Mountain Bike Ride to Hell

Downhill

Lunch over, my tires hummed on the pavement, a magical smoothness after the talus, not resisting forward momentum nor lurching the bike. No wonder people liked road biking. As much as I enjoyed the change, the highway did not belong here; the stark line it cut across the ridges insulted nature's curves. Fifteen minutes on the road deposited us at a Forest Service sign saying, "Smith Creek Trailhead." I noted the complete absence of cars in the parking lot.

"Downhill for a long time. You'll enjoy it," Philip said.

"Don't forget to wait anywhere I could go the wrong way," I said.

"This is the only trail except at the very bottom where we have to go back up and loop back to the parking lot, with maybe 600 feet of elevation gain. We'll wait along the way though," Chad said. We had already gained a couple of thousand feet, so 600 did not sound like that much, but it would come at the end of the day when I was tired.

    Smith Creek Trailhead with no parked cars.

I reached for my water bottle, drank, and looked up—all three bikers were gone. A few seconds wouldn't change anything, so I gazed at St. Helens. Steam seeping out in several places, the mountain revealed its blown-out guts, an absurd volume of rock that had been transformed to dust and blown hundreds of miles. In Seattle, where I had lived at the time, hundreds of thousands of people had stopped what they were doing on May 18 in 1980 to stare at the rising ash plume and wonder whether it was heading their way.

The Smith Creek drainage and valley ran in a long straight line to the south, St. Helens now on the right, another mountain ridge on the left, the bottom of the valley thousands of feet below. I pedaled for a few seconds and then released myself to gravity, my fingers caressing the disk brake levers to control my speed. The trail dipped below the road and ran downhill, sideways to the mountain at a comfortable angle. Loose stones on the trail jostled the tires, but the bike ran straight. To my right the mountain side fell away at a scary angle, but I felt safe, exhilarated at flying through the terrain.

I rounded a bend and the trail continued at the same angle, with the same solidity. How wonderful. Philip, wherever he was by now, was right: a great descent. Another bend revealed more of the same, except the trail narrowed, demanding tighter steering, but I was in the zone. A hundred yards ahead, the mountain became a vertical cliff, and the trail snapped to the opposite direction. I clamped on the brakes and skidded to a standstill at the edge of the corner. If I had been going any faster, I would have overshot and would still probably be falling. Time to slow down. I got off, flipped my bike around, and restarted in the new direction. How far ahead were the others?

The trail dipped down at a steeper angle and narrowed even more than a few minutes ago. The surface, now covered with a layer of small loose stones wobbled my wheels side to side, forcing me to slow down from the zippy 20 miles per hour my bike computer had been displaying a minute ago to less than 10 miles per hour.

On my left the mountain fell away. I gripped my handlebars, tightened my fingers on the brakes, and looked for a stable line in the stones, determined not to veer off the trail and fall down the mountain on rubble. I unclipped my right foot from the pedal and held it out to the side, so that if the bike slid out I might, in theory, step onto the ground to catch myself. My foot flying through the air made me feel safer, though not by much, and my lower back ached from the contorted riding position.

Ahead, another switchback appeared. I ground to a halt again, sensing a fall if I tried to complete the turn with my foot out. I got off, turned the bike around, resumed, and this time held my left foot out, the mountain falling off to the right side. The bike bounced on downward. 

Fifteen more handlebar-clenching minutes followed, a quarter of the descent to the creek I guessed, and the terrain leveled out. I cruised into a clearing to find the other three riders sprawled out on a grassy ledge, snacking. A smile spread over my face. "Hey guys, glad you waited." I joined them with my water bottle and sports bar.

Middle-of-nowhere snack, Mt. St. Helens in the background.

Philip said, "We've only been here a couple of minutes. You weren't that far behind."

I said, "I felt unstable in that loose crap. I rode with my foot out for most of it. How do you guys do it?"

Chad said, "I pull out my foot too when I'm real unsure, but the more you ride in these conditions, the more comfortable you get."

Philip said, "Right, Chad. I don't know if I've ever seen you hold out your foot. The extra air resistance would slow you down too much." Philip explained that Chad used to race dirt motorcycles and had won a championship. "We have a bit more of this type of riding then things mellow out a bit." Coming from Philip, I was skeptical that riding would actually become easier.

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