I’ve done this trail before as a 42 miler when it was called the John Wayne trail. It is now the Palouse to Cascades trail. The plan this time is to cut off about 12 miles by starting at Olallie State Park. This should allow us to still see most (all?) of the trestle bridges and of course the tunnel at the top.
It looks like it will be a nice, sunny day in the upper 70s to low 80s.
We had a nice, warm day. The trail is well shaded along long stretches so that makes it a good one for sunny days. We started from Olallie State Park which cut about 12 total miles off the last time I did this one.
Putting in at Olallie Park meant we had to join the trail by biking up a road. I do mean UP.
I think that road was close to a 20% grade. I would recommend driving up instead. The intersection with that road and the trail has some parking area so you could save a lot of sweat if that’s what you want.
The trail was a bumpy as I remember it and slightly uphill the whole way. You definitely shouldn’t try this one with a road bike.
There was only one trestle bridge that we crossed (pictured above). There are 2 or 3 others below where we started including the biggest one so if you want to see it you need to start lower.
The tunnel was again a lot of fun
It was a little dryer than last time but still pretty drippy once you’re a mile in. We biked all the way out to Hyak and turned around.
It was quite cold going through the other way as the wind was coming from the west. It felt like riding through a refrigerator. It felt good to get out into the sun on the other side.
The way back went fast. We averaged over 15mph coming down and didn’t even break a sweat. We talked a bit about picking it up at Hyak next time and going further to the east. The trail goes all the way to the state border but I imagine it gets a lot less well cared for the further east you go.
