[red-haze.com]

Got a phone message late monday night, all I could hear was "Ape Canyon" "ride" and "shiggy gave me your number".
Called back and got ahold of Al and Colette, aka aosty and impy, heading up to Portland from Eugene and they wanted some info on riding Mt St Helens.
After a few minutes of talking, I noticed my vision was blurring and I just couldn't see "work" the next day. This is a recurring eye problem that I'll have to deal with all my life.
So...
met them tuesday morn in Woodland at thor's Berserker bike shop where we yipped and yapped and met their friends on motorcycles, Ryan and Amanda. Led them all up to Ape Canyon Trail # 234 where we got ready and the 3 of us bikers (Al on his Dean 29er SS, Colette on her RacerX gearie, and me on the reBrew) headed up the trail to a beautiful, and HOT climb to the Plains of Abraham. Trail conditions were excellent as we had just had rain last weekend and the trail showed few signs of travel since then. We basically had the trail to ourselves.

Below are some pics of our day. It is difficult to take a bad picture on Ape Canyon trail...so my apologies.

https://red-haze.com/tr234/CanyonPano01.JPG

https://red-haze.com/tr234/ApeCanyonXpano01.JPG

that was great fun, just what I needed!

 

[gpsser]

Thanks for the beautiful shots. I really can't wait untill I'm finished with this infernal PhD thingy, so I can move back home to Western Wa. I guess I will just have to live with Al's stories when he gets back. My brother-in-law and his family live in long-pew BTW, so I really should find an excuse to get there with my bike.

 

[jh_on_the_cape]

cool pics! brings back memories of camping on the plains of abraham about 4 years ago. awesome! we looked down into ape canyon.
we also hiked through some cool lava tubes.
and stayed at the st martin hotel on the WA side of the river near hood river. funky hot spring place.
thanks for sharing those pics.
i prefer ride pics to bike pics anyday!
hope to make it back out there someday, but with a bike.

 

[Hollywood]

hey aosty

can't you just smile like a normal human being for once?

nice pics Bob! Beauty of a ride.

HW

 

[aosty]

Got a phone message late monday night, all I could hear was "Ape Canyon" "ride" and "shiggy gave me your number".
Called back and got ahold of Al and Colette, aka aosty and impy, heading up to Portland from Eugene and they wanted some info on riding Mt St Helens.
After a few minutes of talking, I noticed my vision was blurring and I just couldn't see "work" the next day. This is a recurring eye problem that I'll have to deal with all my life.

Ha!! After our rockin' tour around Eugene, we called up Bob at the last minute.... within moments, he felt very sick and the only cure was mountain air... wow... .toooo coool!

Big thanks again! Pix sooooon!

 

[Padre]

Ha!! After our rockin' tour around Eugene, we called up Bob at the last minute.... within moments, he felt very sick and the only cure was mountain air... wow... .toooo coool!
Big thanks again! Pix sooooon!

yeah...we are copying Aosty and Impy and heading up north. Trying to hook up with Shiggy and mabye even Sparty and possibly Wade over at Vulture. Can't wait!

 

[Impy]

yeah...we are copying Aosty and Impy and heading up north. Trying to hook up with Shiggy and mabye even Sparty and possibly Wade over at Vulture. Can't wait!

Best roadtrip ever! You guys are going to have a blast!

 

[aosty]

Mt. St. Helens Pix!

Red-Haze, our awesome tour guide...

Red-Haze splashing through glacier stream.... above a waterfall (to the left)....

Impy chugging across the pumice

Follow the trail!

Impy tackles some tight corners

Pumice-eye view

Impy with Mt.St.Helens backdrop

Red-Haze cruising with his H-bar's

 

[GlowBoy]

Nice!

Dang it Bob, you're making me jealous. Ape Canyon is one of my favorite rides ever! My wife and Richie and I almost hiked it the other day (I'm still not MTB'ing after my car accident, but hopefully back in the saddle sometime next month), ... but then we got lazy and hung out on Yale Lake instead.

BTW, we were just finishing off a 5-day camping/hiking trip in the Pinchot. We hiked part of the High Lakes Trail that you and IDM did last year, and spent most of our trip in that area. Also hiked on Mt. Adams and a good chunk of the Quartz Creek Trail, which looks like primo mtn biking to me, bike-legal and very lightly used - have you ridden it?

On this trip we also paid the obligatory visit to Carson Hot Springs (which jh_on_the_cape mentioned). A good long soak in that hot stinky water is the best $12 you can spend, period. By the way, the St. Martin Hotel building is still there, but they've torn down the cabins and are building what looks like maybe 200 hotel rooms on that spot and another location on the site. It doesn't look like they're planning to go upscale and compete with Skamania Lodge or Bonneville Hot Springs (thank God), so hopefully they'll still have reasonable prices and keep the funky feel once it's all done.

 

[red-haze.com]

Quartz Creek. Nice trail to start, but a bit past the big creek crossing is a long, loose climb that was blocked at the top by a huge tree on a steep side hill. That was a couple of years ago so i imagine it is gone by now. The whole trail is epic, in only 10 miles out. I've been from snagtooth creek trail on down to fr90. Not a SS fun trail, that's for sure.

glad you had fun over on high lakes trail, I still remember all that very well as I'm sure Ken does too.!

bike ON
bob