Ride like the wind and climb like a mountain goat

What a finish to biking in July. Went to McCall this past weekend to participate in the 3 Summit Challenge and hang out in McCall.

Victoria and I went down on Thursday evening to just hang out and for me to get ready for the ride on Saturday. Friday morning I took a ride out around the lake and up to the Upper Payette Lake. This ride allowed me to see how the Warren Wagon Road looked for when we ride on it for the MS150 at the end of August. I got to see where the roadway was washed out during some of the hard rains that hit the McCall area during the Spring. Two places are single lane and one of them is about 50 or so feet of gravel. The gravel may give the road bikers a little bit of a problem but hopefully they are able to make it through with not much trouble.

On Saturday morning Deb, Steve, Victoria and I headed to Cascade for Steve and I to get ready for the 3 Summit Challenge. At 8:00 AM we headed out on Highway 55 towards Warm Lake. The weather was perfect for this ride. Nice and cool with the sun out. First destination is Big Creek Summit, elevation 6594 feet, 17 miles out from where we started. I start the climb up at about 13 miles out and it is 4 more miles of pretty good grinding to get to the top of this summit. I am feeling pretty good as I go up this climb but I can tell it is going to be a long ride since I will have two more of these climbs to deal with. I get to the rest area at the top and get a couple of things to tide me over for the trip down. The decent is very nice hitting speeds of 38MPH while passing and getting passed by other bikers. Talk about an adrenaline rush.

The second ascent to Warm Lake Summit started at about 28 miles out and ended up being about 4 miles of major kick in the tush. I had to stop about 5 times on the way up to just catch my breath. WOW! Maximum slope of 11% with an average of 8.7%. This was getting the best of me. Finally got to the top of the summit and an elevation of around 7300 feet. Steve was there getting stuff for the ride back into Cascade so I decided I had better get some essential nutrients. I got back on the bike and started back down to go to Big Creek Summit. As I started the decent a chipmunk decided to come out and run into the side of my tire. I looked back to see if he was hurt but he just spun around a couple of times and rushed off of the road. I hit a maximum of almost 42MPH as I headed down the road. This was another adrenaline rush.

To bad I didn't save the adrenaline rush for the climb back up to the third summit. I ended up stopping a couple of times and walked the bike a quarter of a mile just to keep my calves from disowning me. I finally made it up to the summit. On the way down towards Cascade it started raining. The rain felt good as I descended down the mountain road.

This was a great ride and I am looking forward to doing it again next year.

With this ride I ended up going 677 miles for the month of July. It was a great month for riding and I hope that I will be able to get that much in August.