Tronson Ridge (Devil's Gulch)

By launching from Highway 97 thirty minutes south of Cle Elum we'll shave 45 minutes off of the normal 2.5 hour drive to Kashmir, and add in a good dose of real mountain biking. The Devil's Gulch figure 8 is a nice route but its time for a different approach.

This route will climb out from the cars (all singletrack), drop down to Red Hill (Red Devil ? I can never keep them straight) where it joins the normal climb up DG and upper Mission. From there we ride some up and down forest road until we rejoin trail to go over Mt. Lillian and its odd sandstone hoodoos and on to the fun and treacherous Tronson Ridge back to the TH. Its not really that treacherous,but it is a fun and rough mountain trail.

THink of it as the normal DG/MIssion out and back but with about 1-2 more hours of work and fun. There is no bailout though.

Pace will be backcountry, which is far from race pace but definitely a bit faster than what might be called social pace. We should be on trail about 7 hours. This is a ride for strong, experienced backcountry riders - probably not a good choice if you haven't ventured from Tiger Mt. yet this year.

We can meet at Preston P&R at 7:30.

(Note that Peter also posted this same ride, this is the same ride so sign up for either one. If we actually have a turnout we might have a faster and slower group but most likely we'll all stick together).