Yesterday was my first Tour de Blast ride, which is a long climb up to the top of Mt. St. Helens and back down again.
At lower elevations, the weather was fine – slightly drizzly, upper 50’s, good climbing weather – and the first 1500-2000 feet of climbing were pretty easy: Hills and rain are a fact of life in the Northwest, this ride is just more of each packed into one day. Although the total climbing elevation of 6200’ is more than I’d ever done in a single day before, I was confident I could turtle up the long hills and get back to the bottom before closing time. We started out around 8 a.m.
Things got a bit rougher above 3000’. I was a few minutes behind my faster friends, and my chain came off and jammed in the front chainrings not once but twice during a climb, nearly causing me to topple over as I had to “clip out” of the clipless pedals fast to avoid falling into other cyclists. That cost me about ten minutes of mucking about with my chain and rolling back downhill to get things shifting normally again before returning to the ascent.
By the time I got to Elk Rock before 11 a.m. the weather had turned nasty: It was very foggy with freezing rain and I was soaking wet from rain and sweat and freezing cold. Riders were huddled under a few small tents trying vainly to warm up.
Thankfully the Seward Park boys had waited a few minutes for me there to tell me they’d decided to turn back, which was good. The ride organizers were recommending that riders turn back due to crappy weather at altitude. If I hadn’t run into them, I would have assumed they pushed on and kept going to the top and been frozen and miserable the rest of the way back… thanks for waiting for me Alex!
As it happened we were frozen and miserable on 8-9 miles of the ride back down anyway, as we got pelted with freezing rain for the nine-mile downhill. I was never so glad to see an uphill again as when we got to the bottom of that hill, so that my limbs and feet could warm up!
I know it sounds awful, doesn’t it? But on a decent day it would be a fantastically-beautiful ride, with incredible views as you climb the mountain. We’ll do it again next year if there’s a good weather report beforehand :).
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