27 July 2002 - Saturday
Mt Rainier
We spent the day looking around and hiking on and about Mt. Rainier.
Unfortunately, the weather was just too foggy to get any real views in.
  
After the hike, we headed to Tacoma for dinner and some fresh fish.
We could not find the right kind of fresh fish but had a long drive anyway.
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28 July 2002 - Sunday
Day off, we did not ride but we did find a cool local car show.
I also took a quick road trip to Yakima to visit my classmate from high
school. We hadn't seen each other for about 20 years.
I also managed to find the ahi (in Yakima) that I was looking
for in Tacoma.
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29 July - Monday
27.4 Mile ride - Smith Creek
This was an extremely long all day single track ride. Strenuous
climbs and descents, lots of hike-a-bike, 264 foot gap. 3.6 mile
steep technical descent of loose pumice. Like riding sand.
Switchbacks, drop offs. Cross Smith Creek several times, in and out
of tree sections. 6.5 miles in out of trees, cross lava canyon creek.
6.3 mile fire road climb up 1260 foot. Eat lunch, reload water, then
start 6.8 mile single track climb through old pine forest 3 mile from Mt.
St.
Helens. Trees like match sticks, mud flows all around me. We
make our way up to Plains of Abraham (gigantic plain of pumice littered
with chunks of lava). Trail winds turns and winds rolly through several
snow melt creeks. We make it to a knife edge ridge to ride down some
really steep technical steps and finally down to the fire road and climb
another 1.8 miles up to the Windy Ridge look out parking lot. From
there we climb on to the parking area at Smith Creek.
Dinner was back at Packwood at Cruisers. Excellent pizza if you
make it there.
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On the trail, we found some bones. Troy picked one up and tossed
it up in the air. Reminded me of "2001"
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Then Bob and Troy picked up bones and started doingn the
" Bone
Dance"
If the image loads but does not run, try clicking
on the image to run the video.
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Beautiful meadow area right on top with Mt. St. Helens
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