I crossed the Cascades on Highway 20 in Washington, part of the Northern Tier bicycle route. It was a two day journey. The first, from Bellingham to a Campground just outside Diablo. (Diablo is one of a pair of Seattle City Light company towns on the Skagit River. The other being Newhalem. The service the hydroelectric dams which Seattle City Light has set-up on the Skagit River. Both sound like perfect settings for slasher-horror flicks.) The second, from Diablo to Winthrop.

Stilllife at Camp, Diablo, WA

A stop at the North Cascades Ranger Station in Sedro-Wooley was invaluable here. First off, they were able to point me to this campground near Diablo. Awesome find. Not far off the road, potable water, pit toilets (but cleanish ones with hand-sanitizer), and free. Free! Secondly, they gave me a map of the elevation gains and points of interest from Sedro-Wooley through Washington Pass…..a map designed from a bicycle perspective.

Okay. The elevation gains were just depressing. But the info on where you could expect to refill water, and where to watch for bad pavement and narrow shoulders was really fantastic. Every National Park featuring a mountain pass should have something like this. (Hello Canada, I’m talking to you!)

The climb from Sedro-Wooley through Marblemount, Newhalem, and Diablo is pretty gradual, just a titch above perfectly flat. This is really important for me, with the massive amount of gear I’m carrying. Anything greater than that titch above flat and I’m gutting it out at 6 mph or so. But on this sort of terrain I could keep a steady 12 to 14 mph, no problem.

Washington Pass

After Diablo, it pitches up significantly to Rainy Pass, drops back down again, and then up to Washington Pass. I felt pretty good on this stuff at first. I passed a couple of recumbent riders early on in the day, which both made me feel strong and motivated me for much of the rest of the day not to lolligag too much lest they catch up with me again. (Depressingly, I ran into them the next day as I was breakfasting on the sidewalk in front of a grocery store in Twisp. It turns out they were working on their seven-thousandth mile of their Paneverywhere tour AND that one of them had nearly completely ruptured one of his Achilles’ tendons about three days earlier. How they were still cycling at all…? But they said they were “taking it easy” to nurse the injury. I felt significantly less studly.) But pretty soon the heat and the grade were taking their toll. I was just counting the miles between water breaks. Finally, about 2pm, I crested Washington Pass. Zoomed down the other side at excess of 40 mph in sections. As the road flattened out toward Winthrop, I crossed paths with a couple on fully laden bikes headed in the opposite direction. Just starting the climb in the late afternoon. Woe to them.