Resting at Quartz Mountain

Ranger Steve stayed late at work. He waited for us to arrive, showed us a good place to lock up our fancy bikes and then, as a second thought, leaned out of his truck window as we were leaving and said, “If you meet me at Selkirk Lodge, I’ll give you a lift up.”

After spending most of the day riding 60 miles on loaded touring bikes and with cold darkness descending, we were at Selkirk with utmost haste loading our gear into Ranger Steve’s truck. Thus began our second trip to Quartz Mountain. It seemed fitting that it would start in a gentlemanly fashion.

Quartz Mountain is a fire lookout in Mt. Spokane State Park. With outstanding views, the basics provided for (beds, stove, water) and relatively easy access (normally a 2 mile walk up), it is popular and difficult to get reservations for. Once again, we were only able to get late-season mid-week dates for our trip.

Yes, it got very cold, but no matter. We never saw another person during our two days on the mountain, enjoyed most of the day in our sleeping bags reading, and then played cards and trashed talked between meals and drinking a fifth of Maker’s. We were especially grateful to Dave who hiked back to the car for the bacon from the Swinery we forgot! Breakfast saved! Bacon for all!

Next time, we’re going to make a point to spend at least three full days and maybe spend some time there when it’s pleasurable to sit outside and watch the sunset over Spokane.

It was a great wind-down from our cross-Idaho bicycling weekend.