adventure
Gravel Riding in the PNW Mecca Get off the pavement and into the backcountry on gravel roads across the Pacific Northwest written by Kevin Max
I CLIMBED THE last hundred feet out of my saddle, my bike tires spitting up a gravel road with Ponderosa pines towering overhead. I had gotten used to the feeling of pleasure and pain commingled in my body. Wide vistas of Idaho’s Pioneer Mountains narrowed to the width of the gravel road as I pushed up the last big climb of Rebecca’s Private Idaho, the brainchild of cycling legend and Ketchum, Idaho, resident Rebecca Rusch. Nothing seemed harder. Nothing seemed more gratifying than this, my introduction to gravel riding. Gravel, in its forms of speech, has described scratchy voices and roads to dead-end residences. Now, gravel is an honorific describing a burgeoning trend in cycling and some of the best ways to experience the Pacific Northwest through either competitive races, group rides or self-guided exploration. This discipline of cycling marks the convergence of three phenomena—increasingly unsafe road riding with distracted drivers, the discovery of seldom-used BLM and U.S. Forest Service gravel roads, and a cycling industry serving up what people want. “It’s like a perfect medium in between mountain biking and road riding, and, of course, the best part is just the scenery,” noted Anne Marie Stonich, a Seattle resident and long-time cyclist. “It’s generally gorgeous on any gravel ride. You’re guaranteed to be on some beautiful, remote road.” For bike manufacturers, gravel has created a new challenge and new demand. Bikes designed for gravel riding generally 72 1889 WASHINGTON’S MAGAZINE
FEBRUARY | MARCH 2019
look like road bikes but have wider, more durable tires than road bikes, and are more upright and longer for stability. In 2018, this phenomenon led to record sales for gravel bikes, according to the Bicycle Product Suppliers Association. Gravel riding offers a license to ride virtually anywhere there are dirt roads and out of the path of distracted drivers. America has approximately 1.3 million miles of unpaved roads. Idaho has about 14,000. Washington has about 20,000. Oregon has 71,000. “People are looking to get off the highway and are really enjoying this experience called gravel that isn’t new by any means, but is intriguing,” said Dave Jones, a Boise-based gravel rider. “People like to be out where they’re not getting buzzed by cars, and they’re in new places that they haven’t seen, or they’ve only seen by a car.”
Washington With miles of forest and service roads through beautiful topography ranging from high alpine to high desert and coastal rainforest, Washington has some of the most pleasing traits to win the gravel pageant. For the casual gravel rider, multiday expedition gravel bikepacker or gravel grinder racer, the Evergreen State is an all-in-one mecca. Take the Cross-Washington Mountain Bike Route, a 684-mile mixed trail that extends from La Push on the western bank of the Olympic Peninsula across the high alpine Snoqualmie Pass
