Ancient Lakes
Bikepacked 2025-04-11 to 2025-04-12
Overview
A mixed bikepacking and singletrack mountain biking overnighter to a geological mystery.
View toward the Columbia River from the Ancient Lakes area near Quincy, WA.
Notes
What are the Ancient Lakes?
Ancient Lakes is the name given to a set of lakes formed from an ancient geological phenomena near Quincy, WA. The lakes sit in bowls in the earth presumed to have been formed from massive, sudden floods. Scientists believe that such floods repeatedly occurred from glacial activity in the area over millions of years. The two largest lakes in the area are Ancient Lake and Dusty Lake, each rimmed by vertical canyon walls made of layer upon layer of sediment deposits.
The wikipedia entry for Ancient Lakes describes the area thusly:
Lying between the Beezley Hills to the North and the Frenchman Hills to the south, the growing region was severely impacted by the immense water flows of the Missoula floods. The scouring effect of the waters stripped the top soils down to the basalt and scoured out canyons referred to locally as "coulees."
Another view of the Ancient Lakes area.
Our Plan
My son and I made plans to take his mountain bike and my gravel / bikepacking bike out for an overnighter at Ancient Lake. Our loose itinerary was to arrive on the 11th, a Friday, which was a day off from school, then to meet up with his cousins, and camp for the night. After that, they would depart the following morning. Next, some of our mountain biking friends would arrive for the day, and we would further explore the area on our bikes.
From where we live in Seattle, Quincy, WA is a roughly two-and-a-half hours drive away, and then you take a dirt road out to the area. We elected to arrive to the southern end of the canyon in order to avoid descending and ascending the canyon wall.
We carried out this plan successfully, and arrived around lunchtime on Friday.
Arrival
Upon arrival, we found a full parking lot. There were a variety of outdoorspeople there. We observed adventure vans, Subarus, large diesel pickup trucks with horse trailers, and everything in between. Hikers and horsepeople were out in droves. It seemed we were the only pair arriving with bicycles. I unloaded our bikes, attached the bags, and began to tighten down the straps and buckles.
My bikepacking setup for the trip.
The most challenging aspect of the trip was the need to pack all necessary water. Although there are multiple small lakes in the recreational area, all of their water is considered to be contaminated and undrinkable, due to chemical runoff from industrial agriculture on the plains above. Even tablets or filters cannot make the water safe to drink, since they would only deal with harmful bacteria in the water, and not its chemical contents.
Before long, we had everything we needed for two days of survival in the desert attached to my bike and ready to go. Immediately east of the south parking lot, the trail begins its gradual descent through scrub brush and rock outcroppings. With over 40 pounds of gear on my bike, and only 42mm wide tires, this proved a fun and interesting challenge. Furthermore, the brakes were not really up to the task, and I found that it took a strong, firm grip to wrestle the bike into control at several points along the trail. The bike performed admirably despite these challenges. I was actually disappointed that we had only a 1 1/4 mile ride to the lake.
Ancient Lake on a clear and warm April day. Looking at the Canyon, you can see its multiple layers, thought by scientists to have been deposited one at a time by massive ancient glacial floods.
The sun was blazing happily in a cloudless blue sky. We passed hikers along the way and saw horses in the distance. I fretted for a moment that we would not find a good camp site due to the presence of so many people in the area. Then we began a more serious downhill section on narrow singletrack into the bowl of Ancient Lake. The brakes really didn't seem up to the task, and I coasted to the bottom at a pace just a little too fast to handle. Thankfully, there was a long runout. But then immediately it was uphill again, through the narrowest section full of encroaching brush. My son got off to push his bike, but I spun along in the low, climbing gear of my Kona Rove.
Camp
We passed one small camp site populated with a group of what seemed to be twenty children and a few adults. We came to a second camp site which was, dare I say, incredible. It actually had a ring of short trees around it, right on the edge of Ancient Lake, and consequently some shade from the sun. There was enough space for two tents and a gathering area, and someone had built a fire ring there. I stopped, gawking at it. I told Elijah that we should have one of us park there and the other to scout along further to see if there were any better sites. "This is likely the best there is," I said. It was probably the best we were going to find.
Our camp site, nestled in trees on the shore of Ancient Lake.
The scouting trip confirmed that this was the best spot in the whole canyon! Most of the other sites were on windswept hills, and we saw one couple setting up their tent with some difficulty due to the wind's attempts to launch it, like a sail, into the canyon air. So we stopped, unloaded our gear into the perfect camp site, and set up our tent.
Cousins
Our camp was fully set up, we had taken a nice break, and we expected that the cousins would be arriving soon. Since the parking lot was only 1 1/4 miles away, we rode our bikes — mine now unencumbered by any gear — back along the canyon toward the lot. About 1/4 mile out from the lot, we found our party and joyfully greeted each other. The young cousins were having some difficulty with the idea of carrying their camping gear on their backs, and complained of the weight. Nevertheless, they carried their gear along dutifully, aided by rewards of candy from their father. It was a perfect afternoon, warm and clear.
A hardy drought-resistant grass grows across some of the canyon.
I was able to take some of the childrens' gear onto my bike racks and we then proceeded to the site. The children laughed and played while Terence and I set up the rest of camp and discussed the geological history of the area.
The rest of the day proceeded at a relaxed pace, with some hiking, some food, and some games of Beagle or Bagel? The highlight, though, was the starry sky. As an area removed from any nearby city, many stars that we can't see in Seattle due to light pollution were easily visible, and there is no forest, of course, to obscure any of them. There was a thin, wispy layer of clouds obscuring part of the sky, but the panorama of glittering steller bodies above our heads was (for us) a rare treat.
Mountain Biking
The next day, after a breakfast of pancakes, the cousins decided that they would pack up and head home rather than go on a hike as we proposed. After all, they would have to hike their gear back to the parking lot anyway. Elijah and I expected our friends to arrive around noon, so we set off on an exploratory mountain bike ride. I was on my Kona Rove and he was on his Woom Off Air 6. Now that I no longer had any gear on the racks, I pedaled easily along the dusty singletrack, taking in the wide open views of the canyon in all directions. We navigated the maze-like network of trails using Trailforks and GPS, and found our way down to a trail called "Northback" winding along one edge of the Columbia River Gorge.
Mountain biking in the Ancient Lakes recreational area.
This proved to be something of a mistake, as we soon learned by empirical means that the trail was little more than a horse-hoof cobbled snake of dust through the midst of burr-filled grasses and sage brush. Our shared misery was made even worse by the sun was bearing down violently on us, and we drank almost two bottles of water each. Eventually, though, we climbed our way back to the main road (Ancient Lakes Road) and descended down to the parking lot. Which was fortunate, since we refilled our waters from the reserves in our SUV.
Just then our partners in crime showed up, and unloaded their bikes. We added three to our party and now were five. We excitedly made plans to ride the bikes over to Dusty Lake where we planned to have lunch.
Dusty Lake
The trail to Dusty Lake was a double-track of dirt and rock which did not have too much elevation gain. It followed the west edge of the canyon that contained Ancient Lake, past the high rim wall that extended between their separate canyons, to Dusty Lake. At the right point, we turned east and descended down the trail called "Dusty South" in Trailforks to the lake.
The trail to Dusty Lake.
At Dusty Lake, we found a man fishing in the lake, though it seemed he had not caught anything. Elijah and I were now hot, sweaty, and tired from having biked all morning, and we threw ourselves down in a flat patch of earth between sage brush for lunch. We had brought meat, cheese, and fruit (apples and grapes) and ate happily, with much water drinking in between. As we sat there, watching ducks on the lake, we looked up to see a huge scree field. The conversation wound its way around to a consensus that it looked like a spot for a good rock scramble.
Scramble!
Within minutes, all five of us had re-packed our lunch scraps, and dashed away down the trail that seemed to wind around the east edge of the lake toward the scree field. At the bottom were several boulders larger than us, and a whole lot of football sized ones extending all the way up the canyon wall. We climbed to the top, being sure never to climb beneath another climber, so as to safely proceed. Before long, we had reached the top.
Somehow this scree field reminded me of the cover of Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy.
A fitting end
As the sun began to dip lower in the horizon, our three friends decided they should be heading back towards Seattle soon. I conferred with Elijah as to what he would like to do. We had the option to stay another night, since it was still the weekend, and the next day was only Sunday. He felt that another chilly night was a bit too much, so we decided to quit while we were ahead. Although I was comfortable during the previous night, I did find that the temperature drop in the desert was quite drastic, going from high 70's all the way down to high 30's at night. Typical desert weather.
Our friends accompanied us via bike back to our camp site, and we packed up our gear. A hiker passing by dropped in to talk bikepacking with me once he noticed my multiple racks, panniers, and frame bag. We found that both of us had only just recently acquired bikepacking setups, and his was similar. It was fun to hear about his choices, and to speculate about how our gear might fare on longer trips, or in different terrain. My bikepacking setup was put together with the Cross Washington Route (XWA) in mind. It is a goal of mine to ride this route in the future, possibly as early as next year.
And with that, once loaded up, we rode the 1 and 1/4 mile trail back to the parking lot, packed up, and headed home to Seattle, where we arrived around 7pm for a late dinner!
I am beyond pleased to be located in what is geographically such a rich region as to allow me, within a few hours, to take outdoor trips to mountains, rivers, lakes, deserts, the Pacific ocean, islands, and more. It's all on my doorstep, and my only regret is that I don't have more time to explore it all!
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