It was a long wait till tax day this year. My taxes were done. The wait was waiting for the trails on Tiger Mountain to open. The multi-use MTB trails on Tiger Mountain close for 6 months during the wet and stormy Winter. They open every year on April 15th, tax day. Today was opening day and I needed to ride.
The weather was unsettled, meaning it was cool with the threat of rain and thunder showers. Not ideal weather for a ride, but it was opening day and I needed to ride. It has been raining on and off for the last few days so the trails were soggy and there were mud puddles to deal with. The many roots on the trail were also slicked up due to the mud and wetness just to add some added difficulty to the trail.
I got started late and arrived at the trailhead at 3:00 PM. Time to put on the gear, stretch, give the muni a once over, and start the ride. At 3:15 I was off.
The ride at Tiger starts with a 3 mile long climb on a logging road that gains about 1140 vertical feet. In my eagerness I attacked the climb at a faster pace than normal. I normally give the climb more respect because it’s going to be an 11 mile ride and it wouldn’t be wise to blow all my energy in just the first 3 miles. But this was opening day and I was excited after being denied the ability to ride my trails for 6 months. The climb was going better than I expected for this being the first Tiger ride of the season. I was putting on the power to make it up the longest continuous up section of the climb when tired legs and a wet rock combined to give me a very quick UPD to all fours. I’ll have to edit out my exact comment immediately following that UPD. Unfortunately the hikers just ahead of me got an earful. The challenge of doing the climb with no falls and no stops was gone. Nothing left but to trudge onward. The good news was that I made it to the top in record time even though I took an additional stop to pee.
At the top of the climb the Roach arm armour goes on and I get ready for 3.5 miles of wet and muddy mostly downhill singletrack on the Preston Railroad Trail. The Winter storms were not kind to the trails on Tiger Mountain. There were more large blowdowns than I could keep track off. The blowdowns that fell across the trail had already been cleared, but some of the blowdowns were right next to the trail and the upheaved rootballs had taken part of the trail with them. Some obvious trail work had been done to get the trails ready and rideable. This 3.5 miles of singletrack is the reason for doing this ride. It’s over all to quick, but boy is it fun. The wetness and the chewed up condition of parts of the trail made the ride more difficult than normal. Many UPDs, but fortunately none that caused me to land in a mud puddle.
Next comes a 2.something mile ride on a logging road that will take me to the Northwest Timber Trail. Halfway through the logging road ride it starts to shower very lightly. I optimistically hope that it will just shower and quickly blow over. The misty shower turns to rain and just as I reach the Northwest Timber Trail the rain turns to hail. The hail adds and interesting twist and covered the singletrack in white. After a half mile or so the hail stopped and I got to enjoy riding through a trail of muddy white. The coating of white made for an interesting ride. The Winter storms had made some changes to the Northwest Timber Trail and there were some new trail features to deal with. The new trail features still need to settle in. They’ll make for some new challenges on the trail.
It’s now a quarter till 6 and I’m back at the car. I’m muddy, wet, my shoes are soaked. I discover that in my haste to leave I forgot to pack the shoes and dry socks that I had put right next to the front door. At least I remembered to bring a spare shirt and shorts.
I’m eagerly awaiting saturday, where i get to ride the wa’ahila valley trails. take a bus to the top, get out and ride a system of about 6-7 trails with all possible terrain types, difficulty ranging from intermidiate to kris holm, all downhill. get to the end, take the bus back up, repeat until exhaustion. it’s pure joy.
That would be cheating.
And I’ll bet that you’re not going to get the experience of riding on a freshly hailed on trail. That was a blast. The trail was all white except for a little strip of brown ribbon where my tire (or tires in the case of the two bikes ahead of me) had ridden.
I went riding on the same trail on closing day 6 months ago. It was a wet muddy ride then too, but no rain and no hail.
Excellent!! Sounds like a great ride. I certainly remember that trail from 2002 - it was a really nice ride. Denied access for 6 months is sad, but at least there are some other nice places to ride up there.
I also enjoyed that ride at UNICON 11. We definitely didn’t do a whole 11 miles though. Riding in hail must be interesting. It must get awfully loud on the helmet! Hail on rocks would probably be prohibitively slippery…
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There are good places to ride here year round so even though Tiger is closed for 6 months every year, there are still places to ride. However, Tiger is my favorite local ride so I do miss it while it’s closed.
The local MTB club and the Washington State DNR (Department of Natural Resources) are working on some plans that would allow the trails there to be open year round. The trails need some work so they’ll be able to handle the Winter riding. Hopefully some time in the not to distant future we’ll be able to ride there year round.
It’s ironic that opening day was rainy and unsettled. The previous month has been full of great weather and not much rain. Then opening day comes along and the weather takes a nose dive.
We did two rides at Tiger Mountain during UNICON 11. One ride was the Iverson RR Trail and the other ride was the Preston RR Trail. The Preston RR Trail is the 11 miler and the big climb. I don’t think you went on the Preston RR Trail ride. The Iverson RR Trail is shorter and I remember you being along for that ride. The Iverson RR Trail ride featured one rider loosing their shoe in a muddy marshy area off the trail.
I didn’t notice the hail being a problem on the helmet. The hail pellets were small and the hail downpour was short lived. I did notice the hail falling in the top part of my 661 leg armor and I didn’t like that because it was cold and it got the insides of my armor all soaked.
