Day 3, part 2. Pine Creek Road.

I like this picture.


Now, as alluded to previously, most of the roads in the Sierra Nevada are closed in the winter.


But not all of them.

Pine Creek Road is a little road that starts just North of Bishop, CA. It climbs past about forty mining-company-owned-houses in a far-too-perfect-to-be-natural grid, and goes up to the mine. The company keeps the road cleared year round.

Start of the climb.

Now, this road wasn't without it's drawbacks. But traffic? I saw one abandoned car in the two-hour climb. No other souls.

My Destination.

Obligatory switch-back photo.

This was a quick climb, only about an hour to get from the valley floor (at about 4000 feet) to the top (at just 7750 feet). So I only got an hour of fun... before the torture began.

The descent.

You see, at the base of the climb, it's 60 degrees and Sunny, and you work as hard as you can. When you start the descent, well, now you're at altitude, it's 30 degrees and you're going over 40 MPH down the hill... on this one I was going ~48.

The Descent.

You can't pedal fast enough to get any resistance. All of the sudden you aren't working at all, you're soaked with sweat, it's 30 degrees, and you have a 50 MPH headwind. "The cold skips all kinds of phases"... You're instantly frozen throughout your entire body. I stop several times to warm up. Seeing the end of a descent is a weight off your shoulders... finally, get back in the car to warm up.



And drive to the next climb.