California Climbing: Day 2 - April Fools Day
Author of this post: Scott Larson
From March 31st to April 5th 2012, Leon, Mike and I traveled to California to check off some of the climbs Leon has on his "100 of the toughest climbs" list. I was very excited to get out of the cold and rain and go the the "mythical" warmth of the central valley and the Sierra mountains.
Palm Sunday & April Fool's Day!
The joke was on me because Leon had a super steep climb and I still only had my 11-23, but I'll get to that in a moment. Finally, a truly nice day, but we had no palms. Instead we traded the traditional palms in for some ponderosa pines or lodge pole pines. My arbor identification skills aren't very good, but at least I knew they were pines.
We started off early that morning and drove to Prather, just south of Oakhurst. The first climb was more of a grade than a climb. It was a steady climb from 1500 feet to 7000+ feet over about 20 miles. We rolled up it slowly taking in the sun and the views of the valley below. After climbing for nearly two hours we entered this small town that consisted of a gas station, and the town was buried in several feet of snow, but the road was clear so we kept climbing. Finally, after several more miles of riding between snow banks and Cadillac Escalades, we reached the top. It was somewhat anticlimactic because there was no real way to know you had reached the top other than Leon saying that the road we stopped at to put our jackets on was the top.
The three of us turned around and started the cold decent. On the way down Mike continued the way we came up but Leon and I turned left and wound our way down a goat path to the hamlet of Tollhouse. We had an exciting decent through some switch backs and some super steep sections. The cars just cut lanes so you never know if the next corner will be your last. Finally we reached the bottom and found another gas station that marked "Tollhouse." I was expecting a cookie factory, but apparently it just wasn't to be. We turned around at a bridge and started the climb to the top. Originally Leon said the climb was supposed to be 13 miles or something, but I questioned him about how long he expected the climb to take, I thought it was easily rideble in less than an hour but he thought it should take closer to two hours. Then he realized that he made a mistake on the distance and the climb was only 6 miles but it gained 2200 feet! Ouch, this was my April Fool's Joke!
That climb hurt so bad, and parts of it were more than 15% for 1/4 of a mile Leon said. The good news was that close to the top where the steepest part of the climb is there was a fire station, so if you decided you needed to go into cardiac arrest, help would be close. Once we both made it to the top we rode down the hill and managed to get hailed on for a couple of miles. Hail hitting your face at 40 mph is not fun.
We continued down and met Mike at a different gas station. I guzzled a can of coke and we drove over to a subway to eat lunch. After lunch we drove to Dinuba, which was surrounded by orange groves. Leon only wanted a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for dinner so Mike and I went to Panda Express. For some reason they post calories on their menu and we calculated that our meals were about 2000 calories each! We deserved it after the two climbs though.
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