People who love the Spruce Railroad Trail around Lake Crescent (about 20 miles west of Port Angles, WA) have known it up until now as a terrific MTB trail with twisty, bumpy, often muddy singletrack mostly skirting the water's edge without much elevation gain and tons of great views. Last summer construction started on the northwest end of the trail to widen, flatten and eventually pave the first six miles or so to match the amazingly smooth, easy-grade section that already runs parallel to the southwest end of the lake.

I sort of have mixed emotions about the taming of this trail, but since there are plenty of other place to MTB around there, I guess I won't miss the old rutted track too badly. Once it's completely road-bikeable, it'll be a huge improvement for touring riders who currently make the death-defying trip around the lake on Highway 101.

Here's a few shots of the regrade and widening process on the Spruce trail:

They moved in a lot of fill to build up ramps where there used to sudden ups and downs in elevation


Steepest grade I could find on the recently re-worked section, probably about 7%? And just in a few short places. This is the section that used to have the really steep ups and downs; the get-off-and-walk stuff.


About 0.7 miles from the northwest trailhead parking lot, suddenly you're back on the old trail. This is right where the trail gets really close to the lake's edge, and flattens out. Progress from here should move pretty quickly until the first tunnel is reached since they won't have to be moving that much dirt to flatten the grade.