A Great Way to See St. Helens

The thermometer in Doug's car read 31 as we pulled into the parking lot on the south side of Mt. St. Helens. I was having a hard time motivating myself to bundle up for some fall mountain biking but since there was a group of us and we'd already driven nearly two hours, I wasn't going to just sit in the car for the day, so I bundled.

The year Mt. St. Helens blew was one of the few years I lived in Washington as a child. I don't remember much but we do have photos of inches and inches of snow like ash that blanketed the small town of Washougal. Thirty years later the evidence of the power of the mountain still remains. We started our ride in old growth forest and soon climbed out onto a huge pumice field. From there we had a great view of the mountain and the desolation surrounding the volcano. As we rode down across the pumice field the wind picked up and we battled our way across Windy Ridge, a loose (and of course windy) ridge. After riding for about 10 miles and feeling like we were really away from civilization, we came to a paved road and and the Windy Ridge observation site which overlooks Spirit Lake. I had a hard time believing people actually drove to this destination, but then again, Americans do weird things. After hunkering down for some lunch (Windy Ridge is Windy Ridge for a reason, everyone who had previously done the ride had never NOT experienced wind on Windy Ridge) we hurried off for a warmer destination and some punishing downhill. Since pumice weighs next to nothing, it does not make for great biking terrain. The first part of our downhill consisted of white knuckle switchbacks followed by loose trail on a slanted slope. Not a mountain bikers dream but considering the unbelievable views and terrain on the rest of the ride, we didn't complain as we bumbled through the pumice.

Finally able to de-layer we took in the myriad of giant toothpicks that remained as they did thirty years ago after the big blast. We rode along a river bed that was obviously once a lava chute but was now a small river. Being in places like this make me realize how small and insignificant humans really are. When I am constantly surrounded by big box stores and other human made entities, I begin to feel as if we rule the world, but mountain biking on St. Helens once again reminded me that life goes on when we humans are not around, we don't rule the world.

The St. Helens ride was one of my favorites. It offers great terrain, it's long (25 miles), and beautiful in a way many Northwest trails are not.