The pagan celebration of the Winter Solstice centers around keeping a light lit from sunset to sunrise on the longest night of the year, to encourage the Sun to come back. Over the last 15 or 20 years i've tried several times to stay up all night with a candle.
About 5 years ago it occurred to me that it would be a cool twist, and a hell of a lot of fun, to celebrate the Solstice by keeping the bike light on all night. With a dynamo headlight, the way to keep the light on is to keep the wheels moving. I could celebrate by riding all night!
I was really excited about the idea, but i didn't think i could manage it alone and besides, that wouldn't be any fun. So for a few years i tried a little to find someone to ride with me with no success. After Winter Solstice in 2009 i heard that
Seattle International Randonneurs had for the first time done an overnight 200 km 'permanent' on the solstice and about 4 people had showed up. I liked that idea, so last year (Dec 2010) i 'gave up' trying to find people to ride with and decided to join the Rando ride. Although i had a very
good ride i didn't exactly make it to sunrise.I certainly didn't want to try that again. I'm just not that competitive and i don't like riding alone.
This year i was very interested in doing a relaxed, collaborative overnight ride. Mileage was absolutely not an issue. I wanted no goal of a certain distance to accomplish, no speed to achieve, no place to get to. The goal was simply to enjoy riding thorough the night, and it would be riding pretty slowly. I'm slow.
Partially through more effort on my part and partially due to better resources available, i managed to collect a couple of friends to go with me.
Kent eagerly signed on as soon as the email went out. He and i had a couple of conversations about possible routes; both of us were excited about night time riding on some of the east King County trails through the forest. We've ridden those trails during the day many times and were intrigued about trying it at night with good lighting.
We decided that our basic route would be to ride from a central meeting point (Mercer Island along I-90) out to Preston, Fall City, North Bend, into the foothills of the Cascades beyond the farthest exurb, and up to Rattlesnake Lake at the edge of the wilderness. Because there are good gravel (and paved) trails along here, this would keep our small group off the roads and away from cars for almost the entire route. From Rattlesnake Lake, we'd have a variety of options: return, go south to the Cedar River trail, go north on the Snoqualmie Valley Trail or go up and back the Iron Horse Trail. We would decide on the fly.
On the shortest day of the year i was nervous but excited. I had prepared everything the day before: the bike was in good shape and i was bringing a lot of food and clothing. Sunset was at 4:19. I left home at 4:12 pm. Sometimes when i leave for a very long ride, as i am riding right out the door from home i feel the enormity of the undertaking. It can be a little overwhelming that first 3/10 of a mile of a 100 mile ride. But today i didn't feel that. I was excited and ready to roll. And the first goal, the only goal, was to pedal.
I'd start by meeting Scott at the tunnel. I rode through Central Seattle down to Judkins Park and took the trail to the I-90 bike tunnel where he was waiting. It was good to see him and it helped eliminate any nervousness. I was really glad he came along, i met him on Kent's
Tour Divide departure ride about 18 months ago and we rode together well.
Once through the tunnel we crossed the floating bridge to the meeting point at a coffee shop along side the trail on Mercer Island, arriving just before 5pm. I got a breve' hot chocolate for fuel and as the sky got darker we waited to see who would show up. I really did spin my wheel every few minutes to keep my headlight shining!
Before long David, who i had never met but had been talking with Kent at the bike shop, showed up. Kent arrived soon after. With a bit of light left in the western sky the four of us departed eastbound, joking about our goal. At one intersection we were discussing which way to go.
David asked, "Where do we need to get to?"
I responded: "7:55 am".
We all laughed.
We didn't have a
place to get to, we didn't have a
distance to achieve. It really was a different way of thinking from almost any ride i've done. Not having a goal of any kind was really freeing. We were relaxed, just riding together through the darkness. Being in the moment. Experiencing the forest, and the night. Catching up with old friends and making some new ones. This was our social network, and we got to pedal the whole time.
Kent was riding his much beloved
Trek Allant, i was riding my rebuilt Bianchi Volpe with Velocity Chukker 700c rims, with Schwable Marathon 35 mm tires, Scott was riding his beautiful orange
lugged Rawland cSogn with 650b rims and 32 mm tires.
We crossed the highway on the ped bridge at Eastgate as Kent wanted to detour around the LDS temple to try out a trail back there. We sped through the dark forest on the trail. That's when we ran into the Boeing fence. Not literally, but we didn't see it until we were right on it. Barbed wire across the trail -- blocking our path. We doubled back, crossed through a parking lot of what turned out to be a large Microsoft facility and then picked up the I-90 trail again.
When i was doing some microfilm research (that's what we used before Google) at the library back in the early nineties, i learned that sixty years ago, when Sea-Tac airport was being planned, the location south of the city where it is now was the SECOND choice. The top choice was Phantom Lake airport in Bellevue - now a very rich suburb.
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| Phantom Lake, Bellevue WA |
Until i was drawing the map of this ride today, i never knew where the Phantom Lake airport had been. But that was it, right where we ran into the Boeing barbed wire and when we crossed the Microsoft parking lot we were crossing the old runway! If the City of Tacoma had not protested, that might have been a major international airport!
Instead of the commuter route over the shoulder of Cougar mountain on Newport Way, we took the narrow bike trail on the north side of I-90, and very carefully navigated the frozen leaves on the tight switch backs downhill. Our first stop of the night was at the semi-secret Timberlake Park in Issaquah. We rode down through the forest and stood on the dark bank of Lake Samammish eating
Kent's Nutty Turtle Bars. They were yummy and the view was amazing.
From there we passed through the newer sprawly business district of Issaquah where there an airport was when i lived in Issaquah in 1992. Interesting that we cycled right through two former airports, both of which appear on the c.1983 USGS maps in my Topo program. We stopped briefly at the IHOP where the SIR overnight 200km was about to depart. There were 45 very serious riders there, we said a quick hello and good luck before pedaling on down the road.
It was only another quarter mile through the strip malls before picking up the trail. In town this trail is paved, but as we left Issaquah to the east, the trail starts to climb, enters the forest and turns to gravel. Most of us had never ridden on gravel at night, (
except for Kent, obviously) so there were a few minutes of convincing ourselves that it was all OK, but that didn't take long.
From that point onward we were on trail most of the rest of the night. It was glorious being in the forest in the dark. Riding on the gravel was not a problem, and the vast majority of those trails are smooth dirt. That’s a really fun trail in the day and i quite enjoyed it at night. We rode through the dark woods, two pairs of bikes cruising along chatting. It felt good.
A couple of trails later we quickly crossed through the quiet little town of Preston, continuing east, downhill, on the Preston-Fall City trail. This trail is paved and we really tested the speed of our lights. It's not too hard to get ahead of the light and on this narrow downhill trail in the dark; and that's not a good idea. We aimed our powerful beams further ahead and quickly covered the ground to the end of the trail near Fall City. We had to ride a couple of miles downhill on the main road to get into Fall City; rolling in not much after 10 pm.
In Fall City we met up with Brad, who had been putting in daddy bedtime duty; he has two toddlers. We attempted to grab a sitdown meal, but although the waiters at the Fall City Roadhouse were excited and supportive, they had already closed for the night. It was for the best i think, it kept us outside and on the road.
So like Tour Divide riders we grazed at the convenience store before the, now five, of us rolled out of town, around the roundabout and back into the forest. We rode up Rutherford Slough Road which connects to a gravel logging road uphill to the Snoqualmie Valley Trail. This road was blocked due to a property dispute for a couple of years. Thankfully it has recently opened again and it was very useful for us.
The weather started off pretty chilly and got down to 27 degrees by about midnight but we were all pretty well dressed. We didn't even have to stop to add layers. Riding through Fall City the roads were a bit icy, but the gravel trails were fine. At some point i noticed that i had left one of my two water bottles back on the steps of the restaurant in Fall City.
It was a cold, clear night and if i looked up above me while i was pedaling along i could see a strip of stars between the trees towering on either side of the trail. At one point along the trail we heard hooves ahead and to the side of us, and caught a fleeting glimpse of a group of Elk galloping alongside the trail. Good company, the cold forest, a wonderful trail, the bright stars, and turning the pedals, it was a joyous celebration.
Kent and David were using battery powered lights that were very bright with a narrow beam. Scott and Brad and i had super bright, wide beam dynamo powered LED headlights. Mine is a 2010 Schmidt
SON 28 Classic hub generator with a
Schmidt Edelux light, Scott had his Shimano Dh-3N72 generator hub with a Busch and Müeller Lumotec IQ Cyo R+ light. We really lit up the trail as we rolled through. It was bright.
We stopped along the trail once or twice to eat a bite and catch our breath. The forest got dark and a little scary as our bike lights either dimmed or went off when we stopped. We didn't stop for long at any point and my dim standlight kept burning. We were in a different world there, just a few hours of pedaling from downtown of a major city we were isolated in the forest with just our human powered lights. There are millions of people in the Seattle Metro area but we felt very alone. It was humbling and invigorating.
I tremendously enjoyed the trail, but it was very different from riding it in the daylight. The darkness snuggled around each of us. I mis-counted the trestle bridges and was very surprised when we got to the end of the trail. The Snoqualmie Valley Trail is interrupted by a gap near the town of Snoqualmie. Finding the little 100 yard hiking trail up to the road in the pitch dark was a challenge, but with people like Brad and Kent along, anything is possible.
From that point Snoqualmie Falls is just a quarter mile out of the way, and we couldn't resist the detour, after all, we had nothing but time. It was about 11:45 pm and there were still a handful of sightseers looking over the falls. Most were dressed up (there is an expensive restaurant at the falls) and they all looked at us strangely and gave us lots of space. In addition to the low lying fog along the river, there was a huge frozen fog being kicked up by the
giant roaring waterfall and it was an amazing sight in the powerful lights they have focused on the falls. We enjoyed our little break and the pedaled on, skipping the small town of Snoqualmie. Instead we took Mill Pond Road to the spot we could pick up the trail again. Mill Pond Road is a lovely, quiet, dark (and in the daytime, tree shaded) road on the other side of the river from town.
The trail starts again on a trestle bridge with stairs up from the road. Those stairs were
very slippery on this cold night. The trail is straight and flat through farmland and the town of North Bend. We turned off the trail and rode through North Bend, although we did not stop. As we rode out of town, Brad sprinted off to the right, chasing a group of Elk with his very bright light.
Where the road crosses under the freeway it meets up with the trail again, which we joined. Now the trail enters really thick temperate rain forest and starts to climb significantly. We were all starting to get a little tired on the climb up the gravel trail. I warmed up a bit and had to take off a layer to let my head cool. The group scattered a little, our human powered lights cutting through the darkness in a line stretching through the forest.
While it would have been ideal to stop and eat sitting next to side Rattlesnake Lake, we were a bit worried about being there, as the park is officially closed at night. We stopped and used the potties and looked out over the lake for a moment, but we continued up through the park to the beginning of the Iron Horse trail where we found a plastic picnic table where we could settle and eat for a bit. We hadn't noticed how cold it had gotten until we stopped and we all pulled out some clothing when we got there. It was a cold, clear night. Very beautiful. I added a layer, an extra sweater, when we stopped and i didn't take it off for the rest of the night, i only made one other layer change the whole night.
Everyone dumped their food on the table. Various sandwiches, granola bars, nuts, cookies and bread covered the table and we all dug in. Kent started to fire up his
Kelly Kettle, a nifty metal bottle with a fire pan at the bottom and an internal chimney which funnels the wind to increase the fire and boil water quickly. He shoved some sticks in the chimney, started a fire with paper and soon water was boiling. He made some tea and poured water in my dehydrated backpacking meal and Brad's pot noodle. We passed them both around.
The next fire in the Kelly Kettle was proving to be more difficult with the wet, and frozen, sticks that we could collect. Scott and i stood back and watched, but pretty soon there were three guys around the Kettle all trying to make fire. It was funny, at first, but it started to get worrisome. The fire would not start and we had a bunch more things that needed hot water, including cocoa. Eventually we decided it wasn't going to happen.
We sat back and chatted, enjoyed the rest and ate up what we could. I spun my front wheel frequently to keep my light burning. There were a couple of times it went out briefly, but we had candles, the Kelly Kettle and flashlights so i think it still counts as keeping the light on.
The cold was seeping in and before long we came to the easy group decision that it was time to mount the bikes and roll out. When we started packing up we discovered a problem: the Kelly Kettle had been sitting on the plastic table when it was hot, and now it was cool and it didn't want to move. We pushed and pried to no effect. We kicked at it. The Kettle itself came up easily, but the fire pan it sits on was seriously fused to the table. We struggled with it for a few minutes before the idea to heat it up again arose. Perfect idea, but we'd already had trouble with a fire.
Suffice it to say that a long time was spent trying to get a fire going again, to no avail. That frozen fog was preventing even the paper from lighting. After starting a somewhat disheartening discussion about riding down to North Bend, buying lighter fluid and riding back up the hill we pulled out our tools and after a tiny brief paper fire were able to pry up the pan with a screwdriver.
As we rolled back through Rattlesnake Lake Park, just a few hundred feet away, a ranger car came driving through and looked at us long and hard. Surely they thought we were crazy. It was one of the few times all night we saw headlights. The descent through the forest was downright cold. My toes got numb for the only time all night, but of course i had been standing still for an hour before that. When we pulled up to the all night mega-sized grocery store i went in the back and put on long johns. I was fine after that.
The five of us were a motley crew of overdressed, tired, dirty cyclists wandering around the huge, clean, brightly lit store for a few minutes. I grabbed a fruit juice, but other than that we could not find any ready to eat food that was going to work for us and i think the staff was glad when we left. On Rando rides you are often required to show dated receipts to prove you covered the route, so i thought for fun, i'd put the store receipt here.
We went down the street to the Quik Stop where the high school girl working there was very pleasant to us, but it became clear soon that she was in the middle of a drama of some sort and we had interrupted a flirting session with some boys. We got microwave burritos and bad cocoa and Kent got his
famous 3 day old hot dog and peanut M&Ms. We scarfed it all down and happily headed back out onto the trail again, leaving the relieved teenagers to flirt in peace. Back on the trail we saw plenty of deer before getting to the trestle again and heading back down the slippery steps.
We were retracing our tracks, back down the lovely Snoqualmie Valley Trail. Although we were getting sleepy, our good conversations were continuing and keeping us alert. We heard, but did not see, an owl as we sped down the dark gravel trail towards Fall City. It reminded us all just how wonderful this experience it was. It was truly a blessing being in that forest in the night in the winter.
When we got to the turn off for Rutherford Slough Road, where we had come up, we stopped and had a talk about route choices. Earlier in the evening we had floated the idea of continuing on the Snoqualmie Valley Trail to Duval, crossing up over Redmond ridge on the roads and picking up the Sammamish River Trail on the other side for the ride back to Issaquah. Now was the time to decide and as we discussed it we were all concerned about icy roads, and especially icy pavement on the long, steep descent. We decided not to risk it, and figured once we got to Issaquah we would go up to Redmond for coffee and back on the flat gravel lakeside trail.
When we got down the hill to Fall City around 3:30 am we started seeing riders on the Rando ride go by; they were covered with frost and looking a bit worse for wear. I stopped at the Fall City Roadhouse to grab my second water bottle, which had been sitting there since 10:30. The full bottle was frozen solid.
Brad left us at that point; this is where he had parked his car. We went into the Quik Stop for potato chips, ice cream and other fuel. We spoke with a couple of groups of the Randonners who also stopped in. They were enjoying their ride but they said that the roads were extremely slippery and it took a lot of energy to focus on keeping from slipping. They said couple of people had gone down. We were glad we were on gravel trails most of the night. We also noticed that the elevation we had gained, in addition to keeping us warm, with the additional effort, pushed us up above the thickest of the frozen fog which they were really fighting with on the low lying roads.
As we rode out of town, towards the southbound Preston-Snoqualmie trail, i had an idea and suggested we take the north(east)bound spur of the trail across the road, which heads through lovely forest and dead ends just a quarter mile from Snoqualmie Falls. Since we were aiming for 7:55am, we decided it was a good idea. So we walked our bikes up the 4 steep switch backs to the trail. (When this was a railroad, there must have been a huge trestle here!) It was a lovely ride and we had a nice view of the valley from the bench at the end in the forest, where we ate more nuts and chocolate. This trail spur is paved and returning to the road was a significant down hill and it was frosty. That descent was pretty hairy, i was glad when it was over.
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| Fall City Trail Loop |
By now i was getting pretty punchy. Much to my surprise my legs still felt strong and my blood sugar was fine, but it was late at night and i was quite tired. I was feeling a bit distant. Scott and i pedaled up hill on the Preston-Snoqualmie Trail towards Preston occasionally seeing things that were not there. Kent was the only one of the four of us with Rando experience so this was new for us, this riding while almost asleep. As we neared the end of that trail dawn started to break. We started to see a bit of light in the sky in the openings in the forest. It was beautiful and in my happy but tired state i found it astonishingly profound.
In Preston as the sky was starting to brighten we stopped for coffee at a typical small town coffee shop with some serious characters in it. Kent was having some very entertaining conversations as i went out to stand with the bikes and take in the beauty of dawn.
As we were saddling up again a guy got out of his truck and asked what ride we had done. When we told him we'd ridden sunset to sunrise he said, "You started yesterday?!?"
I had to stop and think for a long time before i said, "Yeah, i guess so." It didn't really feel like tomorrow to me. It was still today. I was keeping the light on. Only about 50 minutes to sunrise. It felt good.
We felt fast on the frontage road out of Preston, but the deep gravel on the new trail connection to High Point slowed us down a lot. The High Point to Issaquah trail that we had started on was a very welcome section as we enjoyed the end of our ride. We got into Issaquah at 7:48, about 7 minutes to go before actual sunrise, so Kent took us on a brief tour of his neighborhood ending back at his front door at 7:57.
David lived nearby and he pedaled off quickly for his bed, while i crossed the street to the bus stop. I didn't feel like i had the 16 miles to Seattle left in me and my goal, 7:55 am, had been reached. My legs might have been able to do it, but not the rest of me. Scott was pretty punchy and was thinking we were only 3 or 4 miles from Seattle, i had to talk him into riding the bus, but he was quite thankful. Again on the bus we got the question "So you started yesterday?" It still seemed weird to me.
We got off the bus at the tunnel entrance where we had met 15 hours previous. We went our separate ways, i had 4 more miles to ride. I was happy to get home and i had breakfast and a shower before trying to get some sleep. I slept about 4 or 5 hours, and was pretty worthless the rest of the day. I wasn't as dehydrated as i expected.
My odometer recorded 10 and a quarter hours of riding over 15 and three quarter hours. I found it interesting that when i got home that i had NO IDEA how many miles i'd ridden until i looked at the map! I'm not a mileage fanatic, but i really can't remember the last time i did a long ride where i had no idea how far i'd ridden. That's pretty cool, i'd like more of that.
I've wanted to do a Solstice ride like that for years! It was a blast. We had a great group. It wasn't lost on me that in my pagan celebration of the Winter Solstice i was joined by two Mormons, a Lutheran minister and the husband of a lay preacher. I loved the riding, the stars were sublime, the forest magnificent, the crisp air invigorating. The company was great. I really enjoyed catching up with old friends and making some new ones.
And we celebrated Winter Solstice by keeping our lights lit from sunset to sunrise. We brought the sun back on the longest night of the year!!
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| Full route 2011-12-21 Keep The Light On Ride |
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| elevation profile 2011-12-21 Keep The Light On Ride (group portion) |
The GPS coverage was pretty spotty so most of the map i drew by hand.
My full 'day' was 92.5 total miles with 4,057 feet. That was 38 miles on gravel trails, 19 miles on paved trails, 24 miles on paved roads. 82 miles with the group, from Mercer Island to Rattlesnake to Issaquah. Plus the 10 miles to and from Mercer Island. Interestingly, last year when i tried to ride with SIR, i rode almost exactly the same distance (91 miles).
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| Urban Section (first section) |
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| rural section (8pm to 7am) |
3.4 mi home to tunnel (add Scott)
3.4 mi bike tunnel to Mercer Island (add David & Kent)
25.1 mi Mercer Island to Fall City (add Brad)
19.6 mi Fall City to Rattlesnake Lake
19.7 mi Rattlesnake Lake to Fall City (lose Brad)
17.6 mi Fall City to Issaquah (lose Kent & David)
15.3 mi bus ride to bike tunnel (lose Scott)
3.6 mi ride home
