On this trip we were close to 4 volcanos. Mt Rainier, Mt St Helens, Mt Adams and saw Mt Hood in Oregon. We headed up hwy 410 t0 Chinook pass then to Cayuse Pass at the base of Mt Rainier to get on hwy 121. Where we headed toward hwy 12 and on to Randal to turn south to Mt St Helens.
Mt Rainier
First view of Mt St Helens. The road from Randal and up to Windy Point was still beat up from the winter snow. Lots of broken and missing sections of asphalt. Ran into a little bit of rain going up.
One of the blown over trees along the road. I have the same picture from 15 or 20 years ago somewhere.
Spirit Lake. Yes, those are still the same logs floating on the water from the explosion.
Mt Hood in Oregon, center far back ground
Mt Adams, center far back ground
This is as far as we could go, Windy Point. There was dirt road going up from here, but it had a locked gate. While we were eating lunch, we watched a truck come down and back thru the gate. On the way out we stopped and found out they were a crew looking to widen the dirt road to get heavy equipment up there to do work on a pressure point that Spirt Lake is causing issues with. It is still very impressive looking at the power of nature in action.
This is the back side of Mt St Helens
On the way into Goldendale after going up the Klickitat river canyon from the Columbia river, one of my buddies started talking about slipping on the tar snakes. I hadn't really noticed it until were were almost out of that canyon. A little farther down the road, the tar snakes were so slippery and soft that I thought I had both tires going flat. I stopped to check them and everything was normal. By then my buddies turned around to see was the issue was and we were all amazed that we had the same reaction to the tar snakes. 3 different bikes all on different tires with the same issues. Once in Goldendale I flagged down a local policeman and told him about the slipperiness. He said he rides a Can-am and had the same issues we had too. He said it was bad on 3 wheels and couldn't imagine what it was like with just 2. He had talked to the road crew 3 weeks prior and they said they were going to sand and chip seal the tar. He was surprised that it wasn't taken care of yet. He was going to look into it. The temps were just in the mid to upper 70's. Be careful out there with these high temps and the tar snakes.