CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
205 km from Sedro-Woolley to the finish, about 3 h 06 of riding. On the way it passes Diablo Lake and Washington Pass. The highest point is about 1,650 m. Washington Pass is subject to seasonal closure - check it is open before you set off. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
This part of the ride is 58 km of Diablo Lake → Washington Pass.
77 km that neither climbs nor drops much. The road settles into the ground rather than fighting it. This is where a day makes up time without anyone trying. Third and fourth, and very little else.
Sedro-Woolley is two towns that stuck together. Sedro and Woolley were separate rivals on the Skagit River until they merged in 1898, and the double-barrelled name, with its hyphen, has stayed ever since. It is a working town of about eleven thousand people on the flat, green floodplain of the Skagit valley, in north-western Washington, with farms, sawmills, a timber heritage and a loggers' festival in July. For riders it is the start of the North Cascades Highway, and the last easy place to buy supplies.
Read the complete Sedro-Woolley write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sedro Woolley is where the day begins. Next is Diablo Lake.
Diablo Lake is the colour that nobody believes in photographs. The water is a milky, luminous turquoise, as though someone has dissolved a gemstone in it, and it is not a trick of the light. Glaciers on the surrounding peaks grind the rock beneath them into a fine powder, rock flour, which washes down in meltwater and stays suspended in the lake, scattering blue and green light back to the surface. The effect is strongest in late summer, when the melt is at its peak and the sun is high.
Read the complete Diablo Lake write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Diablo Lake comes up about 101 km into the recorded legs. Next is Washington Pass.
At 1,669 metres, Washington Pass is the highest point on the North Cascades Highway, and from the overlook just beside the road you look straight across at a wall of grey granite that seems to have been designed by a rock climber. Liberty Bell Mountain stands out as a smooth, blunt dome, with the sharp spires of the Early Winters group beside it, and the whole group rises above a basin of scree, larch and bare rock. The overlook is reached by a short, paved path from the car park, with a viewing platform above a cliff, and it is one of the best easy views in the state.
Read the complete Washington Pass write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 159 km into the recorded legs you reach Washington Pass. Nothing on this route is higher. Next is Winthrop, mostly downhill.
Winthrop has dressed up as the Wild West, and it does so with enthusiasm. The town sits where the Chewuch and Methow rivers meet, in a sunny valley on the dry eastern side of the North Cascades, and its main street is lined with wooden false fronts, boardwalks and hitching posts. In the 1970s, with the new highway about to bring tourists from Seattle, local businesses agreed on an Old West theme, and the plan worked. Today there are saloons, a general store, a small museum in an old log cabin, and at weekends a cowboy hat is not out of place.
Read the complete Winthrop write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Winthrop closes the day.
Sedro Woolley → Diablo Lake is 101 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Diablo Lake → Washington Pass is 58 km. This is the part worth slowing down for - look through the bends and use the pull-offs.
Washington Pass → Winthrop is 46 km. Brakes and eyes forward; the views are behind the corners, not in them.