Month: April 2018

 My first mountain ascent, the “Jeb Stuart Highway,”  Route 58 from Stuart, Va. (1345 feet ) to Meadows  of Dan ( 2867 feet) climbed up the leading edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The road paralleled Poor House Creek  until the first switchback.  After fifteen miles of twisting and turning up an eight percent grade,  Jeb Stuart  arrived at  “lover’s leap.”  Another tourist  snapped the  pic below with the panoramic view of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the background.  Gnome boy (pic below) jabbered on about his “first” mountain crossing as a “little boy.”  He puffed up when I repeated, “little?”  After trekking  these Appalachian switchbacks for three hours, this confederate highway surrendered.  I awaited “maillot à pois rouges” jersey at day’s end. 

 From Stuart,Va. the piedmont  hid the Blue Ridge’s rocky top.  Rt. 58 swerved around and between the first few hills and came face to face with the mountain’s first switchback.  It was tucked away in a ravine of Mountain Laurel, and on this morning, spring water dripping from the limestone ledge above, seeped across the asphalt surface creating a lime green slime, daring anyone to be careless.  Poison Ivy to my right and Red sumac to the left waved, “Jeb Stuart is treacherous.” With no oncoming traffic, I  kept to the outside of the road, decreased the pitch, and avoided  spinning the wheels in algae.  The inside road edge can be so steep,  and difficult to climb even with a granny gear.  

A few minutes later the road switched back sharply to my left.  With heaven directly ahead and the postcard valley below (pics below) the retaining wall offered no protection as the hillside fell off sharply.  Luckily, no semi trucks were allowed up or down this narrow section of Rt. 58.  Up I go, with the bike cranking  left and right. The rate of peddling  dwindled to 40 rpms… just enough to keep  my balance.  Cars honked, passengers waved, and questioned if  I was actually climbing, or a street performer balancing my bike for a few quarters.

To the victor goes the spoils. I was so proud to have climbed the Blue Ridge Mountain  but it leveled out after lover’s leap, and rolling farm land reappeared (pics below).  There was no  “aha moment,” no shrieks of joy racing down the  mountain’s spine. At sixty-four, I still wasn’t over the hill.

 

 

 

 

 

 I stopped  for  lunch at Poor Farmers Market a few hundred feet from the  Blue Ridge Parkway. As I was seated a portly patron politely pried,  “Was that you I seen?”  I  answered softly in the vernacular, “Yes Hun, you seen me,“.  After a thanksgiving dinner with all the fixin’s that couldn’t be beat, I descended to Galax,Va (2372 ft) and the trailhead of the New River Trail (pics below).  Gnome boy shook his head, “I seen what you be in that store. Remember, what goes around comes around!”

That first spring trek of 2015  my attention focused on the destination and not the journey.  I had  paper and electronic  maps, and  a rough idea about the switchback’s locations.  But while riding up the mountain face, the twists and turns blended together.  I kept awaiting the mountain pass…. for Rt. 58, the Jeb Stuart Highway to peak and divide the mountain in two. I was all about the finish line, the morning’s destination, the completion of my task.

The pic below was snapped after the eighteen mile climb out from White Bird, Idaho (1,581 ft) up White Bird Hill ( 4,245 ft)  via old  Rt. 95.  That day stands out because of  the dramatic lighting and the wide-reaching vistas.  Such a great day. The “river of no return” remains behind in the background  The descent into Grangeville, Idaho (3399ft) produced a small “aha moment.”

The Jeb Stuart Highway carved a second mountain pass in rural Western Virginia.  Rt. 58 skirted the southern edge of  Mt. Rogers  and included a 1000 foot climb over  switchbacks from Mouth of Wilson, Va. to Damascus,Va.  A back wheel spoke broke during the initial New River  climb out.  For thirty-five miles, the wheel yelped  with every  revolution.  I arrived at Sun dog Outfitters late in the day (pic below) resembling an old labrador with a limp .  Once again the mountain pass was  beautiful but anticlimactic .  Christmas tree farms (pic below) surrounded the Wilderness Trail.  During the downhill ride the bike wobbled at 15 miles hour.  I worried that the back wheel would collapse at faster speeds. Gnome boy kept repeating, ” A barking dog don’t bite.”

But I digress.  Western mountains provided that “aha moment” when the road peaked and then plunged downhill.  The climb out would twist left and right with no crest in sight.  Suddenly, the crest arose just like the morning sunrise.  The road divided the mountain in half as I biked through the pass smiling from ear to ear. After a long, tortuous ascent,  I was “over the hill” and free to sprint downhill (pics below).

 

 

The pics below were snapped while cascading  down an eight percent  grade into the Wind River Range of Western Wyoming.  I have never satisfactorily captured the slope in my pics. I nabbed even fewer snapshots while ascending mountains, that’s the way of the world. It might sound funky, but No-one  wants a breather or photo op once they’ve found that uphill groove….the feet stomp’n, the bike swing’n, and head rock’n groove.   When you’re groov’n to heaven’s aria, you don’t want the music to stop.  I’ll never forget those September blue skies, Wyoming’s attempt to cover  Earth, Wind and Fire (pics below).

 

Pretty is as pretty does. If you fast forward to 2018,  I’m 282 feet below sea level surrounded by Death Valley’s Badwater Basin.  The barometer is climbing and so am I… Rt. 374 to Daylight Pass,  Rt. 90 to Townes pass, and Rt. 17 to Salisbury Pass.  During eight days I trucked up and raced down Death Valley’s  mountain’s spines.   During the climb outs, the mountain pass was obscured by the switchbacks until close to the summit.  Several photos from this last trip show Gnome Boy  standing on the center yellow line as the road split the mountain in half (pic below) and separated this Shangri-La from the rest of the Western Hemisphere.  At the summit, we breathed deep, satisfied, relaxed breaths. With each foot in separate worlds Gnome Boy inhaled his moment in the sun.  

  

 After each photo op with Gnome boy, gravity called us back to Earth faster than any rollercoaster ride… thirty minutes of switchbacks and hair raising thrills.  Death Valley’s alpine race course was launched from those peaks in the background of the pic above.  My hands cramped after squeezing the brakes for so long and so hard.  Gnome boy  kept repeating, ” lean into the curve you Retread.”  His right leg was still in a cast from his last fall (pic above).  

Now that I am “over the hill,” new peaks call my name, “Michael, climb me if you can.” Buttes, Mesas, and Mountains  engage in reverse psychology, a trick as old as those hills.  But I’m no longer anxious about trekking the next summit.  There’re no time contraints, no road rage, nor  PTSD.  Have I mentioned that I’m Retired.

Bike trekking is like going to Disneyland.  It’s all about enjoying the rides, and who knows, recycle an old mountain fable to my grandchildren.  Hopefully, this old dog will return to Death Valley as long as billy goats roam the mountainsides.  Until I’m “over the hill” I’ll dream about the mountain pass. 

 

If that’s not nice I don’t know what  a “aha moment” is.

So on down the road i go.

 

Logic will get you from A to B.  Imagination will take you everywhere.

 Albert Einstein

The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.

 Saint Augustine

 

I am a vagabond, a wanderer, a rolling stone and Death Valley captured my soul.  The National Park is an agnostic’s open air cathedral, an Elysium oasis, a visual banquet.  I scan Mother Nature’s portrait gallery;  snow capped Telescope Peak, the multicolored Badlands, Badwater Basin,  the towering Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes, and the Devil’s Cornfield while biking up the valley to Ubehebe Crater. This must be my last “go around” cause “my ride” is heaven sent.

 

 

The morning light evaporates black shadows and accentuates the shrimp and grape colored canyon walls. The midday heat creates strikingly vivid mirages over the salt flats. They call the wayward desert wind, Mariah because of her crucifying ferocity across the valley floor.  Overnight, migrating sand dunes can bury Stovepipe Wells Road six feet under.   Remnants of Winter’s torrents, car sized boulders, are deposited as head stones on both sides of Rt 190, as this ribbon of asphalt treks across  gravel gulches on route to Mesquite Springs.  Flash floods in 2016 drowned and then washed away Scotties Castle Road.  The park service’s North entrance is scheduled for an Easter resurrection in  2020.

 

 

 

  The Amargosa  Mountains  “slip-fault and uplift” (pics above).  They resemble wild stallions bucking their mount.  Chomping at the bit, this rustler galloped over Daylight Pass,  through  Painted Canyon, and across Artist’s Palette on the Eastern escarpment.   The valley sinks while the peaks rise.  These mountains have legs.

Death valley stretches Badwater Basin the way old men stretch  waistlines.  At two hundred and eighty-two  feet below sea level, the salt flats inch wider every year.  At nine miles wide the valley has entered a middle age spread, and no leather belt can contain it.   The Panamint Mountains to the West are reaching higher, the basin is sinking lower while ditching the Amargosa Mountain Range, the park’s Eastern border and wrong side of the “slip-fault” tracks.

 

 

Which gets to meat of my story, the Panamint Mountains have legs.  Once upon a time the valley did not exist.  The Panamint Mountains crested the Amargosa Mountain Range.  There was no Death Valley.  Then 35 million years ago, though no “fault” of its own, the Panamint Range galloped  off into the Western sunset and left Badwater Basin in its dust. All this skedaddling erupted during the Cenozoic Era and grows inch by inch, in geological “slip-fault”  slow motion.

Desert Time asks no questions and yet has all the answers.  Death Valley is designated as a “wilderness area” so most roads are tire slashing rock. I did not trek gravel roads.  After eight days and 400 miles of incredible biking  I have ridden most of her asphalt roads.  Daylight (4317 feet),  Towne (4951 feet ), and Salsbury ( 3315 feet) Pass  have been trekked.   The North entrance to the park,  Scotties Castle Road was closed to the public.  I rode 35 miles up a dead end road, to  Ubehebe Crater Rd. (2,292 ft) and coasted most of the way back.  This empty  roadway was ridden  twice…once for the solitude and the second time for the silence.  Both days Mariah was elsewhere.  They call the wind Mariah out here. On two separate days, I  rode from Furnace Creek  (The Oasis) to Ashford Mills ruins. The air remained so dry there was no sweat in the 80 degree heat.  Badwater Road was empty beyond  Badwater Basin, seventeen miles south of Furnace Creek.  The surrounding mountains were silent  but entertaining.  With lots of liquids on board I thought I could ride to tomorrow.

 Death Valley suits my soul with dry heat, blistering sunshine, and painted panoramas.  The north-south road hugs the eastern edge of the valley from Ashford Mills Ruins to Ubehebe Crater and slowly ascends two thousand feet over the hundred miles.  The East-West Road goes from Beatty, Nevada through Stovepipe Wells and on to Panamint Springs, California.  The roads offered exciting terrain to keep my attention from wandering.  The climb out to Daylight Pass is 4317 feet through Hell’s Gate.  Townes Pass is 4951 feet and passes the Devil’s cornfield and Mesquite Springs Sand Dunes.  Both climb outs are safe at four miles an hour.  However it might be stretching the truth  if you call the twisting and turning return trip over an eight percent downhill grade and speeding  over 35 mph,…. safe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Zabrinski’s Point and Dante’s View are unique sites to view sunrise, sunset, and  night skies free of light pollution. Evaporated  Lake Manly resurrects during winter.

 Even though Badwater Basin is 282 feet below sea level, it sits on top of 9000 feet of silt, and is surrounded by mountains 11,000 feet high, that grow higher each day.  Mesquite Springs, Ash Meadows and the Oasis bubble up year round.  Thirty-six geological formations live within the park’s boundaries  and explain “desert time” to all visitors.  The  sand dunes rise one hundred  feet  with Sidewinder Rattlesnakes and Desert Kangaroo Rats living out a nightly life and death struggle.  I’m grateful to have explored this World Heritage Site before I kicked the bucket. 

Death Valley is an enormous dessert  waiting to be enjoyed.  Judy has always remarked, “Life is short,  eat dessert first.”  Thank heaven I don’t earn my daily bread baking in the sizzling, summer sun powering up  Towne’s Pass.  But the roads these past eight days in Death Valley  have cooked up a new me… a half-baked  fruitcake.  At the end of this trek, I emerged  a crummy chronicler, a nutty narrator, a cheery storyteller, offering a slice of humble, Americana pie….. all because this mountain has legs.

if that’s not nice I don’t know what dessert is.

so on down the road i ride.