BradM
06-18-2005, 11:02 PM
Woke up early this morning feeling a bit better than I had the last couple days or I would have gone up to Vancouver Island to spend it with the girl friend. Decided I wanted to get out and play on the bike as the weather looked decent.
So I took off early, about 6:30 and ran down I-5 to Castle Rock, and then up to Johnston Ridge. Top of the mountain was covered by clouds but it was a great morning, while there I decided to ride around the dang thing today as the only thing I had to do was laundry and yard work.
For those not familar with St Helens there are no roads that really circumnavigate it, that "normal" people can use since 05/80, so it was back to I-5 and south to Woodland. Then east on the Lewis River road and into the Gifford Pinchot forest along Lake Merwin, Yale lake and the Swift resevoir. All beautiful roads and almost no traffic, nothing held me back, even the cop car towing a trailer with 3 Rokon's on it, was scooting along.
Got to Cougar and decided to run up to Ape Cave and Lava Canyon. Ape cave is pretty cool, home of the red bottom cave ape. Only old world ape in north america, famous for throwing feces but because it is dark in the cave they can't see you nor you them so usually you avoid getting hit. I'd show you a shot of them but like I said it's dark. So there is a shot of the headquarters below.
Went on up to the end of the road where lava canyon is located, this is the southeast side of mountain, rarely seen in photos because the caldera is on the other side of the mountain. This side though is starkly beautiful, huge mud flows (Lahar) ran down this side and scoured the landscape, the difference from the other side was that it didn't have a river valley (the Toutle) to dump into just old, old, old lava flows. Just beautiful country, saw a bear but couldn't get the camera on him did get a shot of his print though. A bunch of Elk, deer and several coyote were all out on the plain. At one place where a springs come out of the bank I was having a snack and watched a Beaver waddle by and then downstream to his dam and lodge.
From here I ran back down, you have to retrace your steps a lot out here, and back to main forest service road 25 to head north to Windy Ridge. Weather was closing in a bit as I climbed in altitude and got further NE, but no rain. And in 35 miles I saw a single VFR going the other way no other traffic, got up to Windy Ridge turn off FR 99, a spectacular ride, the road is just all corner for 17 miles. The first half or so in the forest and trees but then you get into the blast zone, a few stumpy trees, thousands on downed logs and pumice covered hillsides.
The trees are coming back up after only 25 years, they are at most 12-15". It is a great road for bikes like the strom or the KLR because it is frost heaved, earthquake heaved, and constantly sanded in the upper stretches by the ash and pumice all over. Suspension and the ability to lean a bike over is great thing here. Traffic didn't hold me back till the last mile when I got stuck behind several cars but I felt the distance was too short to pop by to just stop in a minute so I just puttered on up behind them.
The clouds had dropped even further here and only the mountains flanks were visible but I could see Johnston Ridge visitors center about 4 miles away as the crow flys but took me about 140 miles to get from there to where I was looking at it. After a quick chat with 2 BMW adventure riders on their way home to Seattle from Banff I headed down the mountain. They initially started hanging with me but but soon dropped off the pace and weren't seen again.
I made my way north to the little town of Randle and then west on Hwy 12 towards I-5, stopping in Morton for fuel, I had fueled up in Woodland about 180 miles earlier. Chatted a bit with another BMW rider K1200 this time, a submariner out of Bangor on his way to Las Vegas. Nice guy, nice bike. I normally take the back way home along Hwy 508 from Morton but I recalled there was one more St Helens viewpoint just west of Morton so if I followed the crowd down the major (though 2 lane) highway I could complete stopping at every "official" viewpoint of St Helens that can be found along the road, along with a bunch of lesser known places just off the pavement.
290 miles and 7 hours later I was home, still thinking about laundry and yardwork, but I as I got closer to the house the weather just got better and better, so I took the KLR out and ran up to some local logging roads and got a few more pictures of the Mt., only shot about 500 megs today. Here's just a couple of them.
Was a nice ride, too bad you missed it, but I guess I didn't invite you did I?
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y259/Bradklr/apehq.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y259/Bradklr/laharplain2.jpg
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So I took off early, about 6:30 and ran down I-5 to Castle Rock, and then up to Johnston Ridge. Top of the mountain was covered by clouds but it was a great morning, while there I decided to ride around the dang thing today as the only thing I had to do was laundry and yard work.
For those not familar with St Helens there are no roads that really circumnavigate it, that "normal" people can use since 05/80, so it was back to I-5 and south to Woodland. Then east on the Lewis River road and into the Gifford Pinchot forest along Lake Merwin, Yale lake and the Swift resevoir. All beautiful roads and almost no traffic, nothing held me back, even the cop car towing a trailer with 3 Rokon's on it, was scooting along.
Got to Cougar and decided to run up to Ape Cave and Lava Canyon. Ape cave is pretty cool, home of the red bottom cave ape. Only old world ape in north america, famous for throwing feces but because it is dark in the cave they can't see you nor you them so usually you avoid getting hit. I'd show you a shot of them but like I said it's dark. So there is a shot of the headquarters below.
Went on up to the end of the road where lava canyon is located, this is the southeast side of mountain, rarely seen in photos because the caldera is on the other side of the mountain. This side though is starkly beautiful, huge mud flows (Lahar) ran down this side and scoured the landscape, the difference from the other side was that it didn't have a river valley (the Toutle) to dump into just old, old, old lava flows. Just beautiful country, saw a bear but couldn't get the camera on him did get a shot of his print though. A bunch of Elk, deer and several coyote were all out on the plain. At one place where a springs come out of the bank I was having a snack and watched a Beaver waddle by and then downstream to his dam and lodge.
From here I ran back down, you have to retrace your steps a lot out here, and back to main forest service road 25 to head north to Windy Ridge. Weather was closing in a bit as I climbed in altitude and got further NE, but no rain. And in 35 miles I saw a single VFR going the other way no other traffic, got up to Windy Ridge turn off FR 99, a spectacular ride, the road is just all corner for 17 miles. The first half or so in the forest and trees but then you get into the blast zone, a few stumpy trees, thousands on downed logs and pumice covered hillsides.
The trees are coming back up after only 25 years, they are at most 12-15". It is a great road for bikes like the strom or the KLR because it is frost heaved, earthquake heaved, and constantly sanded in the upper stretches by the ash and pumice all over. Suspension and the ability to lean a bike over is great thing here. Traffic didn't hold me back till the last mile when I got stuck behind several cars but I felt the distance was too short to pop by to just stop in a minute so I just puttered on up behind them.
The clouds had dropped even further here and only the mountains flanks were visible but I could see Johnston Ridge visitors center about 4 miles away as the crow flys but took me about 140 miles to get from there to where I was looking at it. After a quick chat with 2 BMW adventure riders on their way home to Seattle from Banff I headed down the mountain. They initially started hanging with me but but soon dropped off the pace and weren't seen again.
I made my way north to the little town of Randle and then west on Hwy 12 towards I-5, stopping in Morton for fuel, I had fueled up in Woodland about 180 miles earlier. Chatted a bit with another BMW rider K1200 this time, a submariner out of Bangor on his way to Las Vegas. Nice guy, nice bike. I normally take the back way home along Hwy 508 from Morton but I recalled there was one more St Helens viewpoint just west of Morton so if I followed the crowd down the major (though 2 lane) highway I could complete stopping at every "official" viewpoint of St Helens that can be found along the road, along with a bunch of lesser known places just off the pavement.
290 miles and 7 hours later I was home, still thinking about laundry and yardwork, but I as I got closer to the house the weather just got better and better, so I took the KLR out and ran up to some local logging roads and got a few more pictures of the Mt., only shot about 500 megs today. Here's just a couple of them.
Was a nice ride, too bad you missed it, but I guess I didn't invite you did I?
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y259/Bradklr/apehq.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y259/Bradklr/laharplain2.jpg
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