Cross Washington Mountain bike race 2021 (XWA)
My first bikepacking race, really seeing Washington for the first time.
Day 1
The grand depart was at 7am on May 23rd, from the Rialto beach on the coast of Washington.
We woke up at the cabin that I'd booked, about 7 miles from the start. The night before we'd struggled to find a place to park. My friend Jackson Lester and I wanted to take the train to Seattle and had public transport all planned out - but Amtrak was sold out of bike spots when we tried to buy the tickets - so we rented a van and drove. I was confident we'd be able to convince the cabin to let us park the van there for the week we'd be riding, so I insisted we wait to figure it out. Turns out they wouldn't let us park there. After a few more failed attempts to convince hotels/friends/random people to let us park the van on their property, Jackson found a place for us to to leave the van named Cycle Camp. I strongly recommend Cycle Camp, it's run by an old biker hippie, full of character and stories. If I ever do XWA again I'll stay there.
Having solved our parking issue I promptly went to sleep, Jackson didn't get to bed until even later. Both of us woke up a little groggy at 5:30am, but by the time we got to the beach we were in great spirits. It was misting, the trees were dripping, everything was lush, the view was stunning.
We walked to the ocean, dipped our rear wheels, snapped photos and everyone took off. I was peeing, since I thought there would be a group roll out and I felt like I was being dropped - so I rode hard. It was a nice way to start, since I ended up seeing the majority of the racers. I passed Jackson, who was in conversation with a group of riders. After a few more people it seemed like I was nearing the front and someone I passed told me there were only 2 people in front.
The route switched from pavement to gravel, started up a hill and I heard someone approaching from behind - it turned out to be Jackson. We were really excited, since from looking at Trackleaders it seemed like we were at the very front of the race. The two of us rode together for a while until I stopped to pee.
A few hours and steep climbs later, some pushing my bike through the snow, I caught up to Jackson and rode with him again, taking some wrong turns together, marveling at the beauty of the Olympic peninsula.
After descending from the mountains, Jackson put on a strong pace and I dropped back. I'd drank the 3 liters I'd started with, we were 80 miles in, so I filled up water at Lake Crescent (with water purification), got back on the bike, ate a breakfast burrito, and was passed by 2 or three more people.
Going through Port Angeles, around mile 110, I didn't see any food I was excited about directly in my path, so I filled up water from a fountain and pushed on.
By the time I was climbing Mount Zion later that evening, in the dark, I was hungry and out of water (amusingly, I made this same mistake again and again).
Adam Hale caught up to me in the dusk while we were climbing the mountains. Adam is an awesome bike weirdo and I'm excited to see his new mountain bike (and the framebag with carry straps) when it's finished! He said everything on the route except the Olympics and the Cascades was lame, and recommended the Olympic 420 for a better Washington MTB experience.
Adam was also out of water so we were on the lookout for a convenient stream. I was angry that I didn't have food and was tired. I also didn't want to get up too high, because I wasn't prepared for sleeping in temperatures much below 40f.
So at the first stream we found, I filled up, put in water purification tabs and pulled out my bivy. Adam drank directly from the mountain stream and kept on going.
I slept right off the edge of the trail and was woken up by a few more riders passing by in the night.
Worth noting: there was precipitation ranging from a very light mist to a slight drizzle 100% of this day and night.
Strava day 1
Day 2
I woke up at 5:45 and got moving. I pooped in a conveniently located pit toilet which I later found out Jackson had slept in the night before. He insists sleeping in pit toilets is a good idea, but everything about it seems suspect to me (how is getting your bivy/tent wet worse then not being able to stretch out the whole way to sleep?).
The singletrack after the toilet was beautiful and exciting and some of the more technical riding of the trip. I was really hungry, but the breakfast burrito and coffee I got in Quilcene improved my happiness dramatically.
Later that morning, the Hood Canal Floating bridge on 104 was the worst bike section of the trip. At the moment of this photo was the only time I felt safe on the bridge, the rest of the time it was full of trucks and trailers moving very quickly very close by.
The ride from Port Gamble to Kingston across the Kitsap Peninsula was pleasant. I was out of food by the time I got to the ferry but it was leaving, so I ended up eating a selection of snacks from the vending machines onboard.
I was looking at the wrong map and missed the majority of the food right after the ferry, but ended up with two very satisfactory burritos a little bit later.
I stopped at Bothell Ski and Bike in Kenmore, because one of my Xpedo M-Force pedals had broken for the second time. They were repairable but I was unwilling to spend the time to do it again and my repair hadn't lasted that long. I bought good old Shimano SPDs and some Cliff energy chews. This was the first time I'd had gummies or gels on the trip, I'd forgotten how effective they are. Note to self: make sure you have enough food, some of it energy food.
Bothell told me there was a big group of riders ahead of me, so I set out to catch them. At the top of a hill in Blyth Park (site of one of the many frisbee golf courses I saw before crossing the Cascades), there was a cooler marked for XWA with a bunch of drinks in it, the first instance of trail angels I'd experienced. It was amazing - it really made me feel like I was a part of something and I deeply enjoyed the chocolate milk.
A few miles later I ran into the big group of riders. Chad (I think?) rode with me for a little while and I learned they were doing XWA as a casual ride, they'd started 2 days before the mass depart so they got to chat with the racers as they passed by. Seems like a really fun way of experiencing the race and of having a bike vacation.
The route went through amazing paths in Redmond, weaving in and out of more lush green wet forest, full of banana slugs. It blew my expectations out of the water for what I'd imagined was a boring suburban park with Microsoft in it.
The next section was on bike paths. There were some majestic bike only bridges and more lush green forests. Jackson called to tell me he was dropping out of the race because of knee pain. He was a bit ahead of me and had booked a hotel room. I was hungry and running out of food and water (because I'm an idiot and don't learn). I decided I wanted to crash with him for the night, so I let him know, stopped at a pizza shop near his hotel, picked up 2 large pizzas and rolled over. He said he wasn't hungry, but I figured he would want some anyway and obviously he did.
The shower felt nice. It had been drizzling most of the day and I hung all of my stuff up. It got sort of dry.
Worth noting: there was precipitation ranging from a very light mist to a slight drizzle 80% of this day and night.
Strava day 2
Day 3
I woke up and ate the two remaining slices of pizza for breakfast. Having breakfast when I woke up was a novelty on this trip, which I didn't appreciate in the moment. There was a gas station that was open at 5:30 when I left our hotel, so I even got a coffee.
The first 25 miles were a slow, gradual climb on a soggy rails-to-trails path. It had mostly stopped drizzling but everything was still wet. I said hi to Fabien Le Gallo as he passed me.
Going through Iron Horse Tunnel was awesome - it's a long tunnel, by far the biggest bike/pedestrian only tunnel I've been through. When I was in the middle, I couldn't see light on either side. I was out of water and so I was very pleased to find a full service bathroom for hikers on the other side, but there wasn't any food.
I was very hungry when I got into Cle Elum but inexplicably, didn't buy very much food. I picked up a mailing envelope from a post office and I ate a subway sandwich.
The trail branched into two routes - the high route and the low route. In the parking lot at the start, most people had indicated they were planning on taking the high route, but looking on Trackleaders, Adam was the only person ahead of me to take it. I figured that meant it would be fun.
When the going got cold and snowy, I cut the postal envelope to wrap around my feet inside my shoes (Tyvek is miraculous). There were some amazing views in the Cascades, they seem to go on forever.
I'd been very confident I would make it over the mountains by the morning. By 10:30pm it was clear that wasn't going to happen. I was out of food and mostly out of water. Pushing my bike up a snowy hill, I ran into the second XWA cooler, which was definitively the high point of the trip.
Adam had told me Rainier was the best cheap pacific northwest beer - surprise to me, since I'd only had Olympia before this and he had an Olympia patch on his fanny pack - he'd explained that Olympia was bought by Pabst and has maybe been discontinued. True to his word, the only thing consumed in the cooler was a Rainier beer, so I drank one too.
I made it a few more miles, but I was tired and hungry so I stopped in a spot protected by some deadfall, pulled out my bivy, put on all my clothes and went to sleep.
Strava day 3
Day 4
It was a chilly night. I didn't sleep that well, my feet were too cold. I wasn't willing to get out of my bivy until after 7 because it was so cold outside. But it was clear and the sun was out (for the first time on the trip), so the day was warming up.
When I started biking I ran into more deadfall, more soggy gravel, more snow and many more amazing views.
This was close to the actual high point of the route, right around 6,000 feet.
The ride down to Wenatchee had an amazing flowy section that went on for miles and could be ridden just pumping through the banked turns and rollers. Then there were a series of climbs that were too steep for me to ride. Walking up them, I followed a solitary trail in the dust from a bike and noticed that Adam was walking too and that he was doing the race in flat pedals.
I ran into two dot watchers in Wenatchee who suggested places to stop for food and told me Shiggy Don Person was at Fred Meyer. I bought some food from the hot food section at a small grocery store and I think this did me in. I caught up to Adam waiting at a train crossing but ran off to get chain lube and new brake pads at Full Circle Cycle Shop (I also picked up some gels, because energy food is fantastic).
I caught up to Adam again at Fred Meyer, where Shiggy was indeed waiting at the bike racks. I’m very thankful he was, because I desperately needed to go to the bathroom. By the time I finished, Adam had left.
I changed my brake pads in a park by the river and bought some barbecue from a small store right before the climb up Rock Island Grade. While I was eating, Adam passed me, having stopped to chat with people. I caught up to him at the start of the climb, when he was rearranging clothes. I waited for him and asked why he had put on a buff, even though it was incredibly hot. He explained that his nose dries out in the hot desert air. Next time I go to the high desert I will bring a buff, I also get bloody noses from the dry climate (it took until after I finished the ride before I got one this trip).
We started riding up Rock Island together. He recommended listening to the Colombia River Collection by Woodie Guthrie, because we were by a dam on the Colombia River and Bonneville power (and the Department of the Interior) paid Woodie Guthrie to tour dams in Oregon and Washington and write songs about them. Adam also admitted that the entire route had been pretty great so far and he'd been a sourpuss about it earlier.
I couldn't manage to keep pedaling up the steep gravel and my stomach hurt, so I said goodbye to Adam and started walking. At the top of the climb, I struggled to find a sheltered area to poo, but when I did the view was majestic.
The view was also majestic in the next few places I stopped for my diarrhea. I contemplated just camping in a field after one of my stops, but I was running low on water, didn't have much food and was feeling pretty drained (figuratively and literally). So instead, I rode a sandy descent in the twilight and walked through a bunch of streams in Douglas Creek in the dark.
I picked up some water from one of the streams that I hoped wasn't pure farm runoff and camped in an impacted campsite right next to the route, near the outside of the park.
Strava day 4
Day 5
I woke up feeling slightly better and didn't need to immediately need to take a shit after eating a bar - so things were looking up! I didn't have enough food though, so I moved pretty slowly on my way to Ephrata. When I got there I ordered two burritos from a Mexican restaurant and received two burrito suizo plates.
I ate one, and unsure about the best way to deal with a wet burrito, chopped the other up and put it in a ziplock bag to take with me. A few miles later, after eating a few spoonfuls, I threw it away because I was worried about my stomach. By that point, I was outside of the main part of town, so once again I was short on food.
The next section of ride was loose pebbles with an incredibly strong side headwind, which blew the dust from the farm fields into my eyes and made them burn. My first time riding in a dust storm! I made a little duct tape side protector for my glasses.
I made it to a gas station right as it closed, and it turned out to have the best tasting pop-tarts in the world. They had an exterior outlet where I charged my devices while I ate my gas station bounty.
I started riding on the Palouse to Cascases State Park Trail and it was unbelievably rutted by horses. There was no smooth track. It was still incredibly windy and while the wind had died down a little bit, there were multiple blockades of tumbleweeds in the trail.
After it got dark I decided I was tired of everything, crept off the edge of the trail and camped.
Strava day 5
Day 6
It was surprisingly cold in the morning, so cold I stayed in my bivy with all my clothes on until almost 7, when the sun had warmed things enough that I was comfortable venturing out. The trail continued to be incredibly bumpy until I passed about 40 horses, at which point it went back to being loose pebbles.
There was also a burned out bridge that I definitely didn't cross.
In the evening, I was hoping to find some food and water in Malden, but the town had burned down and there were no businesses open. Looking ahead at the map, Rosalia was 8 miles of pebbles ahead - and had Whole in the Wall pizza shop which was closing in 50 minutes. I called and ordered a large pizza, said I would be there in 30 minutes and laid down my hardest effort of the trip. I got there 5 minutes before they closed but they generously let me eat in the restaurant as they cleaned up.
Aharon Elston was at Whole in the Wall when I got there and he waited for me to finish eating. We road the last miles to Idaho together, which was a really great way to close out the race. It sounds like there is a really strong community of riders in the Seattle area and like XWA has served as a focus point and recruitment event. I'm incredibly grateful to Aharon for accompanying me on the last leg of the trip, it made finishing the ride much more fun. Also, he gave me a ride back to Seattle, which was amazing.
Strava day 6
See also the XWA website, and the route on bikepacking.com.