Passport to Pain Ride Returns to Vashon Island For a 6th Time
80 miles of relentless climbing (with 50 and 30 mile options), countless gorgeous vistas across Puget Sound to Seattle, and a crazy batch of over 100 cheerful volunteers have made P2P a grueling good time that “sucks in all the right ways.”
A bike ride along Vashon Island’s gently rolling central roadway fails to reveal the steep challenges that can be found at the island’s foreboding edges. On September 10, 2016, hundreds of cyclists will spend their day bombing repeatedly down the steep drops along those very edges. After a short bit of refreshment and a coveted stamp on their official passport, riders will seek the lowest gear they can find for the return ascent. For a 6th straight year, the island’s least fair, most gnarly hills will once again play a starring role during Passport To Pain.
P2P has steadily gained a reputation for being the toughest ride in the Seattle area, with riders able to choose the degree of “crazy” that best suits their pain threshold. The IDIOT covers 10,000 feet of vertical gained over a brutal 80-mile circuit of the island. The WEASEL ride is 50 miles and 6,500 feet of vertical. The WEENIE is a mere 30 miles and 3,400 feet.
Along the journey, riders get their P2P passport stamped at eighteen strategic checkpoints, where food, friends, photo ops, laughs and fun await. Volunteers at the checkpoints try to out-do one another year after year with themes, costumes, entertainment and showmanship. At the end of the ride, a giant beachfront barbecue awaits the hungry riders, with multiple massage tables on hand for weary muscles, along with tales of challenge and triumph aplenty. For many, the lure of a cold beer and a cool dunk in the inviting harbor can be overpowering.
“For comparison, ten thousand feet is Alpe D’Huez, Col d’ Aspin and the Galibier combined,” says lead organizer Bruce Morser.
Perhaps a more apt local comparison would be the better-known and much-beloved RAMROD (Ride Around Mt. Rainier in One Day), which covers the same cumulative elevation gain over nearly twice the distance.
“We like to say that Passport To Pain is half the Ram and all of the Rod,” says Morser.
“I hugged the last passport stamper tight after she told me it was all downhill from there,” said rider Pamela Forrester of Snoqualmie, Washington. “At that point, I wasn’t sure if ‘downhill’ was in the Vashon Island vocabulary.”
Billed as a “strenuous, supported ride for experienced riders only,” this year’s Passport to Pain falls on Saturday, September 10 at 7:30 AM. Riders gather at the Jensen Point Boathouse on the island’s Burton peninsula for a staggered send-off.
To register, or for course maps and more info, go to www.passport2pain.org. Passport To Pain is a fundraiser for the Vashon Island Rowing Club.
Notes from lead organizer Bruce Morser regarding some of the more notorious hills along the Passport to Pain:
#8 Burma Road (The Triple Dope Slap)
“This is a three-pitch hill, with two of the pitches at 25%. It’s a narrow, winding road that you’re sure must be one-way, but it’s not. Standard gear of choice would be a 34-27. Many just get off their bikes and walk it. As you proceed up (and down) Burma Road, you see red pitchforks on the roadway that tip you off to the reward at the top of the hill, where our P2P Devil (who by day runs the Island’s Chamber of Commerce) gleefully congratulates you for conquering Burma. Then comes the bad news. You then must immediately go all the way back down to the water at Sylvan Beach…and then up again.”
#15 Gold Beach (Wheeeee! Uh oh.)
“If you don’t feel like roses on the lighthouse climb just before Gold Beach, you’re in a little trouble. Gold Beach is a spectacularly beautiful, swooping left hand turn that reveals an incredible view of the Sound and the mainland as you plunge down into it. After a speedy, smooth descent and a short ride through the small residential community at the bottom, you head back up this same hill, now very exposed, very hot and very steep (and only getting steeper as you go). That’s why we station our photographer at the top, to capture your elated glee as you zoom into this magnificent vista, only to be contrasted a little later with the seemingly never-ending pain of your ascent.”
#16 Manzanita (Outer Limits)
“At the extreme southern tip of Maury Island, this hill is so out-of-the-way that the only people who ever see it are the residents who have homes down on the beach, and riders training for Passport to Pain. It’s an incredibly fast, winding, narrow descent, followed by about a 22% rise back out. Manzanita comes toward the end of the ride when everyone, even the high end cat 1 and cat 2 riders, are suffering from potential leg cramps.”
