Lower Dungeness/Gold Creek

One of my favorite trails to date in the Puget Sound area is the Lower Dungeness and Gold Creek Trail Loop.    I have ridden it twice before and I was excited to get back out for another outing in the area.

A fire road that does not suck

The first few miles of the Lower Dungeness trail can be brutally steep and amazingly pretty.   A lot of people opt to take  the fire roads around to 3 o’clock ride and then take a connector trail down to the Lower Dungeness cutting out much of the brutal climbing section of the trail.

Views from along the forest service road heading towards 3 o’clock ridge.

I have done both options and decided to take the forest service roads/3 o’clock ridge option.

More views from along the forest service roads

The views from along the forest road are really nice and grades are reasonable but you are missing out on pristine stuff my bypassing those first few miles.

Lower Dungeness Trail

Once I reached 3 o’clock ridge there was quite a bit of zippy downhill singlet rack goodness down into the creek watershed.  Once down there it was just sublime Pacific Northwest loamy, mossy forested goodness following the creek up stream.

There is plenty of undulations along the Lower Dungeness trail and since you are heading upstream you know you are trending uphill.   You probably will not care as the experience is pretty incredible.

Once the trail reached the junction of the Dungeness Creek trail and another fire road it was time for some more climbing to get to the top of the Gold Creek Trail and the Tubal Cain Trail at the edge of the Buckhorn Wilderness.   It was not a horrible climb, but you certainly did some work.

From along side the forest service road climb

The Gold Creek is pretty awesome section of trail that spends a lot of time along the a steep hillside with the Lower Dungeness Creek far below.

Along Gold Creek Trail

 

It was not recently that I learned that a portion of this trail is also part of the Pacific Northwest Trail.  Established in the 2009, the Pacific Northwest trail is 1,200 miles long and goes from the Continental Divide to the Pacific Oceans.

Hmmmm, I was a little lite on pictures through much of the ripping downhill sections of this trail.    Gold Creek will eventually drop down off of the high ridge sides.  Where you will enjoy some more creek-side riding before you have to a wee bit of climbing on an decommissioned forest road back up to the trail head.

On this day I logged right at 20 miles with 3,900 feet of climbing.   My legs were drained and my soul was full!

Lower Dungeness- Gold Creek

Had a great day out on the Olympic Pennisula. I revisited the Lower Dungeness and Gold Creek loop I had done some number of years ago. The last time I was socked in with clouds but today was clear skies and sunshine. Such good singletrack. I do have some tweaks to make to my review of this trail. Look for those at some point.

The Opening Week in Washington

Last week was really busy.     While work was plenty busy, I did have enough time to get out and about on some trails.     After starting the week out by finding out with my bike being stolen, I was able to get my hands on a rental hardtail on Tuesday.    Wednesday after work I hit up Banner Forest.   I had hiked a small slice of this area in December of 2008 but this was the first time on the bike.   This places is a lot of fun.  Lots of the twists and turns and quick up and downs on nearly all singletrack.   Quite the fun XC playground.

Wednesday was supposed to be a quick afternoon ride at Green Mountain near Bremerton.     The trail was billed as well marked out-up and back-down.    Just a few miles into the climb I spied and sweet looking narrow singletrack heading off to the west and someone had made a wooden arrow on the ground pointing to it.   For those that know me, know what happened next.   Yes I took the sweet looking singletrack that was not on my map.   This was indeed a really awesome singletrack saw much less traffic the the one I started on.  This trail lead to another and another and the next thing I know I was much futher out than I had planned on being.   I had to dust off  some orienteering skills that I had not had to use so thoroughly in quite sometime.  When all said an done my 12-14 miles afternoon spin ended being a stout 21 miler that ended in the waning moments of the day.

 

 Saturday it was raining the Seattle-Tacoma area so I headed inland to the east of Mt Rainer to ride the Ranger Creek and Palisades trail.   The 20 miles of pure singletrack did not disappoint.   I am going to get back here when the sun is out.

Sunday I headed out to the Olympic Pennisula for a ride that is considered a Washington Classic/Epic.   The Lower Dungeness to Gold Creek Trail loop. For much of the ride I was in the clouds which made the fantastic singletracks take on a primordial rainforest feel. The cloud ride in thick old growth woods was sometimes spooky and I often found myself whistling so as not to surpise any critters further up the foodchain.

I’ll get some proper ride reports put together when I get some downtime, but for now it will just be the samplers.