A week in Mazama
Our summer vacation this year was sort of 3 vacations right after each other. You’ve heard about the two smaller ones, our 3 day weekend on Lopez Island celebrating our 9th wedding anniversary and the 3 day Bumbershoot Festival. The highlight of my summer vacation time off started right after Bumbershoot when we rented a house in Mazama, WA for a week.
Mazama is the first town that you get to when crossing the North Cascades Highway from west to east. It is about 15 miles from Washington Pass and is surrounded by National Forest, National Park, and Wilderness. The town itself is tiny and basically consists of a general store (but the best general store that I’ve ever been to), a post office, a climbing guide service, and a couple of hotel/inns. We stayed about a mile out of the core town in a nice rental house that overlooked this big alfalfa field:
It was a great vantage point from which to watch birds, deer, and sunsets.
Rising up to the north of our house (just barely north) was “Goat Wall”. This is a cliff which climbs really steeply and then turns into Goat Mountain, with Goat Peak at the top of it.
One of the great things about Mazama is that it is the western end of the Methow Valley Sport Trail Association trails. This is a set of cross country skiing, walking,and cycling trails that criss cross the Methow Valley,and they went right by the door of our rental house. We used them every day to get to the Mazama Store or to the river and often just for walks or relaxing bike rides. The roads were nice too, but the trails were great.
A highlight on our second day was when we were walking along the trails and saw 3 black bears (two cubs and their mother). We kept a safe distance and watched them for a minute before retreating back to the road. I only had a small P&S camera in my pocket, so the photos aren’t great, but here are the bears:
The trails were really well built and had some cool features such as this suspension bridge over the Methow:
The big attraction of the trip for me was all of the nearby hiking and mountain biking. I brought up my new (to me) Rocky Mountain Hammer mountain bike, my IvyCycles with knobby tires, and our tandem. On most days I went for a mountain bike ride in the morning and a hike in the afternoon. It was great to be near so many great trails without needing to drive much.
There were two hikes that were real highlights for me. Sadly we forgot the camera on the first one, but it was a hike that started at Hart’s Pass and went out to Grasshopper Pass. The whole time you are hiking on a ridge line with fantastic views down into the valleys on either side. There were fires in some of these about 5 years ago and it was interesting to see the patterns of what the fires got and what they didn’t. The wildflowers were out (even this late in the year) and it really felt like we were on top of everything.
The other great hike was up to Blue Lake just past Washington Pass. I did this hike twice, once with Christine and again with our friends Larry and Kathy. It’s a quick hike (5 miles round trip, about 2.5 miles each way) with good views of the pass near the top and a stunning lake. I hiked it with Christine on a Saturday and the trail and lake were both quite busy. When I hiked it with Larry and Kathy we went on a Thursday morning and had the lake to ourselves for well over an hour.
The hike up to Goat Peak was also a good one, but challenging. I did this solo and early in the morning. The trail isn’t long (around 2 miles), but it climbs almost 2000′ in those two miles. It felt like I was walking up stairs for much of it. There is a fire lookout at the top, so I knew there would be good views. I wasn’t disappointed, but I think that the views from up by Hart’s Pass and Grasshopper Pass were even more stunning.
The mountain biking was also really good. I did a bunch of trips, some solo and some with friends. The first group of friends to visit us were Ben and Vanessa and their kids. Ben brought his mountain bike and we went riding up the West Fork Methow River trail. This was interesting because we could look down into this valley while driving up to Hart’s Pass, and it is one of the valleys that was in the fire 5 years ago. The underbrush was eating up it’s new found sunlight and was really thick. The trail is 8 miles out and back, and we went about 5 miles before turning around because the brush was too thick. The trail was the right mix of technical and fun, especially when coming back and riding it downhill. Sadly I seem to have mis-placed the memory card with the photos from that one.
Larry also brought his mountain bike when he visited and we went up to Sun Mountain Lodge. That is 15 miles away in Winthrop and is well known for it’s mountain biking. The trails up there were a little too easy (not very technical, ridden out as my friend Rory put it) but it was still a great day of riding bikes with Larry. I also forgot a camera (do you sense a theme?). We did a roughly 20 mile loop suggested by the bike shop in Winthrop which covered most of the trails. There was a lot of climbing in the middle and the ride ended on some nice downhill singletrack that was a lot of fun.
When we didn’t have friends visiting I still got some riding in. On my first morning in Mazama I headed up to Cedar Falls on my IvyCycles with slick tires. I just rode up to the falls and back, so it was mostly road riding on SR20 with a little trail riding at the end. The trail was a lot of fun though, and I wish I had gone back with the mountain bike and rode the whole thing. The falls were spectacular, but you can only see them from the top:
A couple of days later I tried to find singletrack in the Rendezvous Ski Trails. The roads that lead up there are easily accessible via the MVSTA trail system, so it seemed like the best option for a full dirt circuit from the rental house. There was a lot of climbing, some good views, cattle trying to block my way, but no singletrack. I asked later at the bike shop in Winthrop and they said that the Rendezvous area was better for XC skiing than cycling. It was still a nice loop for the morning, all on pretty good dirt roads. I would like to have more time to explore some of the side roads up there.
The final solo MTB ride that I did was up to Cutthroat Lake and back. This is the closest legal to bikes trail near Washington Pass. The lake wasn’t too spectacular, but the trail was good and there were a lot of good views.
All in all it was a good week of hiking, riding, and relaxing. I hope we can return again next year.