We are trying to find the alternative to our beloved Centenial Trail, just to get some change in our bike routine. It is difficult because CT is almost perfect: it is paved, it is close to home (about 30 min by car), it is long enough (30 miles one way), it goes through forests and fields crossing only one small town. The Olympic Trail is even better, but it is pretty far from home, on the Olympic Peninsula, and because of this not reachable for after-work training.
There are plenty of bike trails in Washington state, especially around Great Seattle, however, all of them have some disadvantages. Most of them are simply too short. Couple trails with good length go directly thought Seattle, that means plenty of people and traffic lights, that I don’t like at all. Still, we continue to check out.
On the way back from Crystal Lake we saw Cedar River Trail and decided to check it.
It goes from Renton along Cedar River and road 169. It is about 17 miles one way, but it has a forked end, that gives an additional 6 miles one way.
The trailhead is in the park on the bank of Cedar River. The trail immediately crosses the river. The bike-bridge in under the big moto-bridge.
This is actually the end of Cedar River, the couple kilometres later it joins Union lake.
We are going upstream.
Rainier as a pilot star.
The river is everywhere.
The trail is made on the base of the old railroad, so has corresponding bridges.
It is paved until the fork place, but both tails are gravel, that does not pleasure at all if you ride a road bike.
Without tails it is too short for us, even with them we made only 60 km.
So, very unlikely that we will ride it again.
However, the river looked quite interesting, so we decided to try it with our kayak, but this is the next story.
