This is a solid ride about 65 miles from Hood River, starting near Camas, Washington. If you’re up for a long day, you can ride this as a 30 mile loop. For more information about these trails, along with a map, click here.
The Grouse Vista start point can be reached along the L-1200 forest road, as can be seen on the trail map in the link above.
1. Grouse Pt. to Rock Creek. Shuttle, 16ml.
Leave a car at Rock Creek and shuttle to Grouse Pt. about 8 miles (guess).
The trail leaves the parking spot on the West side. The trail is easy to follow.
At one point (about 4 to 5 miles in) the trail forks at the edge of a clear cut. The left hand fork is just a short spur to a forest road, stay on the right hand fork in the woods. Nice riding with about 1500 ft of fairly easy climbing and 3000 ft of descent. The sections through the clear cuts are OK, but they must have been awesome a few years ago.
2. Cold Creek to Larch Mt. Out-and-back, 8ml one way.
Starts out along the Cold Creek with lots of technical obstacles.
Take the right fork at the first split to stay with the stream.
Nice single track all the way. The climb has some fairly long steep sections, but most are ridable and have short flatter sections to catch your breath. Think Hector’s Connector x 5.
We climbed 2000 ft to a picnic area with extensive views. This is still about 500 ft short of the summit. At this point the trail switched to loose rock that we did not fancy riding. The downhill is great fun with banked corners on the switchbacks.
As I said, it is possible to make a shorter 600 ft. climb to Larch Mt. from the Grouse Vista trailhead and then descend the Cold Creek trail. If we were to repeat the ride we would definitely take this option, the 2000ft steep climb was too grueling for us.
Head to Battleground, WA. Follow Highway 503 5.7 miles north out of town, and take a right on Rock Creek Road. After 8.5 miles, take a right on Sunset Falls road. After 2 more miles, take a right on Dole Valley Road. Go 5.2 miles and go left on the L1000 road. Follow it .8 miles, and you’ll see a parking area on the left with a bunch of signs telling you where to go.
Thanks to Peter W. for suggesting that this trail be included and for providing the trail descriptions.