Ice Cycle Run 2009

The Pacific NW Road Riders (PNWRR) had the sixth annual running of the Ice Cycle Run on November 29, 2009.  This is third year I have participated.  The weather was supposed to be fog in the morning turning to partly sunny in the afternoon.  The usual destination for this RTE is the Olympic Club Restaurant in Chehalis, WA. 

One group was planning on meeting up at the Fauntleroy ferry to catch the 8:35 AM run to Southworth.  There ended up being four of us; George, Doug, Dean an I.  I rode Brutus over early enough to stop for some coffee and a pumpkin scone at the closest Starbucks.

The ferry ride over was uneventful and we started a back roads route to Chehalis for the planned 12:00 RTE.  I’m glad the lead rider, George, had the route programmed into his GPS because I would have had great difficulty making all the turns and cutbacks to pick up all of the twisties that we rode without electronic help.  I had my Zumo trip log set up so I was able to capture all of it.

There is no way to get an embedded map to show all of the detail so I will just provide the file “Ice Cycle Run 2009.gpx”.  Just right-click and do a “Save As” to copy it to your computer.  It contains routes, both out and back, as well as tracks.

The ride started out overcast but fairly dry until we got down to the Purdy area.  From there until just before we got to Chehalis we were running on damp or wet roads and through drizzle to light rain.  That put a little ‘damp’er, pardon the pun , on aggressive cornering but it was still a nicely spirited ride.  We were occasionally teased by a peek at the sun.  We ended up riding the 135 miles to Chehalis without any rest stops.

Pulling into Chehalis the sun was finally  breaking out.  We arrived at the Olympic Club a couple of minutes before noon.  We lucked out and got parking spots right in front of the Olympic.   As it turned out several other groups of riders were participating in the Ice Cycle Run and everyone was pulling in about the same time. 

Though it wasn’t planned the way it turned out everyone was directed back to the Green Room and we ended up pretty much filling it.  If it had just been our group there would have only been about eight of us.  I had a Club sandwich and one of the house brews  and we all had a good BS session while we ate.

I don’t remember when we got up to leave but I am guessing it was about 1:30 PM.  During lunch our four rider group had agreed on a long loop back through Morton, Eatonville, Enumclaw and Hobart for the route back.  We picked up one additional rider who wanted to ride with us a good deal of the way. 

The homeward route wasn’t filled with quite as many turns and cutbacks as the outbound trip.  In spite of that we ended up on some roads that I had certainly never been on.   The weather and roads were dry for the whole trip home. 

We rode about 110 miles back to Enumclaw and George pulled over to see if anyone wanted to take a short break.  I still had gas in my tank so I didn’t feel like taking a break .  So I said my farewells and finished up the remaining 35 miles to home.  I even got home with a little daylight left .

It was another successful if un-icy Ice Cycle Run.