Olympic Peninsula Winter Loop Ride
A Winter Treat When All Is Right
 Most
of my long range riding is over by the first of November. But having spent a
good part of spring and summer doing 200-300 mile days it’s hard to accept the
cold air and stay cooped up at home watching the rain pour down.
And then January shows up. That’s when I start watching
the weather patterns looking for the perfect day. And inevitably we get a few.
Cloud-free, low humidity, overnight lows above freezing. Of course no one would
use a day like this to ride off into the mountain passes where wicked road
conditions await along with hoards of skiers and snow boarders causing long
traffic jams. When this window of opportunity opens I head for a day- long ride
around the Olympic Peninsula.
This is a ride like no other for several reasons.
For starters, it’s the middle of winter and you find
yourself riding along the Olympic Peninsula on dry pavement. Now that’s kind of
weird. By the time you reach Forks, Washington’s wettest city at 121 inches of
rainfall a year, you wonder why all the business owners haven’t closed down for
the day so they too can enjoy the great outdoors.
 But it is winter and it is cold. I wouldn’t dream of doing
this ride without heated clothing. I put on the full set of
Gerbing heated clothing which
includes my jacket, pants, gloves and socks. About 150 watts of heat wrapped
around me for a 10 to 14 hour day on the road. Strange things begin to happen
when you artificially heat your body that long and eventually you feel as if you
are a real person living in a synthetic body. For some, this creates a somewhat
out-of-body experience. Each time you stop, your thyroid must wake up and start
discussing tactics with your brain’s hypothalamus (your body’s thermostat) so
that you can come back to ground zero with natural heat production.
Combine a satellite shot like this one, lows
above freezing and dry roads and you've got some great winter riding weather!
As for other heating options, simply putting on a layer of
warm gear will provide you comfort up to about the first hour of riding. After
that the wind has stolen all your body heat and you’ll need to get off the bike
and create some new heat doing some physical activity before you hit the road
again. A cup of coffee is nice too, but dealing with this hour after hour gets
laborious and you’ll really start thinking about a purchase of electric
clothing.
As for my route, I almost always run it in a
counter-clockwise direction. This allows me to leave Seattle early in the
morning and reach Lake Quinalt by noon for lunch by the lake in the cozy hotel
restaurant. Then I’m back on the road arriving in Port Townsend or Port Ludlow
at the dinner hour before making my final return to Seattle. Each year my route
varies, but I make every attempt at staying off SR12 by using as many back road
routes between Shelton and Aberdeen as possible. With a dual sport, you can do
the whole stretch on paved and unpaved roads skipping SR12 all
together.
The Portland Options
Living in Portland doesn't lend
itself well to making your way to the Olympic Peninsula for a one-
day trip. But you can still get out in winter by running
Highway 14 east to Hood River, then returning using the Historic
Columbia River Gorge Highway.
Another alternative is to ride SR30
north to Astoria across the bridge and return via SR4 in Washington
and finally I-5.
Elevations along both these routes
should keep you off the ice if overnight lows are above freezing, |
A clockwise direction beginning in Seattle will land you
in Port Angeles about lunch time and in Shelton for dinner. Since Shelton isn’t
all too famous for fancy dinner houses, you can see why I choose the
aforementioned counter clock-wise route. When I’m on this ride I tend to dine on
the high side.
If you’ve picked your day well, road conditions will
likely be stable along the entire route. However, stretches of 101 between Lake
Crescent and Forks get almost no direct sunlight and if fog has occurred
the night before it can be a nasty tarmac of black ice. The alternate to this
stretch of 101 is to utilize SR112 and SR113 between Port Angeles and Forks.
Suppose the friendly weather window-of-opportunity comes
along mid-week and you can get away and do the ride! Oh my! Traffic along the
west side of 101 is next to nil and you’ll ride for miles at a time never
passing a soul.
I tend to make this a solitary ride. Group rides can tend
to drag on as people move at their own pace to saddle up and ride. Inevitably
one or two people take a wrong turn and the idea of keeping everyone together
goes south. Dealing with this in high 30s temperatures can be more torture than
fun. Eventually your 10-to-14 hour day has the potential to turn into a 16-to-20
hour nightmare.
I also don’t bring a passenger. My girlfriend would love
to accompany me on the back of the bike for this ride, but my stator has another
idea about that. In order for us to both heat up with two full sets of Gerbing
heated clothing, we would draw 330 watts from the electrical system. It would
work well on a Goldwing or K1200LT, but on my FZ-6, or NX650, it would drain the
battery in several hours and the charging system would never recover a full
charge until we got it home on a full-blown charger. I once did the ride on a
250cc scooter and drained the battery all on my own. Fortunately I had brought
along a charger and played charging games all day long at my break and meal stops.
The most comical moment that day was when I plugged the charger into a set of
Christmas lights hanging from a tree on the sidewalk in Port Townsend. Adapt,
adapt, adapt.
So it’s me and the road for an entire day. I can’t think
of a more solitary, pleasing way to welcome in the New Year, one that will be
filled with great rides and many miles of pleasure. A trip around the Olympic
Peninsula in January is a perfect way to get your riding year underway.
Patrick Thomas/Winter 2005
|
