Washington Pass from the valley floor (bike pics) + Harts Pass Larch March (hiking pics)

It was a busy weekend. I asked for advice a week ago about road vs mountain cycling, I wound up doing a road ride, on one of the most impressive and frankly amazing roads around, and then hiking the next day.

I started the bike ride at the Mazama Store, which is the natural and obvious place to start. On the way up I made a side trip to the Cutthroat trailhead, I won’t say it was a mistake, but the highway is basically a railroad grade, while this rough and beat up road was much steeper, and left me a lot more fatigued than I would have been. I wanted to rest a moment during the last few miles, but it was steep enough that I didn’t want to have to clip in and get moving again, so there was no rest for the weary. At the pass, I decided to visit the overlook, more climbing. And then as if all of this wasn’t punishment enough, my Garmin read 3,9?? feet of elevation gain and I just couldn’t let that go, I made a short side trip up a gravel road to push it over the top.

But let’s take a moment to talk about the road. Washington began work on the North Cascades Highway in the 1890s, it finally opened in the 1970s. They thought they’d put the road over Cascade Pass, they thought they’d put it over Harts Pass, they thought nobody would ever build a road through these mountains. When they arrived in the Methow Valley, these men who’d spent their lives shoveling gravel said “This place is so beautiful, only a poet could describe it.” “Yeah, we need a poet.” They wrote the poet laureate, told him it was an emergency, that they were building a road that would forever change the valley, and that he must capture it in its current form. Plaques around the valley showcase these old poems. The highway they built is a wonder.

The ”ride movie” is cooler than usual this time: https://www.relive.cc/view/1878517107

Not the fall color I came to see, but nice nonetheless:



Cutthroat Creek





The Hairpin



The yellow up in those basins above the road is what I came for. But I was a little early.



The next day I hiked at Harts Pass. This was the last day of September.







You can see Slate in this one.





Dead Horse Point, from the drive back down.



And this was the view from my hotel.