Last weekend, I headed up to the North Cascades Highway for
my annual Spring Pilgrimage. Every
Winter, the west side of the pass is closed at milepost 134 due to avalanche
danger. Each Spring, the road closure
remains here while work being done to clear the pass all the way over both
Rainy and Washington passes to Mazama and points beyond in Eastern Washington.
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| Looking back down the way I had come. |
I had been checking the WSDOT Web, Twiiter, and Facebook pages
for updates and the most recent news had them clearing the roads about 10-15
miles up from the road closure. So I
paced myself with this distance in mind.
To my surprise, the mile markers kept rolling by and as I was up to about
18 miles, my thoughts went from, “oh, it’s nice to get some good miles in” to “when
will this end?” as the fatigue accumulated.
I can do shorter hill reps and repeat them multiple times, but this doesn’t
really prepare the legs for an uphill effort of 15 miles. Finally, the end was in sight, and I rode past
the snow blowing equipment to the point that I could ride no further.
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| Looking further up the road. |
Here, I took the few pictures posted here, ate a banana,
added some layers, and started my descent.
As the road was closed to cars, I took full advantage and rode both up
and down on the racing line, trying to shorten the distance by apexing the
corners. This is much more fun on the
way down, and I didn’t change out of the biggest gear the first 10-12 miles of
the descent. With the road wet from
runoff and the speeds high, it was quite cold initially, but losing altitude
rapidly helps. There is a short uphill
on the return just at the end that always manages to make the legs feel fried,
and this time was no different, but the road closure gate and parking lot soon
appeared and the effort was over. All
that remained was to fill the stomach and legs.
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| The trusty carbon steed. |
It was a great day out on the bike and I hope that I might be able to make it up one more time this season before they open the road.
