Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Alice Creek S24O


Life has a way of filling up the days. First there is that whole making a living thing and in the time that's left you have to balance time with family, friends, alone time and adventures. The S24O or Sub-24 Hour Overnight, invented (or at least named) by Grant Petersen, is a great way to squeeze a bit of outdoor living into a civilized life.

My pal Mark Canizaro is the only one whose schedule can mesh with my odd "leave around 2:00 PM Monday back early afternoon Tuesday" plan. The forecast calls for temps in the nineties, so our plan is to head for the high country. Last year, Lake Moolock was still iced in in July. An icy lake sounds good, the hot climb not so much. Our fallback plan is to stick to gravel roads along the north fork of the Snoqualmie River.

It turns out we need a fallback plan for our fallback plan -- the timber company which owns the land has shut off all recreational access due to fire danger. We should have seen this coming with the hot, dry summer we've been having.

Our fallback fallback plan involves a rootbeer float for me and a chocolate shake for Mark at Scott's Dairy Freeze in North Bend followed by a ride up past Rattlesnake Lake and then out along the John Wayne Iron Horse Trail to Alice Creek. The official camp sites are high in the dry hot sun along the trail, but a small trail just a bit west of the groomed camping spots leads to the cool, rocky banks of the trail. It's actually cool enough by the creek that I trade my sweat soaked hot-weather shirt for my cross-dressing camp sweater. I scored this large woman's SmartWool sweater from REI (Return Everything Incorporated) at their scratch, dent and return sale. Eighty bucks marked down to eleven because it has a tiny hole in the front. "For eleven bucks, I'll cross-dress in the woods," I told the clerk.

This is a no cooking trip, just sandwiches and various munchies. Chlorine Dioxide Tablets take care of the water purification and we settle down to sleep just as the sun finishes setting.

In the morning, we trade bikes for a bit and mostly coast back to North Bend for a big second breakfast at Twede's. It's still early enough and shady enough that we get to see and photograph a large owl in the trees above the Snoqualmie Valley Trail. We're back in Issaquah 22 hours after we'd left, with 84 easy miles on the odometer.

9 comments:

  1. Hey Kent,

    Could you say a few words about your choice of helmets? It looks like a pretty hot (as in heat, not attractiveness) head covering.

    Bob

    ReplyDelete
  2. I've never found one helmet to be much hotter or cooler than another. I guess I'm just cool headed!

    ReplyDelete
  3. After looking at your pictures, I realized your buddy comes into my work pretty frequently. I only realized this because I recognized his bicycle -- I carefully inspect every bike that is locked up outside. Ha, what a dork.

    Anyways. What sort of maps do you use on these trips? It looks like a standard topo. I am very interested in riding my bike up scenic dirt roads and finding secret camping spots in the woods, but I've only lived in the area for a year and don't know very many secrets.

    The other day I was excited to ride lonely dirt roads from the Hobart area over to Rattlesnake Lake/North Bend area. Of course, I was totally stymied by the Cedar River Watershed which I had no idea existed. Dang!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Doug,

    I've find the Green Trails Maps to be pretty good and I've built up a pretty decent set of them. You can get them at REI and the really handy thing is they list out things like private vs public land, watersheds and things like that.

    The Cedar River Watershed blocks out some cool potential adventures. BTW, I stayed away from the Redmond Watershed until I found out that it never was actually used as a water supply and it is in fact a park!

    ReplyDelete
  5. "REI (Return Everything Incorporated)" - I love it.

    I have thought about doing a "sub-12-hour-outing" to Fay Bainbridge state park this summer, but instead have gone the "every night is a getaway" route with tent in back yard.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I've been meaning to hit the Iron Horse Trail with my 10 year old son for an overnight trip.

    Thanks for the reminder....

    ReplyDelete
  7. Your activities will inspire more cyclist to be the strong and keep the body fit.... nice...

    ReplyDelete
  8. Kent, Looks like rivbike has updated their site and now has a new URL for their s24o discussion, the new URL is http://www.rivbike.com/kb_results.asp?ID=36 .

    ReplyDelete