Ride the Hurricane

I completed the ride up Hurricane Ridge on 8/5. They close the road inside the park from vehicles from 7am - 12 (noon) for the ride. I think there were about 400 riders and we had beautiful weather. You have the option of starting at Peninsula College (17 miles and 4800' elevation gain) or at the park entry (12 miles and over 3300' elevation gain). I chose to start at the college (silly girl). It was a grueling ride, but the views were absolutely stunning (also got to ride through 3 tunnels). The descent was awesome! And $5 from every registered rider goes to developing the Olympic Discovery trail (a good cause). I highly recommend it to folks in the NW area.
FYI...the pictures don't do it justice ;)

I coincidentally (didn't know about the organized ride) rode up the day before. It was hot, but in all a lovely day. I started from the visitor center, which is about 16 miles to the top, I think. Love the descent, but I had to be really careful - too many really tame bambis and moms out.... there were cars stopping all over the place to look, so you never knew if there would be a car stopped in the middle of the road (or a deer...) around that next corner. I think I've done it once every year for the last 5 or so as training for several hill climb races that I do.

Non cyclists are funny... when I got the the very top the first thing someone said to me was "you made it".... well of course I made it... it's not a question of if, it's a question of how fast :cool:

Wow....that's awesome. It was my very first time ever to Hurricane Ridge. I would like to return to do some of the hiking up there and snowshoe in the winter.

I'd also like to make this an annual ride. It was so nice riding up there with the road closed to car traffic that I will probably opt to do the organized ride unless the date conflicts with another event I want to do :D

Since we are from the same area, I'm curious what other rides you typically do?

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Originally Posted by Dog

Since we are from the same area, I'm curious what other rides you typically do?

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Organized or otherwise?

Well - I race, so I do a fair amount of local racing up and down the Sound, over on the dry side, and a bit in Oregon. I'll be headed up to the Mt. Baker Hillclimb (otherwise known as RIDE 425) in a few weeks. I don't do a whole lot of organized non-racing these days, though I've done, in the past, some Cascade rides - Chilly Hilly, STP, HPC.

For training rides I do a lot of local to Seattle riding. Our team rides take us around the lake, out to May Valley, Snoqualamie Valley, Carnation among others. We like to start either in Leschi, Marymoor or from Logboom. I like to ride down to Auburn when I'm looking for a long flat day. I tend to do hills in Issaquah, or if I'm feeling like a hard workout, I'll head up to Denny Creek (past North Bend, just off of I-90) and do hill repeats

DH and I just DROVE up to Hurricane Ridge last Sat. to go hiking. We were impressed by the several cyclists (all guys mind you) plugging away at that 17 mile non-stop climb. Way to go girls (I know I couldn't have done it)!

The down-hillers really looked like they were having fun! Nice reward.

The hiking was a great cross-training day away from the bikes. Incredible views up there too. We also saw 5 Mtn. Goats off in the distance. Very cool!

Good job.

SmittyKitty - I want to go back and do some hiking from Hurricane Ridge!

Eden, you are definitely in a different league from me. I'm not sure I could do the racing thing :)

I would say that was the hardest ride I ever did. I rode it with my husband and a girlfriend. I was kinda slow (duh) so our friend waited at the top for 1 hour while I struggled my way up there. Going down was rather unpleasant, as it started to rain. One of the biggest achievements in my cycling life. Glad to know I was not the only one here that did it. Glad to know you had fun too!