The Best Descent in the Gifford Pinchot. Yozoo to Hamilton Buttes || Gifford Pinchot Radness!
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- Опубліковано 9 лют 2025
- Patreon: / voiceovertrails
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The Yozoo to Hamilton Buttes ride incorporates the Blue Lake Butte, Yozoo, and Hamilton Buttes trails for a 4700 foot climb over 23 miles within 2.5 hours of Portland and Seattle.
It's one of the magical Gifford Pinchot rides. It might even be the best one.
Yahoo isn't too far from Walupt Lake, Cat Creek, and Adams Fork campgrounds. I'd recommend Cat Creek or Adams Fork if you're mountain biking just to avoid the dirty looks from equestrians and hikers at Walupt as that campground is closer to the wilderness areas. This is about as deep as you can get into the Gifford Pinchot National Forest and it's easily my favorite ride of this whole area, incorporation Blue Lake Butte, Yazoo, and Hamilton Buttes for a big day with 4500 feet of climbing. It was worth it. It's worth the pain. All of it. You can also ride this one as a two part shuttle. Hamilton Buttes alone is worth shuttling on repeat.
and now the secret is out... I too was blown away by the descents and the views. It was quite dusty and lots of flesh eating bugs in July and despite that it was still awesome. On thing I would recommend is minute 10:07 turn left for a quick out and back to the top of Hamilton Butte. The view there is just jaw dropping, even better than anything on the route. High elevation route, snow will stay till June most years in the shade so keep that in mind if you go early in the summer
We were soooo tired, we didn’t have energy to add more riding! 😛
Oh yeah, got the first view and first comment. Feeling special now. Great vid. I will definitely be putting this trail on my list.
Nice work! Yeah, this one belongs on the list for sure.
If I remember correctly that chimney you referred to is a leftover from one of the CCC camps.
That would make sense. I'm assuming there was once a cabin built around it.
I checked this out this past weekend and sad to say the snow has hit! It was slushy on the blue climb after the road and the black connector trail only had even more. We even had to push another mile down Yozoo because of all the shade. Was able to start descending @7:30 but cut the ride short after getting back to 7800. Although the snow left me questioning life’s choices, I will definitely be back next year because that downhill was great.
Oh man! I was hoping the snow would hold off!!! Glad you got up there, though!
Definitely adding this to the wishlist
Like, you pretty much have to.
Thank you for posting this! Looks like I could include this in part of a bikepacking route, this is really helpful.
If you could bikepack upper Siouxon, you can bikepack this area for sure!
it's a cool area, amazing views, just pack light b/c you'll be pushing!
Thanks so much! This will go on my list for next year. I just scratched the surface of GP area and have to go back!
I still have a lot of trails to check off the list as well!
Did this ride a few weeks ago. Feels like way more climbing than descending, surprisingly physical ride given the stats. Views were pretty average by Gifford standards and the descents were OK, though swimming in Blue Lake was cool. Hamilton Buttes was a fun mellow descent, I'd probably just do that one on it's own. Strawberry Ridge, Juniper Peak to Tongue Mtn, the Sunrise-Juniper-Dark Meadow loop and Goat Mtn are all way better views and better descents.
Instead of going up the trail, you can go up road 7807 that takes you closer to Hamilton butte. The summit is totally worth the final push up the moto trail. That's where the best views are!
There will be a next time, and when that time comes, I’ll try it that way.