Great early season ride
Have never riden out here and weather was great and wanted to give it a try with a twist...Bring an overnight backpack and spend the night up the Dungeness trail past the trailhead and finish the loop the next day. Weather was spectacular and I was expecting to not be able to drive up the road around the 2800' level but it was all dry and sunshine up there. Must be much more of a snow shadow in this valley. Shuttled camping gear to upper trailhead then drove down to lower trailhead road where there is no clear parking area except the road gets obscured after a turn and an unsigned path runs down to connect with the main trail. Riding up this lower section was super tough with a good amount of pushing and quite a few big blowdowns. Trail steepness exceeds a 22x34 granny setup so I cannot imagine anyone actually being able to sustain all that climb. Once cresting the lower climb, the trail drops and is nice buff descending for a while before reaching the river shelter and becoming more of a rooty river ride. The super sucking mudflow is still there at one point and the river washout section but that is the biggest obstruction on the lower trail. I then hid the bike, hiked upper dungeness to goat lake area, and spend the quiet night at camp handy.
Next morning I hiked back down to trailhead and rode the road climb to Tubal Cain/Gold Creek trailhead. The day was early so I hiked up to the mine and up the ridge for some nice snow scenery before heading back to the bike. Gold creek descending is miles of nice sidehill descending. I hit quite a few blowdowns but most were small trees that were an easy hop over. Final challenge was getting across a full gold creek with no logs or much help with rocks.
Overall a nice adventure with a few obstructions that made things interesting.