Mt. Adams Bike DeTour

We've been meaning to do this ride for three years now. And boy are we glad we finally did. This was one awesome ride. Certainly the best of the year, and among the all-time bests in our three years of riding centuries.

Quick Stats Ride Distance: 105.57 miles   Elevation Gain: 6,484 feet   Average Moving Speed: 14.65 mph

The actual name of the ride is Mt. Adams Country Bicycle Tour. However my name is more fitting, at least this year. You know all that precipitation we've been getting? Well at higher elevations that stuff is solid white stuff. And covers the road. Yep, the road is impassable. You may think only our skinny tire road bikes were blocked, but I'm guessing very few vehicles could cross the feet of snow I saw piled across the road.

So anyway the organizers changed the mountain loop (or I think they called it the forest loop) so that it consisted of two separate out-and-back climbs. Voila! Problem solved.

PHOTOS (IN FLASH PLAYER):

I don't want to get into comparing this week's ride to last week, but man oh man what a difference a good smooth road makes! The out-and-back climbs were on roads so smooth you could, well, ride you bikes with big cheesy grins the whole time. The climbing was good, with slopes ranging up to 9%. None of this 11-12% grade for miles and miles garbage! The best part though was that the descending was a brakeless affair. In other words, awesome. Just turn around and "fly you fools!" to quote Gandolf.

You can see on the ride data below that I wanted to see how fast I could go. The big green spike on the second descent is when I pedaled as fast and hard as I could. Only got to 48 mph, so was a bit disappointed, but with only an 8% downslope, and my gear ratios, it is hard to expect more (my cadence apparently peaked at 145 rpm in the effort).

RIDE DATA:

The support was amazing. They served us two meals: lunch at the halfway point and an incredibly scrumptious salmon burger (with various other delicious odds and ends) after the ride.

Lots of water stops were available. We didn't use all of them, but it was nice they were there if needed.

The only negative on the ride was the headwind for the last several miles. That was tough work. You are exhausted from riding a century, and you see at about mile 99 the organizers even painted "last hill of the ride" on the pavement. After that we descended and got hit by a nasty headwind. This was very demoralizing. Thankfully it wasn't too long of a stretch though. I think in future years we will ride the valley loop first in order to mitigate this issue.Yes, you can get wind up in the forested area, but the trees often block a lot of it. Down in the valley loop there is nothing to stop it. Except apparently tired bicyclists?

Riding the valley first would also allow about 15 miles of warmup before climbing rather than the forest loop's 2-mile warmup. Amy's legs struggled with that a bit (but then they usually don't warm up for 50 miles anyway).

All in all, a wonderful ride. We're coming back. Count on it.

RIDE MAP IN GOOGLE EARTH:

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