ROUTE

Mountain Loop Highway — Granite Falls to Darrington

The locals’ secret: 105 km of narrow forest pavement past Big Four Mountain’s ice caves and ghost towns — a slow, shady, gorgeous old route linking the Stillaguamish to the North Cascades back door.

scenic-road106 km1.2 hmoderate

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NPS Photo / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain

ABOUT THIS ROUTE

The route in detail

The Mountain Loop is the road Washington riders keep quiet about. Half closed-ish-feeling, half paved marvel, it threads between Granite Falls and Darrington through old-growth cedar, past the Big Four ice caves and the ghost-town sites of Monte Cristo and Silverton, along the Stillaguamish’s trout water. It is narrow, mossy, low-traffic and beautiful in a way the big highways are not — the mountain-forest ride for a slow morning. The middle stretch beyond Darrington is gravel for a few miles; most riders do the paved Granite Falls to Darrington half.

From Granite Falls the Mountain Loop Highway (FR-20 for part of its length) follows the South Stillaguamish up past the Verlot ranger station — the informally iconic view across the valley to Big Four’s white granite face and its ice caves, the trail to which leaves from the parking lot at mile 20. Beyond, the road climbs gently past the ghost-town signs of Silverton and Monte Cristo (both hike-in), through old burns where the mountains open up, and drops to the Sauk river valley at Darrington — a timber town with a famous beer welcome at the end. Full loop riders continue west to Arlington on SR-530 along the river; the middle section past the end of county maintenance turns to narrow gravel. Ride slow: this road is about the forest, not the pace.