Ride report: Palo Alto to Yosemite and back
Latenser
We received this posting in Nebraska even
though it was limited to California.
How many other sites got it?
By the way, I enjoyed it.
Thanks to Eric!
James Brister
> We received this posting in Nebraska even
> though it was limited to California.
Many sites that forward news ignore distributions for one reason or
another.
James
--
James Brister bri...@wsl.pa.dec.com
DEC Western Software Lab., Palo Alto, CA decwrl!brister
Eric House
Saturday) from Palo Alto to Yosemite Valley and back. It was a fun
and interesting trip as well as being the most difficult unsupported
ride I've done.
Summary: Day 1: 199 miles in 12:32, featuring Old Priest Grade
whose 2 miles took 25 minutes to crawl up. Day 2: 195 miles in
11:58, featuring Altamont Pass into a stiff headwind when I was too
tired to do anything but shift way down.
(For those used to better route summaries than what follows, I must
appologize for not having an altimeter and for not keeping a route
log as I travel. I'll probably get an Av. 50 when the can't-switch-
wheel-sizes bug is fixed, but can't promise I'll start stopping at every
turn to note the mileage anytime soon.)
I left home in Palo Alto at about 5:15 am on Friday, Sept 18. I
crossed the Dumbarton Bridge, took Paseo Padre, DeCoto Rd, missed
the turn onto Niles Blvd. and so wound up taking Mission Blvd. to the
entrance to Niles Canyon. It was still quite dark when I went
through the canyon, and the road was quite well populated with
tractor-trailer rigs headed in my direction, but I survived. I
continued on Hwy 84 through Livermore, stopping for water, and on
to 580.
Just before 580 I turned onto Southfront, the frontage road south of
the freeway (guess what the frontage rd. north of 580 is called).
(Thanks, BTW, to all of you who told me that this road existed.) I
took Southfront to Vasco, and then crossed Vasco (ignoring a sign
telling me that only right turns were allowed) onto another road
whose name I didn't catch. Southfront is a left turn maybe 100 feet
from Vasco, and follows the freeway until the next exit. I then
turned left onto Greenville(?), crossed under the freeway just as it
was beginning its climb over Altamont Pass, and then turned right
onto Altamont Pass Rd.
Altamont Pass Rd., as several of you told me, is a far easier climb
than either Patterson Pass or Corral Hollow Rds. I tooled merrily
along, waiting for the work to begin, as I watched the freeway toil
upwards to my right. Soon I was headed downhill, and at the bottom
turned left (I don't know if the road I turned onto was still called
Altamont Pass, or Mountain House Rd). A mile or so later I turned
right onto Grant Line Rd. and cruised on into Tracy. I'd climbed my
last hill for quite a while. (A note for those following this route:
Grant Line appears to dead-end on Byron Rd. approaching Tracy.
When you reach this point, simply turn right. Grant Line continues
as the first left.)
I continued through the north part of Tracy on Grant Line, and
followed it around its southward bend to the point where it becomes
Kasson, and beyond to were Kasson hits Hwy. 132. 14 miles after
turning left onto 132 I was in Modesto, 90 miles into the trip and
ready to take off my leg- and ear-warmers. I was averaging a little
over 20 mph, including stops, which was pretty good. I had eaten
only three energy bars so far, which was bad.
Hwy 132 east of Modesto is flat and straight for perhaps 20 miles,
and fairly heavily trafficed for half of that. There is little shoulder
worth riding on, but the road is still said to be better than 120 to the
north. I had no real problems with traffic but for one oncomming car
full of assholes (ok, I can really only be sure about the one in the
front left seat) that pulled over into my lane without another car in
sight to force me off the road. My visions of what happened to the
Team Ritchey rider up on Skyline a few months back kept me from
getting a good look at their license plate as they zipped past, but
Spike Bike fantasies made the next dozen miles pass quickly in spite
of frequent paranoid glances over my shoulder. If any of you ever
goes to trial for shooting someone like that you can count on an easy
time if I'm on the jury....
As it enters the foothills the road begins to bop and weave. By La
Grange (where there's a drinking fountain on the porch of a red
building [a small grocery store maybe] on the north side of the road)
you are definitely off of the valley floor -- and it was at about this
point that I began to feel the effects of having eaten too little. I
started having to shift down for hills I should have stood up for, and
on one hill finally pulled over to eat something. I'd stop several
more times before I'd eaten enough to partially recover.
I left Hwy 132 on some road whose name I never knew, following
vague directions from a local toward Marshes Flat Rd. which would
take me to Moccasin and the base of [Old] Priest Grade. Marshes Flat
doesn't actually connect to 132 as my AAA "Yosemite" map suggests,
but instead connects to the end of a network of residential roads in a
developing rural subdivsion near Don Pedro Lake. I made a couple
of wrong turns on those roads, and struggled up an unnecessary hill,
before another local put me back on track. Marshes Flat Rd. itself
was a very pretty, very narrow winding country road that ended in a
very steep twisty descent into Mocassin. It would have been a lot
harder in the other direction.
If you've been reading rec.bicycles for any length of time you've
heard of Old Priest Grade, a 2-mile stretch of road that parallels the
4.5-mile portion of Hwy 120 known as Priest Grade. (Priest is the
name of a town at the top rather than a reference to requests made
by cyclists who never saw the top, BTW.) Priest Grade is steep
enough that tour buses labor down it in 1st gear with brakes
engaged (you can hear and smell them across the canyon), so you can
imagine what it is like to gain the same elevation in less than half the
road -- through an area where all the shade trees were recently
burned. No, you can't; you have to do it. I did, and won't again. Half
the motorists who pass have a "What an animal!" look on their faces;
the other half, "What an idiot!" The latter half are right.
Cruelest of all is that the grade doesn't level out at the point where
the two roads meet, but continues nearly as steep for another few
hundred yards. I was unprepared for this, having spent the last of
my energy making the stop sign at the top of Old Priest. (A friend
who came up the new road on a tandem recently recalled that the
sudden upturn after the junction came too quickly to allow a shift,
and that getting started again took quite an effort.) But after a few
minutes' rest I was rolling again into Big Oak Flat where I stopped
for water.
I crested Old Priest right around 2:00, which was about what I'd
predicted when I left Modesto but, given how tired I was, had me
worried about my chances of making the Valley by sundown. It
didn't help when Hwy 120 beyond Big Oak Flat went down as well as
up on occasion, but at about this point I began to recover some
strength. Perhaps being able to rest on an occasional downhill
helped. At any rate I crawled slowly up the lengthening inclines
until I reached the park entrance at 4800 feet, and then up the
almost uninterrupted grade beyond to Crane Flat at 6100. I have no
idea how steep it was, but given that I was able to keep above 8 mph
as tired as I was it couldn't have been worse that 6%.
From Crane Flat I turned off of 120 toward the Valley, and began an
uninterrupted descent of over 2000 feet. I needed that! The first
half is along the sides and bottoms of gently-sloping, forrested hills;
the second is along the face of the sheer valley walls just
downstream from Yosemite Valley proper on a road cut out of the
mountainside, much like Going-To-The-Sun Highway in Glacier Nat.
Park. Fun stuff! Even the tunnels didn't matter, as I was going so
close to the speed of traffic that no one who didn't know I was there
could catch me inside.
Once I reached the valley floor I was a mere ten miles of level
cruising from Camp Currey, where my friends were staying and
where my clean clothes and dinner waited. And my bed. There was
now opportunity to look around -- at river-cut meadows ranging out
to the foot of granite slabs that then soared up to twice the elevation
I'd just lost. Yosemite is a pretty special place, no matter the season
and no matter how tired you are when you get there.
I found my friends at their rented cabins at about 6:00, and was a bit
disappointed that they were surprised to see me. Oh ye of little
faith...!
Saturday morning I got on the road about two hours later than I had
the previous day, hoping that having less climbing to do would make
up for having less time. I retraced my route, beginning with the
climb up to Crane Flat that I was delighted to be able to do at above
10 mph, with one exception: Just beyond Buck Meadows I turned left
onto J 20, which I followed into Coulterville; and from Coulterville I
took Hwy 132 back to the point where I'd left it in search of Marshes
Flat Rd the day before. This is the way I'd have gone into the park
had I not wanted to climb Old Priest Grade, and now that I've ridden
both ways I can say that that would have been the right choice.
There is a single climb just east of Coulterville that would be
extremely difficult on a hot day, though probably not any worse than
Priest Grade. But beyond that climb I don't think there was as much
up-and-down as there is on 120. There is certainly a lot less traffic,
and what there is is locals rather than hey-Marge-how-wide-is-this-
thing-anyway Winnebego drivers.
On the return through the valley I was at times strong enough to
keep in the low 20's on the aero bars, and at others too saddle-sore
to do anything but sit bold upright. I found that some of my speed
the previous morning had been due to a slight westerly wind (which
grew quite strong on Altamont Pass -- strong enough that
maintaining 12 mph downhill took considerable effort), but in the
end made it into my driveway comfortably before dark. My wife
and daughter had expected me earlier, however.
As to equipment, I rode a pretty standard mid-range road frame
with a 34x42x52 triple and a 13-24 six-speed freewheel. If I did it
again and weren't planning to do Old Priest I'd take the 13-21 seven-
speed instead, as I really wanted a 42x16 going across the valley.
I'm using aero bars made by John Tobin, with whom Pamela Blalock
put me in touch after I asked about the bars she described having on
her tandem. I'm finding them to be extremely comfortable, at least
until my butt gets sore. I carried three water bottles, and was
grateful that one of them is of the older small variety, because there
are a lot of faucets out there that you can't fit one of the big ones
under. There's plenty of water on the route as long as you're willing
to buy an occasional gallon in a mini-mart -- and expect to pay sales
tax!
--
****************************************************************************
Eric House "My employer doesn't share its opinions with
me, so I can share only mine with you"