CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. 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.
Volcano views with serious seasonal checks. 328 km round from Enumclaw - plan on about 6 h 08 of riding. The stops in between: Packwood and Mount Rainier. Sunrise Road is the high point. It tops out at about 1,550 m. It is a high-mountain day.
Enumclaw sits on the plateau east of Seattle where the suburbs thin out into horse paddocks, hay fields and dairy farms, with Mount Rainier standing on the horizon on any clear day. The mountain, at about 4,390 metres, is an active volcano and the highest in the Cascade range, covered in more glacier ice than any other peak in the lower forty-eight states. It looks very close from here, and it is, which is a large part of why so many riders begin the day in this town.
Read the complete Enumclaw write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Next is Sunrise Road.
Sunrise is the highest point in Mount Rainier National Park that you can reach by road, about 6,400 feet above the sea, and the view from the car park is the one that makes people stop mid-sentence. From here the mountain, a volcano of 14,411 feet that is the highest in the Cascade Range, stands only a few miles away across a bowl of meadows and moraines, with the Emmons Glacier, the biggest in the contiguous United States by area, spilling down its flank. On a clear day it is almost too large to take in.
Read the complete Sunrise Road write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
You top out here; the road stops climbing. Next is Packwood food.
Packwood is a small town on the south side of Mount Rainier, on US 12 in the Cowlitz Valley, about twenty miles west of the White Pass summit, and it has long been a place where people stop for something to eat. The population is only a few hundred, but the town has a handful of cafes, a general store and a gas station, and in a stretch of road with very little else, that counts as a metropolis. It is known locally for its flea market, held in summer, which has grown into a large gathering of vendors and visitors.
Read the complete Packwood food write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
A break here. Next is Mount Rainier viewpoint.
Mount Rainier is not a mountain that you view casually. At 14,411 feet it rises more than two miles above the lowlands of Puget Sound, a huge, ice-capped volcano with some twenty-five named glaciers, visible on a clear day from Seattle, Tacoma and as far away as Portland. The Puyallup and Nisqually people called it Tahoma or Tacoma, and the name Rainier was given by Captain George Vancouver in 1792, in honour of a friend in the navy. It is considered an active volcano, and the scientists who study it keep a close watch, because the ice and mud on its flanks could flow in great lahars down the valleys to the suburbs below.
Read the complete Mount Rainier viewpoint write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Mount Rainier viewpoint, late in the day. Next is Back to Enumclaw fuel.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Enumclaw write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Back to Enumclaw fuel. That is the ride.
This Sunrise Road → Packwood food stretch is for rhythm and scenery. Keep your head up, let the view breathe, and resist turning every open bend into a target. Stop once properly rather than half-stopping everywhere.
Packwood food → Mount Rainier viewpoint is the logistics leg. Watch junctions, villages and speed changes, then let the roadbook do its job: move you out of the clutter without spending your best attention too early.