John’s Ramblings

I was recently asked if I would co-lead and come up with a route for a Cascade ride that would start and end at the Rogue Issaquah Brewhouse. As for a route, what came initially to mind was the route that Claire had taken a few of us on, back in March. She dubbed the loop “RACMOD”, or “Ride Around Cougar Mountain in One Day”. I recalled the ride being in the neighborhood of 40 miles in length.

Saturday I decided that my weekend ride would be a scouting of this route, to double check mileages and degree of difficulty. My 40 mile jaunt turned into 52.

I tried to get a little creative in finding an alternative route through Renton, where the Cedar River Trail evaporates for a few blocks of heavily trafficked roads. I had spied a route on the map I thought would work, only to find that when I got to the busiest street I’d have to cross, there was a “Right Turn Only” sign forcing me to actually take the road that I was trying to tip-toe across. Cost was only about a mile.

I hadn’t done the “Jones Road” deviation from the Cedar River Trail for a year or so, so I turned off the trail at 154th, and did the meander along a beautiful horse ranch there. Once back to Renton/Maple Valley Road, I have to back-track the trail for about a mile in order to get back on the Cedar River Trail. Cost was maybe 4 or 5 miles.

I rode though the Lake Francis area after leaving the trail at Maple Valley. This part of the route wanders through some nicely wooded residential areas, and eventually takes you to Issaquah-Hobart Road, right near the Hobart Store and Post Office. At this intersection I was met with “Road Closed” signs on Issaquah-Hobart where I would be turning left. I inquired at the store, and was informed that there was no way I would be let through. As I stood in the parking lot sipping a root beer and pondering my options, another cyclist passed the store headed toward the barricades. I was briefly buoyed by his riding around the closure signs, but he was sent packing by the construction workers.

At this point I could wander back through the rather serpentine section around Lake Francis, then take Cedar Grove Road to Issaquah-Hobart. That routing would put me well past the final proposed climb of the day at Tiger Mountain, and more backtracking. Instead I headed south from the store, turning right on 216th Street, right again on 244th Ave., then right one more time onto Hwy 18 eastbound. Once the most dangerous road in the state, it has been much improved over the last decade or so. What was undivided highway, 1 lane each direction is now largely 2 lanes and a wide shoulder on each side, divided in the middle with a median/ditch or a wall. While I was well off on the shoulder, and only on there for a mile or so I still had to recall when head-on collisions here were a regular story on the news. Cost of this detour was 6 miles.

Thus I managed to turn 40 miles into 52. I met Carson in Issaquah long enough to give him my spare rear wheel, necessitated by the failure of his. I hopped in the car and headed home via I-405, where I spend about as much time driving from Factoria to Renton as I had done a couple of hours ago on a bicycle.

The construction on Issaquah-Hobart Road is supposed to be complete at the end of September, which will be before my Cascade ride. I’m just not sure whether this route is going to work (due to it’s length and hilly-ness), or whether I’ll need to put on my thinking cap for an alternate route.

4,092 miles year-to-date.

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