis, Nighthawk, and down the Simalkameen River Valley to Oroville, then steeply up to Chesaw and Curlew, then South to Republic, then from Republic climbs over Wauconda summit on Hwy 20 then ends with that screaming downhill back to Tonasket. Nice country to ride in. There are now bike trails connecting from Curlew (actually from the Canadian Border at Danville) almost all the way to Republic.

Hwy 20 in Washington is part of ACA's Northern Tier route.

I agree that many sections of it are very poor and somewhat dangerous riding. But with a little research and if you are willing to tolerate gravel riding and some extra distance there are great alternatives.

The Cycling Sojourner guide has a tour that starts in Tonasket, goes through Loomis, Nighthawk, and down the Simalkameen River Valley to Oroville, then steeply up to Chesaw and Curlew, then South to Republic, then from Republic climbs over Wauconda summit on Hwy 20 then ends with that screaming downhill back to Tonasket. Nice country to ride in. There are now bike trails connecting from Curlew (actually from the Canadian Border at Danville) almost all the way to Republic.

Do you know if e-bikes are allowed on the Rails to Trails at Republic? I have been trying to motivate a friend to go ride that with me.

 

[Mr. Coffee]

Do you know if e-bikes are allowed on the Rails to Trails at Republic? I have been trying to motivate a friend to go ride that with me.

No, I don't know for sure.

I do know that under WA state law that if a bike trail has an improved surface (e.g. paved or gravel) Class I and Class II e-bikes are allowed unless explicitly prohibited by local ordinance. Bluntly I can't imagine that Ferry County would bother with an e-bike ban.

Even if you can't ride the trail (and I'd strongly bet you can) there are an amazing number of county roads and forest service roads that have very little traffic (especially if you avoid the roads that mining trucks are hauling on) in the area.

 

[Mr. Coffee]

@Cowlitz

If you head out that way, right now there are two fires to the South of Republic on the Colville Indian Reservation. So it might be kind of smoky if you were to head that way this weekend.

 

[Cowlitz]

@Cowlitz

If you head out that way, right now there are two fires to the South of Republic on the Colville Indian Reservation. So it might be kind of smoky if you were to head that way this weekend.

We can probably expect more fires. A good, local, newsy source for fires is the Okanogan/Methow facebook page. Not much about biking on it though.

 

[Mr. Coffee]

We can probably expect more fires. A good, local, newsy source for fires is the Okanogan/Methow facebook page. Not much about biking on it though.

Yep, for what we are about to receive we need to be thankful. It is just a touch smoky here in the Methow right now.

Two other websites for fire information are:

https://inciweb.nwcg.gov and The NW fire blog. If you are a wildfire geek Wildfire Today is awesome. Yes, there are wildfire geeks.

A little bit of experimentation on Google maps shows that you could ride from Tonasket to Metaline Falls (or actually from Winthrop to Priest Lake in Idaho) with nearly all of that distance on lightly used forest service and county roads. It seems feasible to put together an itinerary that would bring you to a town with hotels or an RV park where you could charge your bike, do laundry, and get outside a decent meal every 45-60 miles. So if you can get that kind of range out of your bike you could put together a pretty awesome backroads tour in NE Washington. Please send me photos if you actually do it.

A similar tour in the southern WA Cascades would be to start at Trout Lake, go to Carson, then Cougar, then Randle, then back to Trout Lake. I'd recommend this trip in late September or early October because the blueberries would be awesome.

Both of those trips I described are pretty badass. There isn't likely to be any resupply, cell coverage, or even a faucet between towns. And most of the towns have very limited lodging, camping, and resupply options. So do your research before trying any of these adventures.

 

[Cowlitz]

I moved back to here from there ( Randle) and would recommend that one makes sure the road is repaired between Trout Lake and Randle. The big washout on the 23 road was repaired late last fall, but I'm not sure about the rest. A good source for that is to google White Pass Shopper and read the rec and road reports. As for picking berries, the easy patches will be picked. There is massive competition for berries now and vanloads of commercial pickers seem to get to the roadside patches just before the berries are just right. That was a reason to get an ebike. The rough roads to my super secret patches were getting washed out and I figured I could wrassle a bike through the washouts and haul some berries out. Then my house sold and I moved. Oh, and the huckleberries seem to be ripening earlier than they used to.

I am enjoying taking rides on the county roads from my house and then buying cherries on the way home. I do not take a map so navigate by landmarks and DEAD END signs. I do need to get a more recent than 1970 forest map because I do not remember how to get around on the woods roads.

 

[Mr. Coffee]

If I were going to do either of those proposed tours I would spend a couple of days actually driving the route and scouting it out to make sure it would "go" as a bike tour. The other thing is that all of those towns are pretty small and have very limited services. Places close down in small towns for pretty arbitrary reasons and especially if you tried to do either of those trips in the fall a lot of places might be closed. So doing some scouting and research is a great idea.