#okanogan

Title: Colville boy in ceremonial dress trotting on horse, Okanogan, Washington Notes: Boy in feathered headdress, beaded vest & leggings riding horse in beaded breast collar. Note from unidentified source: At Okanogan grounds

30 April 2021

Crawfish Lake is perched at the top of the Tunk Creek drainage, so the downhill began a few hundred yards from the campground. I lost 3600’ of elevation very quickly and very pleasantly in the 18 miles back down to the Okanogan River.

LINK: RIDE WITH GPS

Of course, it was then a tiring 1500’ climb back up to the car at Conconully State Park. A shower and fresh clothes. A long conversation with an old guy (probably my age) who had ridden his bike from London to Singapore in his youth (and across the US and down the west coast, too). Then coffee and a burger in Omak, and 250 miles of driving. I made it home for dinner.

Here’s a map of the whole four-day trip. I began and ended in Conconully and rode clockwise.

28 April 2021

The ride down to Oroville early Wednesday morning was quick (though not as uniformly downhill as I had hoped). I followed the Similkameen rail-trail the last mile or so into town.

LINK: RIDE WITH GPS

In Oroville, I bought food and refilled water bottles at the Chevron, then ate breakfast on the bleachers at the empty baseball fields just outside town. In non-COVID times, I would have stopped for a real breakfast in town.

From the Okanogan River, it’s more than 3100’ of climbing before the road finally drops into Chesaw. It’s not a mountain pass, but it might as well be.

From the Chesaw mercantile it was a modest climb back into the forested hills southeast of town, past Beth and Beaver Lakes (good camping options if this were the end of the day). Then down Toroda Creek to the Kettle River, which I followed to Curlew. My early dinner was a cheeseburger at Tugboats at the intersection south of town. Then a gradual climb against a headwind up to Curlew Lake and the State Park.

27 April 2021

This is the first of several posts describing a four-day loop in North Central Washington, beginning and ending in Conconully. In total, the loop was a little more than 210 miles, with about 12,000’ of climbing. It included pavement, gravel, mud, snow, and assorted water features, but very few cars (most of which were on WA21 between Curlew and Republic). I’ll include a map and profile of the route, along with the link to Ride with GPS, in each day’s entry. And I’ll add a map of the entire route in the Day 4 post.

The drive to Conconully takes almost five hours, so I didn’t start riding from the State Park until 1:30. But it was a pleasant, fairly easy afternoon, mainly downhill on traffic-free roads. The road skirts Conconully Lake before dropping down into the beautiful Sinalhekin Valley. The gravel turns back to pavement a little south of Loomis (which has a small general store).

LINK: RIDE WITH GPS

From there, the road continues north, passes Palmer Lake and then joins the Similkameen River, which is one of several good-sized streams encountered on this trip that drain down from Canada (which is only a few miles north of here). I camped below Nighthawk at Similkameen - one of two unimproved (but very quiet and very empty) campgrounds along this stretch of the river.

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