Sunday 26 June 2016

Camano Island and Deception Pass

We stayed a couple of nights on Camano Island.


Kids had a great time building boats at Cama beach.

They had a bunch of activities for kids at Cama, including this amazing bubble mix and hoop that made enormous bubbles. We probably spent 2 hours just making bubbles....



Deception pass rosario beach


Great spot to kayak!


Sunday 12 June 2016

Rainbow Rim: Mountain Biking The North Rim of The Grand Canyon

Another spectacular trip with escape adventures! This one exploring the north rim of the Grand Canyon.

Theme song: Hoops by The Reubens.

Bikes loaded!

Arizona is...special


Great to be on a very familiar bike: stumpy with dropper post

Beautiful singletrack through high meadows on the Arizona Trail, north rim


First view of the canyon. The other side is a very long way away.

Day 1 campsite!



Break at the top of a climb the next day

Mix of singletrack and doubletrack. Navigation was complicated, there's a ton of fire roads and trails going all over the place.


Lookout right near our campsite for day 2. Stupidly spectacular view.


Here we are! The Rainbow Rim is a bucket list MTB trail. Great singletrack right next to the rim of the Grand Canyon.

Really. Right next to it for a lot of the time.

Set up the tents then went for a bonus excursion on fantastic rainbow rim single track before dinner.

Looks like rain is coming. It sure did, there was some emergency tent pitching by some of our people who were just sleeping outside and got pretty soaked.

Day 3: Full length (50km) of the Rainbow Rim!

Those clouds may not look that bad, but a serious storm arrived. Tons of thunder and lightning, heavy rain, and even hail for a while. I almost gave up and turned back at one point. The lightning was particularly frightening given we were often exposed on rocky ledges with solitary tall trees....

Made it to the end! Bizarrely up this end didn't seem to have gotten wet at all.





Storm continues all around us




Making for what is probably the most spectacular sunset I've seen in my life






Final day featured a lot more jeep roads than single track. The main event was trying to soak each other by jumping bikes into the puddles created by the storm :)

Sunday 5 June 2016

Mt. Rainier and Packwood

We stayed in Packwood and hit up Mt. Rainier with Em's family.


Rainier at sunset from Packwood



Hot enough to be wearing shorts and T-shirts but plenty of snow at Paradise for making snowmen and having a snowball fight. Weirdest snow experience ever.




We also took the Mt. Rainier gondola from Crystal Mountain


Simply amazing mountain views from the top of the gondola