FAR FLUNG & rocky Bikepacking from Tarpiscan to Vantage
Bryan Dolejsi crests the final climb and drops into Ginko Petrified Forest State Park with the Vantage Bridge and Wanapum Dam in the distance.
T
by Ray Birks
he Tarpiscan and Colockum areas of the Wenatchee Mountains are notoriously rocky. It’s almost as if a giant hand swept across north central Washington, moved a large volume of rocks and deposited them into this area of the world tucked in between the Columbia River and Mission Ridge. Or they were flung there in a strange ritual by a long forgotten nomadic tribe specializing in trebuchets and slingshots. I guess there’s probably a more acceptable geologic reason involving lava flows and erosion and less about medieval weapons, but I was a humanities major and one can dream. I’d been aching to explore this area for a few years simply because I didn’t know a lot about it but I understood it to be vast and underappreciated. I knew it was a seasonal wintering area for elk and I’d read a few trail reports on W.T.A. (Washington Trails Association) about hikers making their way to West Bar, which is the large sand bar across from the town of Ray Birks, foreground, and riding buddies Marlin Peterson, Wenatchee, and Bryan Dolejsi, Seattle, conCrescent Bar along with recreationalists on template the rockiness of life somewhere high in the Tarpiscan.
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| The Good Life
www.ncwgoodlife.com
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July 2021
