North Cascades Ride

Last Thursday we packed up from the house we had rented (another story) and walked around downtown Coeur d'Alene for a while.  The flowers around the downtown area are beautiful.   (More Photos from Coeur d'Alene)

Around 11:30, we headed out for Seattle to Jim and Heidi's house to meet them for a 3 day weekend North Cascasdes Ride.  Their cycling team does this ride every year from Newhalem to Winthrop Washington and back.  From Newhalem to Washington Pass is 42 miles and 6000' of climbing.

Since Beth and I are not so fast on the tandem when it comes to big climbs, we left at least a half hour ahead of Heidi and most of the other women.  I think they caught us in less than 15 miles.  Jim and most of the men left about 2 hours later.  We got to the top maybe 5 minutes before Jim.  Another mile and he would have caught us.


From Washington Pass it is about 16 miles of down hill which is more of our specialty... gravity is our friend on the down hill runs. We had 5 straight miles of over 40mph and a peak speed of 54mph somewhere along the way.   When the road flattened out, the team cyclists left us in the dust and we met up with them at the School House Pub in Winthrop

On Saturday Beth and I just relaxed, had lunch by the Methow River behind our hotel, took a nap, played Scrabble and basically did nothing all day.  Jim and Heidi and a few of the teammates rented inner tubes and floated a mile stretch of the river a couple of times to enjoy the sun and river.

Early Sunday morning, we packed up and started back to Washington Pass well ahead of Jim and Heidi to allow us time to stop in Mazama at the general store for coffee and a locally grown peach.  Just in general, we are really enjoying all of the local fruits like blueberrys, raspberrys, blackberrys and peaches.  There is a fruit stand just across the street from their house in Seattle.

We arrived at the Pass about an hour ahead of Jim and Heidi and talked with all of the other riders and support people as they came by.  Everyone was very helpful and supportive on the ride.

We started the descent from Washington Pass which is only about 3 miles long before you have to do a relatively short climb back up to Rainy Pass.  Jim, Heidi and Laura, friend of Heidi's, met up with a support RV at the pass and waited for us to catch up again.

We rode together for a while longer on the descent from Rainy Pass, but it wasn't long before the occasional hill would put us behind.  Jim waited up for us at Diablo Lake, but eventually he just couldn't go as slow we do on one of bigger hills, so we all met up at the bottom.

It was a great couple of rides with a nice relaxing day of rest.  On the way back to Seattle we stopped for locally made organic icecream which really hit the spot after the ride.

Monday we spent running errands, cleaning the bike and hanging out.  We head to Crystal Mountain Resort near Mt. Rainier on Tuesday for a few days of riding and hiking there.

More Photos from the ride