liaison and support
For any amateur rider out there interested in climbing Mountain Lake, make sure you select your route to begin with the climb and not require yourself to scale those heights on the way home. The last time I did the front side of Mountain Lake was about two months ago with a small group of VT riders. This time the stakes were somewhat higher: do both climbs but still save room to go all the way to New Castle and back and keep enough energy inside to destroy the Harding climb at the very end.
This ride was absolutely amazing. Totally about 96 miles on my chronometer, I never once stopped, a feat I wasn’t expecting from myself. All said and done, I left at 11:00am and arrived back in town as the sun was just beginning to hide behind the western clouds. A ride time of 5 hours & 23 minutes.
Another hint for riders: the back side of Mountain Lake is terribly difficult. Putting the climbs at the beginning of the rides has a strange catch22 - you either choose to climb at the beginning of the ride when your bike is heavy with water or you choose for the end of your ride when your bike is light but you have no power left. I was carrying a lot of water weight in those early miles, with an extra bottle in one of my jersey pockets. The back side of Mountain Lake only gets hard at the halfway point where it must stay at about 10% grade the rest of the way up. It’s steep enough where you crawl, requiring gravity to help you push your feet down on each stroke. Ugh.
My back was hurting a lot when I returned, but that’s only because I never stopped. Oh, and two black bears were stuck in a tree as I was about to descend Potts (the huge steep drop around mile 60). I’m going to check the news tomorrow to see if there was any story about that. A crowd of people were huddled around the spot which was interesting considering what a bear might do if it fell and survived. Oh well.
Good ride, good times.