This is a few miles into the ride. The views extend forever, an awesome landscape, other wordly. I’m in the front for quite a while occasionally drafting off this guy. After a while a small group breaks away and I make the decision to hang back rather than waste all my energy. I imagined there would be some ultra cyclists using the event for training and it would not be a good idea just yet to try to keep up with them.

As the elevation increases the company is scarce as several people turn back. By three thousand feet I am incredibly dehydrated and suffering intermittent leg cramps. They tell you that Death Valley is the driest place on earth and that you need to hydrate constantly, which I have been doing. I’m eating e-caps by the handful, drinking constantly, yet I have become dehydrated and am cramping up with 1900 feet to go. At 4000 feet you can’t turn around because it’s only 900 plus feet to the pass. The support vehicle stops and loads me up for the last push. Amazing what a little encouragement can do. I get closer and just like the Going to The Sun Rd. in Montana I get a last burst or energy to make it to the pass.

The view from the top, notice the yellow grade signs. The downhill was unbelievable, 18 miles including stretches of 6 to 8% grades with little traffic, best downhill ever. On the descent there was time to really see what the climb was like. Now it’s just tuck and fly towards Stovepipe Wells.

For the first thirty miles or so we’re riding below sea level and then the climb begins. I stop at each 1000 feet to hack and weaze. As hard as the climbs were I didn’t get my heart rate up to where it normally is on hard efforts, yet I couldn’t turn the crank.

I rest at Stovepipe Wells before the last 23 miles back to Furnace Creek Ranch. This was a holiday weekend so there were lots of people in Death Valley and many RV’s of all shapes and sizes, thousands of motorcycles including many of the BMW Dakar which I have coveted for some time. Spoke with a few motorcyclists who were on their way up to Townes Pass, one had done it on a bike in his youth and the other just stood shaking his head in disbelief, love that.

    I normally have the opinion that RV’s are just huge gas guzzling monsters, environmentally irresponsible, esthetically abhorrent, and terrifying to cyclists. This is all true but at this moment in this place they just looked so cool lined up against that immense blue sky. Everybody at Stovepipe Wells just seemed to be so happy and friendly. I had this fleeting feeling of joy, some sort of memory recall from some early childhood vacation somewhere, like an early sixties film clip advertising the simple pleasures of the National Parks.  I’m sure I was high from the adrenalin rush but what a good feeling.

Then came the long lonely ride back to Furnace Creek. I was surprised to see the wildflowers already in bloom and stopped to shoot them.