Ride

Route picks its way north and northeast from Nevada City above (and across) the Yuba River canyon. Kind of mostly survived this one… pushed a little in the first time segment, lost time to rear brake bush fixes in the second segment, lol that third segment.

Sunrise revealed a decent-sized but serious crowd, some very nice bikes and strong looking riders. This ride will be no joke. Morning roll out of Nevada City was swift, right into dodgy gravel where it quickly becomes clear who’s ok with steep, ragged MTB-ish riding and who is going to be out of their depth timidly tippy-toeing through the terrain.

There was so much climbing.

High temps and high altitude were brutal; I went through ten 21oz bottles of fluids… Some of those mid gravel climbs were savage grinds, most descents were steep, super chattery and ragged… I think there was a mile on a plateau somewhere in there where you could sit up and recover for a minute. I’m normally happy to climb for days but this one tapped me out, was done at around 6500′. Also fractured a bunch of side plates on my chain and ate my rear brake-pad spring, two failures I’ve never seen across a lifetime of riding bikes.

There’s talk of trying to find a less-ruthless route next year but it’s a tricky deep-river-canyons region of the Sierras so they’re kinda stuck.

Gear notes:

• A lightweight, full-suspension mountain bike would be more fun and probably not any slower.
• 45c Ramblers not enough volume for this degree of chunk. this is mtb territory.
• First ride on UFO chain lube. Mostly up to task. got about 60miles in before sounding a bit dusty
• That semi-liquid gloopy carb fuel I tried from the mini milk-carton container was pretty gross