{"id":357,"date":"2009-04-17T21:41:20","date_gmt":"2009-04-18T05:41:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mountainbikebill.com\/blog\/?p=357"},"modified":"2009-04-18T08:59:57","modified_gmt":"2009-04-18T16:59:57","slug":"tree-farming-in-the-great-northwest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mountainbikebill.com\/blog\/?p=357","title":{"rendered":"Tree Farming in the Great Northwest"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>The weather for most of this\u00a0past week has been\u00a0“Bi-Polar” here in the great northwest.\u00a0 It would\u00a0be cold, raining and breezy and the next thing you know the sun would come out and the temperature would shoot up pretty much into the comfortable range.\u00a0\u00a0Wednesday ended up being a rainless day and I managed to grab some late afternoon miles\u00a0at the Armstrong Tract of the Pilchuck Tree Farm north of Arlington.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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The Pilchuck\u00a0Tree Farm\u00a0is a some hugh\u00a0chunk of private land that\u00a0is used for logging.\u00a0 The company\/land owners have allowed trails and public recreation on their land for over 20 years.\u00a0 Of course patches of trail are going to go away from time to time as various segments gets logged over the years.\u00a0 Despite the obvious bummage of this, the up side\u00a0is the place is ever changing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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One thing is for sure there is a bunch of miles out here.\u00a0 I got in about 18 miles of rolling and mostly buff singletrack during my afternoon visit and I know I missed a bunch of stuff.\u00a0 I had a very rudimentary map that was rather large scale which meant I was basically on my own.\u00a0\u00a0I love solo riding like this as the miles seem longer and I feel more in tune with my surroundings as you have to paint your own mental map\u00a0of where you are at and how you are going to get\u00a0back at some point.<\/p>\n

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I was digging\u00a0the rolling terrain\u00a0and the aburpt transitions as you go from\u00a0the unattractive barreneque clearcuts into lush forest. While the trails were for the most part buff there were some sections that were rooty\u00a0with plenty of logs across the trail.\u00a0\u00a0I\u00a0got a really good skills workout in from the logs alone.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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There were more trail junctions in this area than I can count.\u00a0 For the first part of the ride I took whatever option looked to go away from the trailhead.\u00a0\u00a0 When the\u00a0remainder of the day dictated\u00a0it was time to turn back, I took every turn that I thought would delay my return.\u00a0 I did loops, backtracks and generally confused myself.\u00a0 This was one of my adventures were I actually used my GPS for something other\u00a0than a simple data logger.<\/p>\n

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I ended up back at the trailhead with some daylight left, so I decided to check out what was supposed to be a somewhat short loop nearby.\u00a0 This loop was indeed short but it also ended up going through a\u00a0low lying area that became\u00a0more than a bit of a mucky mess.\u00a0\u00a0Getting through this area took much longer than I thought it would and the waning daylight\u00a0inside the moss covered\u00a0forest looked somewhere between surreal and spooky.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0By the time I got back to the trailhead, I could officially classify my day as extremely “efficient”.\u00a0\u00a0I doubt I had more than one minute of daylight left.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Just the way I like it \ud83d\ude42\u00a0<\/p>\n

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More Stuff Like This<\/h3><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
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<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t Washington Riding<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
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<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t Banner Forest<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
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<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t Quick Trip to Japan<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
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<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t East Mesa and Oakzanita<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\n<\/div>