Orcas Stoked Us

Orcas Stoked Us – San Juan Islands, Washington
May 8-11, 2009

Orcas Island is one of the four main islands in the San Juan Islands and was a recommendation from my old college buddy Erik Wuchter. He’s been going on about the beauty of this island and in particular a killer Mtn. Bike downhill ride there for years. Enough, enough Eric we’re checking it out for ourselves.

Because the forecast looked cool but clear we decided to save a few bucks and picked Moran State Park from a map to camp out in on Thursday night. Little did we know what a spectacular place this would be. We went through rolling pasture land, the quaint Eastsound village and the Park’s Arched gateway before arriving at Cascade Lake. We decided to continue uphill to the Mountain Lake Campground so we would be closer to the bike ride in the morning. Both of these lakes were gorgeous and surprisingly large alpine lakes for a small island but what was really amazing was there was nobody there. We drove in on a windy narrow road through large old growth cedar trees out onto a small peninsula on the lake and into a completely empty campground. We had the whole lake to ourselves.

We quickly set up camp and I decided that after almost 6k miles and several nights of camping on this trip it was time for me to use some of my new gear. So, in preparation for dinner I got out my new Coleman 22,000 btu double burner camp stove just like my buddy Sean’s, and my new trout size no stick frying pan. Now all I needed was some trout – oh goodness look what I have a little left of in my tackle box - power bait! In no time I had a nice 15’ rainbow trout freshly dressed and ready for the frying pan. Tomorrow morning I’m going to pull out my new French press coffee mug just like Sean’s – just wished I had some of that French vanilla creamer.

After dinner Patti went to bed early and I stayed up for a while to enjoy the full moon over the Lake and got a little deeper into my Desert Solitaire book. My fingers were cold but it was comfy sitting by the fire in a Kukui’ula beach chair with my petzel headlamp illuminating my breath as it fogged around my book.

Friday morning was still partly cloudy so we decided to hold off on the mountain bike ride for another day and explore a little on foot. We hit the Mt. Pickett trail for a 6 mile loop with a 1750’ climb through a naturally propagated, never logged old growth forest. Man I thought Kauai had a lot of moss everywhere. We returned to our private campground, kicked off out boots, cracked open a cold beverage and sat down to relax for awhile. About that time I heard the whine of a car and noticed a van appear across the lake on the approach road headed our way. It made its way to the campground and pulled in two spots over from ours. The doors flung open and out spilled into the quiet forest a family replete with two outside voiced kids in the 2- 5 range, a dog, a gianormous tent, bikes, toys, balls, fishing poles and the like plus two adults discussing the pending arrival of the rest of the caravan. By nightfall we were immediately surrounded by not only 3 additional families with a total of 8 children and 3 dogs but the entire campground had filled up with mostly mountain bikers. You see the trails in the area are so nice that they get really busy later in the summer – too busy to mix pedestrians and MB’s so they close them to MB’s after May 15th so a lot of rider’s show up for the last weekend.

Saturday morning we tuned up our bikes, stretched out a bit and headed up the 3 mile long, 2000’ road climb toward the Mt. Constitution summit. It was steep but not too long and the views from up high out over the islands can’t be described. We took a few pics around the lookout tower at the top and headed down the famous 6 mile long single track called the Spiral Trail. What an exhilarating 2 hour descent through thick forest with drops, logs, bridges, streams and lakes. Sorry Slick Rock but this is now definitely the best ride we have ever done.