Volcanoes & Passes Motorcycle Tour - Part 1 (Guided)

The Pacific Northwest’s volcanic spine, guided. Eight days from Seattle to San Francisco, seven nights and around 1,490 miles, with a tour leader, a welcome dinner in Seattle and a farewell dinner at the other end.

Mount Rainier comes first, approached on Highway 410, a 14,000-foot volcano that stays in view for most of a day’s riding. The White Pass Scenic Byway then passes Mount St Helens, whose 1980 eruption removed the top 1,300 feet of the mountain and left a landscape that is still visibly recovering, before the route crosses the Columbia River into Oregon with Mount Hood ahead.

Crater Lake is the one people remember. It fills the collapsed caldera of a mountain that destroyed itself around 7,700 years ago, and the water is a blue that photographs never quite manage. Beyond it the route continues south past Mount Shasta and through Lassen Volcanic National Park, where the ground still steams and bubbles, before dropping to Chico and running into San Francisco over the Golden Gate Bridge.

EAGLERIDER provides the motorcycle, the tour leader, all seven nights and the group dinners. Fuel, most meals and insurance are arranged separately. Riding days are long, up to 328 miles, which suits country this empty and roads this good. Five volcanoes, a caldera lake and the whole length of the Cascades, with someone else working out where the fuel stops are. For a first guided trip in the United States, or for anyone who would rather not navigate, it is a strong choice.