Bikepacking the Teanaway River Link Up
A late riser's trip report featuring hopping over fallen trees at night
After riding road bikes for a few years now and dabbling into bike touring a couple of years ago, earlier this year I discovered a few bikepacking YouTube channels and got excited to try it myself. The Teanaway River Link Up ride in mid-August of 2023 sounded like a great gateway into it.
Day 1
Now, I’m not exactly an early bird. I tend to beat the crowds by showing up after everyone is on their way out. This time, I was hoping to take off at a reasonable hour, so I set a hard limit to start no later than 3 p.m. As I realized in the afternoon that I was running late, I could not resist having a proper late lunch at The Coal Chute Cafe and Pub before riding into the woods. I got on the trail at 5.
There are signs at the starting point of the route saying that overnight parking is prohibited. Some reports say it’s not enforced. Not wanting to risk it, I found unrestricted street parking within a quarter-mile ride (which there was plenty of). There was also a $5 per day parking lot across the street from Roslyn Public Library.
The first couple of miles on the route are along The Coal Mines Trail and local paved roads which is a good warm-up. But right after, you hit pretty steep forest roads. The climbs are hard but doable.
Reports mentioned difficulty crossing the West Fork Teanaway River at around mile 12. For me, the crossing itself was not difficult. However, getting to the river from the trail was hard with the loaded bike. There didn’t seem to be an actual path going down to the crossing and it was very hard to find places with stable footing and enough support. It took some work and time to slowly and safely walk the bike down what did not seem like a difficult hill at first as I was afraid of falling and having the bike roll over me. But eventually, it all worked out well.
Around mile 15 I got a chance to take a break and test a new water filter in a creek. A group of locals on a hike passed by and we chatted a bit.
Looking at the route elevation profile while planning, I thought the main challenge would be climbs in the first third of the ride. However, those turned out to be painless compared to what came next. On the map, it looks like you should just be gliding downhill on a beautiful forested single track. But it turned out to be an actual nightmare.
As I was approaching mile 20, it was getting dark. The first thing to go wrong was my front panniers rotated around the fork from trembling and started getting into the spokes. There was no way of fixing it on the road properly with what I had in the repair kit. So I ended up hooking them to the top of the fork with Voile straps. It wasn’t perfect and looked ugly, but did the job and I didn’t have the problem for the rest of the ride.
What I didn’t expect and didn’t notice in trip reports were the fallen trees between miles 20 and 28. Just as I thought I was about to cruise down straight to the camp, I started running into fallen trees. The first couple seemed like a fun part of the adventure. But after having to lift the fully loaded bike 3 feet in the air a few times in the dark, it quickly became annoying. There were parts of the trail where I couldn’t move more than a few dozen feet without having to hop off the bike, lift it, and get going again, only to discover there was another tree just around the corner.
To make things worse — the Wahoo unit, which I used for navigation, turned out to not be well suited for trail riding. It frequently got confused about whether I was on the trail or not and sometimes told me to take turns which didn’t exist. Normally, during the day, I wouldn’t be too worried about it. But at night, being tired, it was not fun at all.
Finally, after a few painful miles of nighttime hopping on and off the bike and carrying it over trees, I got to the Twentynine Pines Campground around 11 p.m. Got the tent set up and put together a late dinner.
It was a beautiful night. And all of the troubles of the preceding couple of hours immediately dissipated. Stargazed, read a book and listened to Nick Cave for about an hour before going to bed.
Day 2
Woke up around 9 in the morning, made Aeropress coffee and oatmeal for breakfast, puttered around, and got back on the trail.
Apart from a couple of steep climbs, the second day wasn’t nearly as bad as the first one. That made me think that until the fallen trees are there if you want to split the ride not by mileage, but by effort, it’s probably best to camp at the Indian Camp Campground around mile 16 and then finish the rest the next day.
Ended up back to Roslyn around 3 p.m. It was pretty hot on both days, so it seemed only appropriate to take a dip in Lake Cle Elum, which is a short drive from the town. The water was surprisingly chilly, but it still felt really good to be swimming in a refreshing mountain lake after two days of sweating on the bike.
Wrapped the trip up by having a full and slow lunch at the same spot.
Thanks for the detailed write-up, I’m gonna give this route a shot tomorrow. Gonna make sure and leave plenty of time for those dastardly blow-downs. That’s crazy/impressive you did that in the dark!