Pedaling Olympic Discovery Trail
I didn’t ride my bike much the past three years. It was the pandemic, yes, but my life in Bellingham is different than it was in Portland. I walk. There’s a trail half a block from my house along a creek and thriving natural area. Most places I visit are walking distance. Barney, my partner, has a car, and while he also enjoys biking, he doesn’t pedal for transportation.
I put pedaling on the summer activity menu and looked for places relatively nearby where Barney and I could go. I wanted something quiet where we could ride side by side and talk. One of my friends had mentioned biking on a trail near Port Angeles. After a quick Internet search, I learned that Barney and I had pedaled some of the Olympic Discovery Trail (ODT) in the area around Port Townsend in 2018 during Cascade Bicycle Club’s annual Ride Around Washington. I also learned that there were about 30 miles of paved path in Olympic National Park, ten miles of which hugged Lake Crescent’s north shore.
“Could you do twenty miles in one day?” I asked Barney. “It’s relatively flat.” Having pedaled the trail now, I wouldn’t say it’s relatively flat, but the grade is gentle. It’s the kind of grade that feels flat when you pedal up it and makes for a joyous coast when you go down it.
“I’m with you,” he said. I promptly ordered the map set from the Peninsula Trails Coalition. It may be old fashioned of me, but I like maps. I like paper, too. A paper map is like two pleasures in one, right? In any case, we were primed for discovery and adventure – neither of us had explored the area around Lake Crescent before.
I hoped we could pedal one day, hike the next, and pedal again the third day. One of the unpleasant realities of having been off the saddle for a while is it takes some adjustment for the sitting parts. A day between rides is a kind way to ease a body back into pedaling. Even if all your other parts are ready to go, your sitter will have the final say.
We stayed at an Airbnb cabin west of Klahowya Campground and ODT trailhead. Late July during a heat wave was not a pleasant time to pedal Highway 101 to the trailhead – lots of road maintenance and traffic, so we drove there to begin our ride. For all the cars on the road, we were surprised to find no one at the trailhead (it was a Tuesday).
I wasn’t certain if or where we might find potable water along the trail, and none of my maps had water icons. The Klahowya trailhead had pit toilets, but I didn’t see water (I may not have found it). There’s a store at Fairholme, and beyond that I don’t know where water is available if you don’t have a filter or other purification system. It does appear that the parking area at the east end of Lake Crescent has water, but I didn’t put eyes on it.
The trail is beautiful and forested. The section from Klahowya east is mostly straight. We encountered five other riders in the ten to fifteen miles where the trail connects to Fairholme access. The trail is well signed, and in a few places where wayfinding wasn’t clear, ‘ODT >’ was spraypainted in white on the road. At one point, I was paying attention to an official ODT sign and missed a turn. We crossed Highway 101 and pedaled to Mt. Muller trailhead. I thought I knew where we were and took us down a leg of the Mt. Muller loop that parallels Highway 101. It was a fun section of single-track flow trail/horse trail, but after I went over a bunch of roots, I stopped to check in with Barney.
He pulled up to me, “Is this the adventure trail?”
“There is an Olympic Adventure Trail northeast of the lake,” I said. “It’s a mountain bike trail. This isn’t it. But this also isn’t the Discovery Trail as I just discovered. The Discovery Trail is paved.”
“Exactly. This is the adventure trail.”
“We’re having both adventure and discovery.” I looked at my map and wished it were possible to hear capital letters in conversation.
We backtracked to the turn I missed, which was clearly signed, and continued with our discovery of the Discovery Trail. We crossed Highway 101 at the official trail crossing, intersected with the Mt. Muller horse trail, and continued up the Discovery Trail serpentine. Then we descended to a trail junction, where two older cyclists at a kiosk were examining the trail map. They had begun their ride ten miles and downhill from the kiosk at the trailhead at the east end of the lake.
“How is the trail up there,” one of the cyclists asked. “Did you do the loop?”
“The loop is a mountain bike trail,” I said, joining them at the kiosk. “We came from Klahowya, and it’s paved the whole way. It’s lovely. You have to cross the highway here,” I pointed. “The trail is steep for a bit if you’re going the way we came.” I looked at their bikes and gestured. “But it’s not a thing. Right?”
“That’s right! We have e-bikes. Hills aren’t a problem. Enjoy your ride.”
Barney and I coasted down the gentle grade and chatted about e-bikes. Nearly everyone we’d seen on the trail had an e-bike. Neither of us is ready to go electric, but we love how accessible an e-bike makes experiences like pedaling the ODT to people who might not otherwise try it. We also know people whose lives have been transformed by e-bikes, how they’ve become bicycle riders and/or they’ve been able to continue enjoying cycling because of the technology. We encountered a few more people on this section of trail, and, again, almost everyone was on e-bikes.
After a day off the bike to give our bodies a break, we returned to the trail, following the old Spruce Railroad, to complete our discovery. We descended to the lake edge where there were more breaks in the trees, views of the stunningly blue lake, people (walking and cycling), and two tunnels. At the longer of the two tunnels, the McFee Tunnel (wow it’s dark in there), people were enjoying access to the lake at Devil’s Punch Bowl. On the north side of the tunnel, the trail was busy with walkers (it was a Thursday). We saw a lone bike tourer headed west. The trailhead near Log Cabin Resort was parked to capacity.
The shorter of the two tunnels on the Olympic Discovery Trail behind Heidi and Barney
Heidi inside McFee Tunnel
On our way back to the car, I stopped to inspect a large brown moth on the side of the trail. The cecropia moth, Hyalophora cecropia, is the largest moth native to North America. The larvae eat maple leaves mostly. Like other giant silk moths, the cecropia moth doesn’t have mouthparts or a digestive system. The adult moths live to mate and have a lifespan of about two weeks.
I’d love to return to the Olympic Discovery Trail and do a camping bike tour from Port Townsend (or from home in Bellingham) out to Klahowya (or beyond). While I wrote this post, Cascade Bicycle Club also promoted a story about the Olympic Discovery Trail. It’s the western gateway of the Great American Rail-Trail, a project championed by Rails-to-Trails Conservancy (more on that in a future post).
