After the bike park day left me with a nasty blister on my left hand, I decided not to ride the next day.

Ha! Yeah right! A little pain wasn’t gonna stop me! I probably made things worse by continuing to ride with that blister, but whatever.

I rented a Santa Cruz Hightower LT from The Bike Hub in Spokane Valley (and barely fit the bike into my rental Jeep Renegade), and headed north to Mount Spokane State Park ($10 day pass, $30 annual pass)! My plan was to ride Trail 290, aka “The Goods.”

Unfortunately the bike shop didn’t open until 10 AM, so it was 11:30 AM or so before I got up to the trailhead. That meant the sun was up high, and it was pretty hot. Yeah, it’s a dry heat, which is wayyyyy better than Texas, but it was still in the 90’s that day. Would make for a sweaty climb.

I parked at the lot where Trail 290 ends, and climbed up the road. It seemed like a tough climb while it was happening, but once I reached the top I looked back on it and thought, hey, that wasn’t that bad! It’s only roughly 1,500 feet, and took me about 45 minutes. Plus it included some good views along the way!

The trail was sweet! Totally different type of riding than what I’m used to. I mean other than it being downhill, of course. It was pretty flowy, but also had some ruts, roots, and a few rocks. In parts it was really steep! It required a lot of mustard, as I put it. I guess “body English” would be a more understandable term for the masses, but I think mustard sounds more intriguing.  The Santa Cruz handled it well!

At one point I stopped to get a good selfie for my YouTube banner photo. Yep, I had lugged my 3.5 pound camera + lens up that climb! I used my Gorilla Pod to set it up on top of a branch, put the camera on continuous shooting every 0.5 seconds for like 100 photos, rode back up the hill, quickly turned around, and rode back down! Wooo!

I was concerned about how it would turn out with such harsh light amongst the shadows, but with some editing it looks pretty good! Love the dynamic range of that Nikon D500!

Here’s a look at the map of my route, and the elevation profile from Strava (click it to view the activity on Strava):

Heck, it wouldn’t even be that bad to ride that twice! I think most people shuttle the rides here, though, and would ride Trail 290 and Trail 140 (video & blog coming up next week!) on the same day. I didn’t have a shuttle, so I didn’t do that.

Anyway, the video is below, so enjoy! #LiveTheAdventure