The road I was on kept climbing with no end in sight. Honestly, the word “road” is doing some heavy lifting here because I’d left behind what civilized people would call a road a while back. First the names gave way to route numbers, then the route numbers gave way to inscrutable National Forest Service codes. Eventually, even those ran out and I was in uncharted territory. I was riding what was, essentially, a glorified fire road straight into the sky with no cel coverage, a half a tank of gas, and no idea where I was. Oh, and every time there was a break in the dense forest on either side of the road, I could see a massive, slumbering volcano looming in the distance.
Earlier that morning, after an aggressively okay hotel breakfast, I threw a leg over my newly broken-in Gear Up and headed north from Portland, Oregon, toward Seattle, Washington. My wife and kids were staying behind in PDX for another week, and this was my first time solo on the Ural—the official start to my cross-country trek back to Detroit. I was heading for Seattle for the weekend before I started east, to see some old friends and bandmates, to pick up some last-minute supplies from the REI mothership, and to have lunch with Ural boss Madina. First, though, I had to get there.
My knowledge of Pacific Northwest geography is limited at best. As a native Rust Belt boy, it’s not really on my map, you know? I know where my favorite Seattle bars and diners are, I know where my friends live, I know where Boeing Field and the Air Museum are, I know where Ural HQ is, and that’s about it. Outside of that I’m at the mercy of Google Maps, my man Rand McNally, and the kindness of strangers. So, I punched “Seattle” and “Avoid Highways” into Google with a handful of waypoints and, trusting to the algorithm, I set out for adventure. First, though, coffee.
My first waypoint was Hinterland Empire in PDX, my pal Trina’s coffee house-slash-art gallery-slash-gearhead hangout. When I rolled up there were probably 20 classic Japanese and American bikes parked outside, all loaded down with camping gear. I was obviously in the right place. My planned 20-minute stop turned into damn near three hours of drinking coffee, chatting, petting cats, showing off the Ural, and talking bikes with Trina and the kids who owned the bikes outside. When I say kids, I mean it. Every one of them was in their late-20s if that. It was nice to see the younger generation keeping up the Old Ways. On my way out I grabbed a bag of freshly ground beans for the road and the first two stickers for the sidecar.
With the coffee and fellowshipping out of the way, it was time to put some serious miles on the clock. I pointed the bike north, restarted the nav, cranked up the music, and I was off. Portland is a real pretty town full of some cool people, but once you get outside of the city the country is gorgeous. As I rode along enjoying the scenery and listening to Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger, I paid less and less attention to my navigation. Eventually I lost track of where (and occasionally when, thanks to my early-90s grunge playlist) I was, my only landmark a lonely, snow-covered mountain far in the distance.
I focused on the mountain and started taking roads at random I thought would take me there, ignoring the increasingly frantic voice of Google’s usually sanguine navigator. Finally switching the navigator from active mode to a simple map, I continued to navigate by vibes and Mk.I Eyeball. Eventually, with a shock, I passed a sign telling me that I’d entered the “Mt. St. Helens National Volcanic Monument.” Oh. OH! So that was the mountain I’d been watching all this time!
By this point I was a solid four hours behind schedule, lost, and had zero cel signal. Undaunted, I decided to just send it—I’d follow any and all roads going north toward Seattle and hope to run into a main artery or, better yet, regain cel service before I ran out of gas and was eaten by a bear. It was a real good plan right up until it wasn’t.
The winding, rutted, goat path I ended up on didn’t snake up the side of Mt. St. Helens, but a smaller mountain kind of to the right of the sleeping volcano. The entire way up, St. Helens loomed over my left shoulder—very pretty, but very witchy in the bright June sunlight. The higher up the mountain I rode the colder it got, and eventually the road was bracketed by towering snow drifts. I had to pee. My fuel light came on. The road got rougher. The trees crowded in. I still didn’t have cel service, and uncertainty began to gnaw at the edges of my confidence.
The road kept going up, with no end in sight. I stopped a few times to consult my big Rand-McNally atlas—a real paper map, you guys!—but it was little comfort. I was clearly on the right trail, but said trail was going to take me all the way up this side of the mountain and then all the way down the other side until I reached what passed for civilization out here. The Ural and I soldiered on.
Eventually, near the top of the mountain, I found an empty rest area that was still closed for the season with about a foot and a half of snow still covering the parking lot and some taller piles pushed into the corners. No better time, I thought, than to try out the Ural’s switchable two-wheel drive system. All alone. On top of a mountain. With no cel signal.
There’s an old off-roading saying that states that four-wheel-drive doesn’t keep you from getting stuck, it just gets you stuck in worse places. That’s exactly what happened to me. As I was hooning the Ural around the parking lot, kicking up huge twin rooster tails of snow and having a grand old time, I slid sideways into one of the big, plowed snowbanks and got the bike stuck. Like, stuck, stuck, with a capital S. No amount of rocking, revving, or pleading was getting me out, and for a fleeting moment, I figured I was bear food. Well, until I remembered that the bike had an entrenching tool strapped to the sidecar that is.
Friends, that little shovel saved my ass that day. I was able to get the bike unstuck and, eventually, make it down the other side of the mountain. I coasted into a little town down there on fumes and starved half to death, but I made it. I still had about two hours to go until Seattle, but I decided to sit in the sun for a while, eat a gas station sandwich, and enjoy the feeling of having gotten myself into, and then out of, a ridiculous motorcycle-related situation. It wouldn’t be my last on this trip, not by a long shot.
Next time I’ll show you my full gear loadout, talk about trains, and finally introduce you to the ancient nature god I encountered in east-central Washington.