I got up nice and early, but perhaps I should have got up even earlier since I didn't leave the headquarters parking area until 7:40. By then it was already warm in the sun, although still pleasantly cool in the long shadows. The initial path rolled over the top of the ridge not too steeply.
It's hard to take photos that show the steepness of the terrain. But this one shows the last bit of ridge before I drop over the edge and a ridge I might have to climb on the other side.
It also doesn't show the dust covering the trail, thin in most areas but up to a couple inches deep in some ruts. It was definitely a tricky downhill, and I didn't want to fall and hurt myself before I'd even gotten started. (Not that I really wanted to fall and hurt myself deep in the Henry Coe wilderness, either!) I was doing OK, going slowly, but when I let go of the rear brakes for a moment to shift I caught a rut and slid the front tire out from under me. At that point there was nothing left to do but put my hands out where the bike wouldn't fall on them and accept however much gravel got pushed under my skin. Luckily not too much: just a couple of holes in each hand.
I shook that off, continued on down to Poverty Flat, across the dry creek, and started up the far side. The word "brutal" had already crossed my mind a few times on the way down, and it crossed my mind yet again on the way up the other side.
At the first rest stop, I heard a hissing and tracked it down to a hole in the rear sidewall. Slime tires are great, but sometimes an old hole will open up again if you pound on it, and I suspect the big rocks in the creek bed had broken the seal. In any case, it was a slow leak, so I continued on.
After a long, hard slog mostly in first gear, I neared the top of Jackass Peak and had to get off and walk for a few of the steeper, dustier parts. Once again, brutal.
I finally reached the top, only to find that the way down the other side was just as steep. I decided to turn around, then decided to continue on, then decided to consult the GPS.
OK, if that hill was that brutal to climb, and it was only 1/3 as tall as the hill I'd have to climb on the return in the brutal afternoon heat, I figured I'd better turn around after all.
My tire had finally resealed itself, but it had lost so much air that the sidewalls were flexing back and forth on the final uphill push, so I took the opportunity to pump it back up. My portable pump can put a lot of stress on the valve stem, and compressing air generates a lot of heat, so I ended up turning the slightly bent valve arm into a very bent valve arm, too bent to allow the locking nut to be screwed tight again. Fortunately, air pressure holds the valve closed, and it gave me no further trouble today. (I had two spare tubes in case I needed them.)
Returning up the ridge was, you guessed it, brutal. On the plus side, all those rest stops on the way back up gave me plenty of opportunities to take photos.
The last part of the big hill wasn't nearly as steep. On the other hand, the long morning shadows had shrunk down to very small morning shadows. And anywhere not shadowed felt like 90 degrees already, still at not quite 11:00 in the morning.
At this point my hand was covered with dirt, rubber off my hand grips, and of course those annoying gravel punctures. Ew.
I realized as I was finishing the last bit of hill that my water situation could have been awkward. I'd chosen to bring my water filter, which would have let me refill at Mississippi Lake, but bringing the water filter meant I didn't have room for that extra emergency liter of water (two half-liter bottles). Thus, I had only 1.5 liters of water, which I could have doubled, but that wasn't much more than the 2.5 liters I would have brought without the filter. Getting back from Mississippi Lake with only 1.5 liters in the hot afternoon sun would have been iffy. Plus, if I had turned around before reaching Mississippi Lake, I would have had to go a very long distance on only 1.5 liters. Fortunately, having turned around where I did, I still had some water left at the end.
So, all in all, it was a shorter trip than I wanted, but it was still plenty of exercise, and I lived to tell about it.
