Skip to main content

Feel The Freedom


Getting out and enjoying a beautiful evening ride.  We ventured up to Echo Ridge trails for a evening ride, first time experiencing the trails on a bike.   I've hiked and snowshoed, but never pedaled this area.  I ride for the pure enjoyment and the free feeling I receive than for exercise.  There is such a joy, complete sense of freedom I feel when I ride, it is something that I almost feel addicted to and have a really hard time choosing between hiking or biking.  Fat biking in the winter started this craving that now has bled over into spring rides, a few summer evening rides and beautiful fall rides.  Most of the time you could call my bike outings a hike-a-bike, since I spend about the same amount of time off my bike taking pictures of nature as I do riding.  The Echo Ridge trails were a pleasure to ride, a little bit of everything, wide open spaces and huge views, nice flowing trails where you can pick up speed, places you can ride side by side or single tracks, a few climbs mixed in.  We mixed our trail choices up with some easy, and a little bit of the difficult so we could enjoy the views on our way down.  The sun was setting beautifully on our way back to the trail head so we took the time to simply enjoy it, look for wildflowers and just absorb the beauty around us.  We will return here before the summer heat hits, to enjoy nature and the simple pleasure of pedaling.


























Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Places We Can Go

Life goes on, things change, storms of life come and go.  One thing that always remains the same is the feeling and quiet peace I feel from being in the mountains.  This was a spur of the moment overnight trip.  It was so needed and such a beautiful time.  Left the house around 2:30 PM, traffic was so slow heading up Hwy 20, lots of folks heading out of Mazama.  Arrived at the trail head a few minutes before 4 PM, and we were off down the trail in a few minutes.  Three quarters of a mile down the trail a bee or some kind of flying ant decided to bite my nieces eye lid, talk about hysteria for a moment.   I was pretty sure our trip was over, but we were able to move on with a very cold creek soaked multipurpose face mask.  The sun was sinking fast and the wind was howling by the time we reached the top.  Made some quick decisions on the best place to park the tents, and we set up camp.  It was truly an incredible evening, hiked aroun...
Post a Comment
Read more

Yellow Jacket Sno-Park.......................

December 29th, 2012 came along with some beautiful weather in the Mazama area....broken blue skys and a nice 21 degrees.....with my little brother and his wife up visiting through the holiday season we ventured out to play in the snow.....We originally headed up to snowshoe the Cedar Creek trail....but Hwy 20 wasn't plowed past the first sign at the bottom.....and when we came across the Early Winters bridge we could see trucks and cars parked on both sides of the road....somewhere between 25-40 rigs.....lots of snowmobile trailers.....we decided that we needed to locate another snowshoeing spot with a little less traffic since my brother wanted to do a little snowboarding if possible......so we headed to Yellow Jacket Sno-Park....Large parking area with just a few vehicles parked....we strapped on our gear and headed up the trail....nice easy hike up a groomed snowmobile track....lots of places to step off the trail and explore...we pretty much stuck to the trail on the way up.....
Post a Comment
Read more

North Cascades Hwy 20, Snowshoeing

Since we don't take snowshoeing very serious and it's just another way to get out in the great outdoors and have some fun, we snowshoe highway 20 from the parking area up the pass quiet often.  It is a busy snowmobile area, but if you just be aware of whats going on around you, it is safe.  There is so much room to have fun, snow covered slopes, snowshoe up the road, or venture off the road.  It is a gradual climb up the road, we never get very far before we run out of gas and are ready to head back down.  I would love to some day take a snowmobile to the top of the pass...and snowshoe....I keep dreaming.  This is a easy location to just get out, stretch your legs and enjoy the fresh winter air.  I have always been a little bit apprehensive about  snowshoeing where there is snowmobile activities, but so far we have met only super polite folks and very respectful to keep their distance of folks snowshoeing.
Post a Comment
Read more