*Motorcycle Roads NorthWest

I did this road in July 2008. While not exactly a stellar summer by even Puget Sounds standards, Northern Idaho seems to have been blessed with much nicer weather. No trace of rain to speak of while I was there, even though Seattle was getting a mid-July drenching.

Halfway through this ride, I dubbed it “The Long Way Around the Lake”. And while this a good description on paper, the whimsical title would completely ignore the somewhat intense reality of this extremely tight and somewhat hazardous roadway.

I have not in my entire life seem so many construction zones, new houses, boat slips, blind corners, and scenic overlooks packed into one place. The road ascends from lake level on either end up to the top of the bluff near Powderhorn Bay. In between these three points, it precariously hugs the side of the ridge with a steep uphill slope on one side and a nasty drop-off on the other in many places.

It’s also very busy as one might expect of such a scenic road in close proximity to Coeur d’ Alene too. The road is rapidly filling up with fancy houses, and in a few years this road will probably have to be pulled from the last no longer being suitable for anything beyond blue-hair riding speeds.

One thing it’s got in spades is scenery.

West across Wolf Lodge Bay:

North across the Lake from atop the bluff at Powderhorn Bay:

No chance of crappy scenery here. No sirree.

The south end of the lake is a little less intense but still moderately curvy. And as long as you don’t get behind a logging truck, you’ll enjoy Idaho 3 down into St. Maries.

• County: Kootenai, Benewah
• Length: 48 miles
• Towns: Beatty, Eddyville, Harrison

Google Map:

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This is a nice little road that’s on the back way home from work. It winds along the Green River in amongst the trees, and provides a nice getaway from the aggressive freeway traffic.

There’s no photos here, as the road doesn’t have much in the way of a view. It follows the river for the most part, but it’s rarely so close that there’s no trees in the way of a good view. Perhaps I might take a photo of this road from the Route 18 freeway on the other side of the river, which is farther up the ridgeline and has a rather nice view of this road.

This road dovetails rather nicely with some other roads in the area, including Hobart-Issaquah Road down into Ravensdale which if you continue south eventually takes you down into Black Diamond and just a few blocks from this road. If you take this road from East to West, it also has the intersection for Green Valley Road near the Route 18 exit.

• Road Name: Auburn-Black Diamond Road
• Counties: King
• Length: 12 miles
• Towns: Auburn, Black Diamond, Morganville, Wynaco

Download the Streets and Trips file for Auburn-Black Diamond Road

Overview Map:

Google Map of Auburn-Black Diamond Road:

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For those not from Western Washington, State Route 503 may need a bit of explanation. This road starts over at Interstate 5 and heads East to the village of Yale, then turns to the South and down towards Vancouver, Washington. While the West Leg of 503 is a nice little road, it’s becoming increasingly urbanized and widened and is not a topic for today. For our purposes, we’ll discuss the South Leg of Washington State Route 503.

South of Yale, 503 twists around in a surprisingly delightful fashion much like FS25 or FS90. To get curves this nice, one generally has to go to Idaho, as even the forest service roads have far worse pavement quality. The countryside up on the north end is a mix of heavy woods and semi-cleared scrubland, all overpoweringly green.

Once across the Lewis River, it settles down more into what one expects out of a Western Washington rural state highway. The curves are more “sweeper” than “twisty” with a few notable 90-degree exceptions. The countryside is vastly different too, with more open farmlands and more people.

Ultimately, of course, this road ends down in Vancouver. Pretty much straight down at that end, it’s busy and suburban. But if you’re heading north and you can put up with that for a mile or two, it’s a road that’s well worth the trip.

• County: Clark & Cowlitz Counties, Washington
• Length: 30 miles (and another 5 miles up to Cougar & FS90)
• Towns: Yale, Chelatchie, Amboy, Fargher Lake, Brush Prairie, Union

Google Map of Washington Route 503:

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This road is not the normal kind of road you see posted here at Motorcycle Roads Northwest. For one, it has 23 miles of graded gravel. For another, there’s quarter-mile long two-tower suspension bridge out in the middle of nowhere that goes over the Dworshak Reservoir. For a third, the southern paved section (below the bridge) is so tight that I’m surprised I wasn’t passing the back-end of my bike coming the other way on those switchbacks.

Heading west out of Orofino, There’s a little road that goes alongside the north edge of the river opposite US 12, and on that road is a very well-marked turnout for Wells Bench Road. This road climbs right up the side of the huge cliff that overhangs the valley floor, and it really does twist back and forth through the narrow canyon going up to the top.

Way up at the top of the canyon, after having ridden a good eight to ten or so very tiring miles up the side of the escarpment, you come to a wonder. There’s a huge pull-off overlook area (about 2/3 acre?) that looks down over the reservoir and the quite majestic Dent Bridge some hundreds of feet below.

Dent Bridge. 1,550 feet long, one of the longest in the world.

About a mile north of the bridge and likewise a mile south of Elk River, this road turns to gravel. It’s definitely not a primitive road, as the roadbed is obviously graded from time to time, and it is packed well enough that the ‘Strom only bogged down in deep stuff when I got too close to the edges of the road.

Up at the top of the road is Elk River. Elk River’s a neat little place, apparently populated by 10x as many ATVs as cars, and home to Elk River’s Huckleberry Heaven.

Just be careful of deer and elk while you’re out that way. This whole area is just crawling with the eponymous hooved rats, as a good friend of mine discovered to his detriment while coming into Elk River from the west on the tarmac. His touring rig was completely totaled, and he’s extremely lucky to suffer little more than scrapes and used-up riding gear. On that same day, I saw a fawn being born right on the roadside heading up towards the bridge overlook and many more deer grazing the surrounding hillsides.

• County: Clearwater County, Idaho
• Length: 42 miles
• Towns: Orofino, Elk River

Google Map of Route:

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This is another member of the Grangeville Gang. And no, this road is not named after a mountain, at least not directly, but after a town that at one time was more important than Grangeville.

This road is very sparsely travelled as Mount Idaho isn’t exactly a bustling metropolis. The road has a few new houses built along it though as the views are quite nice. Not sure I’d want to live up there in the winter though, as I bet it snows like nobody’s business.

In the summer though, this road is a giggle. I thoroughly enjoyed ripping up it at a good clip, and didn’t see a single vehicle until I was into “downtown” Mt. Idaho and not another one until I was right back into Grangeville.

You also don’t have the impressive vistas that you can get with Harpster or Whitebird. Instead, you have a load of fun on a road that isn’t so challenging that the novice is tired after a run or two. You might need more gas in Grangeville after you’ve done the Harpster-Elk City-Mt. Idaho Loop though. This is some seriously rugged country.

Right in the middle of Mt. Idaho at the curve in the main road you can see the back of a Idaho State Historical Marker, which reads:

In 1862, a noted Western scout, Mose Milner, started Mount Idaho on his gold rush trail to Florence. Camas Prairie’s major early town soon grew up here. But when civic leaders resisted a farm effort to organize a grange there in 1874, Grangeville grew up as a better-located town. Although Mount Idaho became county seat from 1875 to 1902 and had an important Chinese community, Grangeville soon surpassed its older rival. Most of its early buildings have disappeared.

It’s not terribly picturesque, but gives a view of the valley to the south.

• Towns: Mount Idaho
• Length: 9 miles
• County: Idaho County, Idaho

Overview Map:

Google Map:

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This is another of the Clearwater River Valley grade roads. Like Greer Grade Road, this one starts down at the bottom of the valley quite near the village of Greer goes up to the top of the plateau and comes back down near Pardee.

I have no other information on this road, including its condition. If you happen to know about this road, please post a comment below as I plan to ride this one next spring.

• Road Name: Woodland Grade Road (Greer, ID)
• Counties: Idaho
• Length: 23
• Towns: Greer, Pardee, Pardee Corner, Tramway

Streets and Trips file for Woodland Grade Rd

Overview Map:

Google Map:

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This road is one of the of lovely twisty bits along the Clearwater River valley. On either side of the river valley are wonderful roads such as this one, on roads that are nearly untraveled compared to what one sees even in the more “remote” areas of the Washington Cascades.

• Road Name: Greer Grade (Weippe, ID)
• Counties: Clearwater, Lewis(ID)
• Length: 25 miles
• Towns: Fraser, Greer, Weippe

Download the Streets and Trips file for Greer Grade Rd

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Overview Map:

Google Map:

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This highway runs along the Snake River south of the Hells Canyon Recreation Area for some 15 miles, after which it heads southeast to Cambridge.

Before the road splits away from the river, you get to experience a few miles of complete twisty bliss south of the Brownlee Dam where the impounded waters of the Brownlee Reservoir force the water up onto the hillsides and thus this road has to follow the hillsides perfectly.

• Road Name: Oregon/Idaho Route 71 (Copperfield, OR-Cambridge, ID)
• Counties: Baker, Washington(ID)
• Length: 40
• Towns: Brownlee (OR), Cambridge (ID), Copperfield (OR)

Download the Streets and Trips file for Oregon/Idaho Route 71 (Copperfield, OR - Cambridge, ID)

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Overview Map:
Google Maps for Oregon / Idaho 71:

GoogleMap Link

Some maps show that the upper half of Whitebird Grade Road is open. It’s not really, and it looks to be a gated-off gravel road now.

This is a fantastic road, and I give it a two-thumbs up rating as a destination road.

This road has history behind it, as it’s a National Historic Area as it’s the site of the opening battle of the North Idaho Nez Perce War in the mid-1800s. It’s also the only North-South road to traverse Idaho. There’s no other way through this geologic formation, and even this area is so tough that the original grade road had enough curves to form 37 complete circles if pieced together.

Down at the bottom of the grade is the little hamlet of White Bird. I’m sure it’s a sleepy little town of 150 most of the time, but this Father’s Day weekend if was full of people attending the Whitebird Rodeo.

Also, watch the weather here on this grade. I discovered that it can be in the mid to low-60s in Grangeville and be in the lower 80s in WhiteBird. Every time I got to the bottom I was peeling layers off, only to want them on again 3000 feet up at the top of the road 15-20 minutes later.

Just be careful of the road surface on Old Whitebird. The shoulder gravel is the exact same color as the pavement and can slide the back end out real fast.

• Road Name: White Bird Grade Rd
• Counties: Idaho
• Length: 18
• Towns: Grangeville, White Bird

Google Map of the Old Whitebird Grade:

Google Map

It’s short, it’s curvy, it’s smooth, and it’s most definitely sweet. One might even say, that this is the best road in the Northwest.

To the uninitiated, Spiral Highway is the old Lewiston grade. This old 2-lane of alignment of US Route 95 heads up the breathtaking 2000 foot tall grade in a very short 8 miles.

While Spiral Highway is very technical and definitely not a good road for a motorcyclist to go take in for their first Sunday ride, the curves are very nice and several of them are such lovely sweepers that they seem to go on forever.

View down the Grade to Lewiston

In the summer, there seems to be frequent Saturday bicycle races up the Grade. During my 2006 visit, the local police rather kindly allowed our grouup to ride up the grade. Obviously, since the road was prepared for the bicycle club, there were no rocks or kibbles in the corner and instead of contending with the possibility of cows in the straights we had to watch out for unattended humans in the road.While the road is terribly short, I cannot give any road that I’ve ever ridden a higher rating. It is absolutely fantastic, and as evidenced by some of the riders I was with, they ride it every chance they get.

View across the crest of the Plateau

The bottom end of the Spiral Highway starts under a mile from the WA-Idaho border on the north side of the Clearwater River on WA193/ID128 also known as Down River Road and Wawawai River Road on the Washington side. The top end links back up with US95, 8 miles and 2000 feet up the hill.

I highly recommend it.

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