Cycling in Colfax

Colfax is a self-guided gravel base in the truest sense: the riding is the endless grid of unpaved and lightly-paved county roads folding over the Palouse’s steep wheat hills, with the classic objective being the switchbacked climb up Steptoe Butte (about 18 miles north) for a 360-degree view of the patchwork farmland. There is no signed trail network — you build your own loops on quiet farm roads — and the terrain is famously hilly and often windy, so come prepared. The area is a fixture on the Palouse cycling calendar: the WSU Cycling Club’s Tour de Lentil metric century (tied to Pullman’s National Lentil Festival) and the Fondo on the Palouse both send riders through Colfax on mixed gravel-and-pavement courses each year.

For lodging, the Siesta Motel is the obvious cyclist base — a budget motel on South Main that explicitly welcomes bikers and cyclists on its own site (“great roads and views… the Palouse has some of the best roads in Washington for biking”) and offers a storage room, free parking, and free Wi-Fi. It is a place to sleep and stage rides, not a bike-service center.

Be honest about services: Colfax has no bike shop and no rental outfit. The nearest shops are roughly 16 miles south in Pullman (B&L Bicycles) and about 25 miles away in Moscow, Idaho — and even those do not advertise gravel-bike rentals, so plan to bring your own bike. Treat Colfax as a great low-cost overnight base for a self-supported Palouse gravel trip rather than a place to rent or repair on the fly.

Colfax’s biggest yearly gathering is the Palouse Empire Fair each September, a four-day county fair with livestock, a rodeo, carnival, and vendors at the fairgrounds just west of town, out among the rolling farm roads of the Palouse.