| This is biking heaven, hereabouts
By
Jack Kintner
There’s a renaissance in Bellingham bicycling. Not
only is it is in one of the better mountain biking areas
(western Washington and the lower mainland) in the world,
local riders are competing well, having won the collegiate
road racing championship last month. September’s
Chuckanut Century and Mt. Baker Hill Climb for Road Bikes
and the Broken Spoke conference a week later is one of
three or four key local events (normally the state road
racing championship is held here in June, too, but not
this year).
If you’re a recreational cyclist, especially one who
likes to venture off road, you can find some of the best
and most accessible mountain bike riding in the world in
the roughly 80 kilometers – 50 miles – from Lake
Padden Park in south Bellingham to Vancouver’s North
Shore, as well as a very good network of well maintained
roads for those who prefer pavement. It’s certainly
not the only place to ride, but it has a combination of accessibility,variety,
wildness, year-around availability and sheer volume that’s
unmatched. And those boundaries don’t include the world-class
terrain at the home of the 2010 Olympics, Whistler Mountain,
or the scenic, varied and under used terrain of the Chuckanut
hills south of Bellingham. It does include hundreds of ride
able acres laced with trails on Galbraith Mountain as well
as the ski areas on Vancouver’s North Shore that opened
their ski lifts to mountain bikes for the summer in June.
Since the state road championship race will not be held in
Bellingham for the first time in many years, the big local
road event will be the Chuckanut Century (100 mile) ride
and the Mt. Baker Hill climb, a 24.5 mile grind that climbs
almost a mile on the Mt. Baker Highway from Glacier to Artist’s
Point. Both events are scheduled for the third weekend in
September, with as many as 300 riders expected to compete.
Charlie Heggem of the Bellingham REI store is coordinating
the hill climb event, and the Mt. Baker Bicycling Club will
run the Century, part of which follows Chuckanut Drive.
The following weekend marks the first year of the mountain
bike oriented Broken Spoke Festival, “a celebration
of cycling, recreation and the northwest outdoors,” according
to their flyer. |
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