This climb was as bad as it looked...and worse

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Day 15 Cannonville, UT to Boulder Town
Miles 65.4 (967.8 total)

Wow, we sure got our behinds handed to us today. I
felt terrible from the beginning, as we climbed toward
Escalante my legs resisted; my entire body had a hard
time moving forward. It’s been getting progressively
hotter - 14% grades aren’t easy in this heat. Around
1 pm we began to climb up from the Escalante River -
big mistake. This was by far the hardest climb of the
trip, poor timing on our part starting it mid day. I
wish we had spent some time in the river, instead we
began the 14% climb. The heat was so draining,
although the country through that area it phenomenal,
it was difficult to enjoy the sites with the climb in
front of us. The nearest town wasn’t close in miles
or elevation and we knew we needed to make it there by
nightfall (water goes fast in this heat) … so we
climbed and climbed. The wind got stronger and
stronger until we reached the Hogsback, this stretch
of road with over a thousand foot drop on each side,
and to top it off, no shoulder. At this point the
wind was wailing - we rode on the center line, the
wind pushing us from side to side, petrified we’d be
knocked off of the road and down the thousand foot
drop. This was the scariest part of the riding to
date.

By the time we reached more flat ground (I was riding
at about 6mph on what appears to be flat ground but is
actually up hill with headwinds) my motivation had
totally waned - I had trouble staying in the saddle
for more than 5 minutes at a time. We were rewarded
by a couple of mountain bikers (in a car) who stopped
to tell us how awesome they thought what we are doing
is, it was just the extra bit I needed to get me back
on that bike and into Boulder (they also let us know
that the guys from Davis were about 30 miles back,
this helped too).

We arrived in Boulder at about 5:30 and ate like crazy
- dinner, rootbeer floats, the works, at the cutest
café called the Burr Grill. Boulder is my new
favorite place (sorry Eureka). It’s an absolute
anomaly - this huge green grassy wet mountain in the
middle of the desert with a super small tightly knit
community of Utah-counterculturarians - prayer flags
everywhere, jewelry stores …

Here we slept in this shady little spot in Dixie
National Forest - we were surrounded by dead animal
parts (heads, legs, the works) - it was super creepy.
We later found out that this was a spot that predators
took the weak winter animals and killed them … we were
a little nervous sleeping here, scared some sort of
human or animal creature would come and murder us in
the night. You would think after all our backcountry
experience that we wouldn’t be scared of these things
anymore … I think we’re all still a little scared of
the dark.

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Comments

[Lynne]

Reading this made me freak
from my nice comfortable seat at a computer this blog just about made me shake, literally. I am so terrified of hights. I jsut do not knwo how you can do that stuff. then i stared smiling. I always thought Tom and I would live in Boulder. I know you cannot fathom this now but your Uncle Tom and I slept in the snow around there in May of 1974. God we are old. Boulder is one of my fond memories.

[Uncle]

"Boulder"
Yeah, Lynne's memory is great alright. It was Boulder COLORADO we visited in 1974...