Author: Mike
Hassur
Well, this was the weekend when we were supposed to be
doing the Mt. St. Helens “Windy Ridge Ride” which is a favorite amongst our
group (great scenery, comfortable length (~65 miles), plenty of climbing (~6500
feet), and a single lane road devoted mainly to us for a good part of the ride
up). Unfortunately, the weather didn't
cooperate (rain), and we had to cancel the ride.
This short blog post is about our alternative ride on
Saturday morning. Leon, Les, and I
decided to go to The Climb and just do some hill repeats there. Our reasoning was as follows:
1.
It was close.
2.
We could drive our cars to the base of The Climb
and devote whatever time we had there to climbing.
3.
If it started to rain, we were never very far
from our cars.
I got there at 6:10 AM.
Leon’s car was already there, but Leon was nowhere in sight. I got my bike out, mixed up some energy drink
for my bottle, and headed up the road. I
hadn’t ridden very far before I met up with Leon who was heading down. He had gone part of the way up and turned
around figuring to meet me near the bottom.
We visited as we rode to the top together, and Leon
mentioned that he had seen a couple of elk just a bit earlier. The closer we got to the top, the more it
misted/sprinkled; until, at the top, it was just raining on us. We headed back down and were soon out of the
rain. Near the bottom, we saw Les coming
up. By this time, it was not raining at
all, and the roads were dry; so we turned around and started back up
together.
Once again, as we approached the top, the rain
increased. We headed back down to the
upper hairpin, turned around, and headed back up again. This time at the top the rain was more
pronounced. I said that I would like to
head back to the cars to change my wheels.
I had my light-weight racing wheels on the bike, and I was not confident
how well they kept moisture out of the hubs when riding in wet conditions. I had brought an extra set of wheels that
were more impervious to moisture just in case.
Leon and Les said that they would head down with me. On the way down, Les and I were talking with
Leon riding about 50 yards ahead of us. All of a sudden, Les said “look up ahead”!! I looked up to see a herd of six large elk
crossing the road just ahead of Leon.
They scattered and headed into the forest on both sides of the road, but
not before we got a pretty good look at them – pretty amazing. It was an awesome sight to see six of these
large animals all at once.
After seeing the elk, the intensity of the rain gradually
increased; and, by the time we had reached the cars, it was raining hard. I raised the back hatch of my van and used it
as an umbrella while I changed my wheels.
Once the wheels were changed, the rain had let up some; and we decided
to head back up again. We had not gone
far when the rain picked up again. It
was raining pretty hard; and, for some reason, I was struggling to keep up with
Leon and Les – even though they didn’t seem to be working that hard. The rain finally got to me, and I told the
guys that I was heading back to the cars.
I turned around while Leon and Les headed on up to retrieve some water
bottles that they had hidden by the upper hairpin turn on our previous trip up.
It wasn’t until I got back to my van that I noticed that
my rear wheel would barely turn. I had
not tightened the rear skewer tight enough when I changed out the wheels, and
the wheel was rubbing firmly against one of the brake pads – NO WONDER I WAS
HAVING SO MUCH TROUBLE KEEPING UP WITH LEON AND LES EARLIER!!!
Les told me later that the rain let up almost as soon as
I turned around and that they had a good ride together. This just wasn't my day, but seeing those
elk made it a pretty memorable experience.
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