Riding Mt.Baker - A Mountain Biker's Mecca

- Jack Kintner

The area around Mt. Baker is a mountain bike mecca, with lots of trails for the foolhardy and the cautious alike.

In Whatcom County, the developing Coast Millennium Trail is designated all the way from the Canadian Border to the Skagit County line, with the gaps requiring road riding clearly marked on the Mt. Baker Bicycle Club’s five-dollar “Bellingham-Whatcom Bicycle Map,” available at all local bike shops.

It’s the basic resource for finding your way around on a bike but also helps you find your way to the three main places that offer the superb off-road experiences the area is known for. The first is the level and straight inter-urban trail, a mom, dad and the kids kind of experience that takes you from the inter-urban parking lot in the Fairhaven district waterfront in south Bellingham about 15 miles south to the Skagit County line south of Larrabee State Park. It’s wide and spacious most of the way, especially in Fairhaven at the many access points, but there is one short steep section as the trail goes through Arroyo Park, a gap the inter-urban train cars bridged on a long-gone trestle. It can be accessed south of this point but parking becomes quite limited once you cross the bridge over Chuckanut Creek. For better parking you can go to the state park and ride it back north as far as your youngest child’s legs will last. If you’re staying a while, campsite reservations can be made at 800/233-0321.

For the more vertically inclined, Lake Padden Park offers an easy three-mile loop that has some small variations at the west end of the lake. It connects with a complex known as the Padden Pedal Course south of the lake, past the baseball and softball (and off-leash dog) area. Once you get to an area known as the Roller Coaster, a steep downhill with successive drops, the locals advise the injury-prone and timid that turning back is maybe a good idea.

Maybe. On the other hand, the circuits in this part of the park are all classic single track buried in the second-growth woods that cover the hills. They connect with switchbacks that get to the highest point in the park and allow the rider off-road access to the endless possibly of our third area, 2,100-foot Galbraith Mountain.

The broad expanses of Galbraith Mountain remind you of a ski area, only without the skiers and lifts and snow, and as opposed to the secluded forests of Padden and the sunlit glades of the pool-table flat inter-urban trail, it’s as sunny and wide open for the most part as an eastern Montana meadow. One-time national veteran’s downhill champ (1989 and 1990) and downtown espresso stand impresario Jim “Sully” Sullivan, since moved away, used to live right at the south entrance to the complex. “It’s a vast area,” the aging wisenheimer would say, “but with half-vast trails.” He began a group known at the Whatcom Independent Mountain Peddlers, or “WHIMPS,” to work on the trails, and today the group even has a website at http://www.whimpsmtb.com/.

Though it can be reached from neighborhoods on the north side near Lake Whatcom, the best access is from the south. Park at a lot on Samish Way across from Galbraith Way and then after a few short blocks to the gated entrance you’re into it. Climb 1,300 feet up the Tower Road for a selection of downhill single and double track that Lewis and Clark would have found baffling.

This year the WHIMPS will sponsor the 19th annual “Padden Pedal,” an 18-category race that’s part of a six-race series in the northwest and the oldest continuously held event in the area, perhaps the whole country, the world, the universe. The course is always hilly and fun, drawing pro and amateur competitors from B.C. and the northwest. This year’s edition will be held July 10.

North of the border

There’s a lot of intense mountain biking in western Washington, but just north of the border in British Columbia it gets even better or even more insane, depending upon your point of view.

First, of course, is Whistler, home to the largest bike and skate park in the world, no surprise considering that the ski area (http://www.whistlerblackcomb.com/) has a vertical drop of one mile and is served by 33 lifts over its 8,000 plus skiable acres. Take away the snow and you have an almost endless variety of downhill where the heavy lifting (you and your bike going uphill) is done by chairlift.
The North Shore, closer to town, has a lot of single track that’s as enticing as it is illegal. Maybe. Mountain bikers and local residents have been contending over the legality of much of the deep woods single track for many years. Currently, the District of North Vancouver is developing the Alpine Recreational Strategic Study policy, they say to achieve a balance of recreation and environmental management on the mountain. More on this can be found at www.dnv.org.

Two trails that are as legal as a beer at a hockey game and have historical significance as well are the BLT (for boulders, logs and trees) at Cypress Mountain and the oldest trail on the north shore, Ross Kirkwood’s Seventh Secret off the Mountain Highway, the old toll road up to the ski area. The pioneering Kirkwood got early bikers to bring shovels and work gloves to the mountain along with their bikes, knowing that good trail maintenance means routes that last. Later, the Griffen trail was the first to be given official recognition.
BLT is reached off the Eagle Lake Access Road that branches off Cypress Bowl Road at the first wide switchback. The Mountain Highway trails are on the right side of the road as you ascend to the first switchback, and can also be accessed at the third switchback.
For a look at another classic, and a chance to compare yourself to competitors over the last 20-plus years in B.C.’s longest running mountain bike race, head east to Vedder Mountain. Take the Cultus Lake/Yarrow exit, and turn right at the lights in Yarrow to get up to Cultus Lake. After Vedder Crossing, turn right on Parmenter Road and the first right fork puts you in the parking lot. There’s a good gravel road that circles the riding area and provides access to the race course. A taste of what’s in store starts about 15 minutes down the main road where the initial climb levels out. A short single track on the right and a left turn at the bottom of the descent puts you back on the main road. Seven kilometers down the road a left turn onto a series of single track ups and downs leads you on to the main course, capped by a double track descent at the end that goes on and on and on.

Two indispensable re-sources for riding in this area are the website for Cycling B.C., which is www.cycling.bc.ca, and Darrin Polischuk’s very thorough if dated 1996 “Mountain Biking British Columbia.”