Out on the line
The hill in the background is Larch Mountain, which is an old shield volcano that stands about 1200 meters high. It’s 40 miles away from home, and it’s been taunting me all year. I abandoned an attempt to climb it a couple of days ago, but I had no prior engagements this afternoon, so I took another shot at it:
It took me 2 and a half hours to climb from the Stark Street bridge up to the parking lot at the summit of Larch Mountain, and I spent a ridiculously large percent of that time stomping away in the lowest gear my bicycle has available. It’s not so bad going from the Stark Street bridge up to the Women’s Forum, but Larch Mountain Road appears to vary between two states (slight ascent and oh no not again!) each of which requires an amazing amount of energy to shove 55 pounds of xtracycle, food, and water up.
I was moving so slowly that by the time I reached the parking lot at the summit I was the de facto drum major of a little parade of bees, all attracted to my nice yellow helmet and the cloud of evaporating sweat that trailed after me. The park at the summit is a pay park, which kept me from sticking around, but it didn’t help that as soon as I parked the bicycle I was immediately surrounded by all of these bees, who took the opportunity to practice touch-and-gos on my ears, nose, and forehead.
Coming down the mountain wasn’t quite so slow. I only used my brakes twice on Larch Mountain Road (a 15mph corner after a steep descent at the summit, and a 20mph corner a little further down) and I believe I averaged 30mph for the first 10 miles of the descent. The Trek is a little too small for me to properly tuck down behind the handlebars, so I never got above 46mph, but it certainly felt like the trees were blueshifting on some of the steeper straightaways down off that hill.
Alas, I had to cut the loop short at 86 miles, because by the time I got into town (and made an emergency stop at a fast food joint for a fish sandwich and a ridiculously large soda (32 ounces is now “medium”? I’m so glad to see that the agribusiness subsidies are working out so well) the sun was plummeting from the sky and I had to do the last 10 miles to home (including a bunch of miles on the newly reopened Caruthers->Foster section of the i205 bicycle trail) with all of my blinky and flashy “please don’t kill me” lights on.
Maybe I’ll visit Multnomah Falls next time. There’s nowhere near as much climbing needed to get there from here.
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Woot!
Congrats on the climb; the description of the bees cracked me up.