I awoke from a refreshing 4 hours of sleep. In the dim pre-dawn light, I saw that there was mist floating up from the river. I went down to filter water and it was kind of warm! I wondered if there was a hot spring nearby, but the bank was too marshy and coated in reeds to go find. The trail climbed out of Silver creek canyon…
and emptied into a paved forest road, and then there was a left to continue up the next singletrack section. At first I rode past it, but then realized there was a cattle gate flooded with basically a pond…
It was a bit of a slog through downed trees to go around the pond…
Later Chip (the race organizer) stipulated that maybe this was the work of some beavers – that it normally was not like this.
The trail was really nice for a little while, then began to have overgrown bushy sections and frequent deadfall. I am so glad I camped last night early rather than slogging through this in the dark.
Yes, that’s the trail ^^
Eventually there were some cool rock formations…
I finally arrived at Antler camp where the water pump required way too much effort and yielded no water after a few tries. Again, I was glad I didn’t try to camp here. There was a creek not too far ahead. Filtering was a slow ordeal and again I tried backwashing. I was using the LIfeStraw – similar to the Katadyn BeFree. I bought it for the sturdier construction but I can’t recommend it.
After a couple of hot climbs, there was mostly cruisy gravel roads all the way to Chemult. I finally arrived at the Pilot/Subway truck stop in Chemult at around 3-4pm. The 15,000 calories that I started with wouldn’t be enough to finish with, so I got a big pack of watermelon sour patch kids and a tube of Pringles some more wet wipes and a gallon of cold water from the fridge. I then ordered a foot-long veggie patty sub, chips and a Coke with ice at Subway and sat down in the AC to eat it. I saved half the sub for later. It tasted far more glorious than it should have!
Out from the back of the Pilot popped another rider! The first one I had seen since Moss Pass!
This was Brad, and he looked smashed! He mentioned he was napping there and had stomach troubles and did not know what food to get. I said that sounded understandable given the heat and directed him inside to cold water. I secretly felt lucky then that I wasn’t suffering with the heat as much. But then again, I probably spent a lot of precious racing time splashing around in cold creeks.
I felt amazing after the resupply. It was a long gravel section over the Mazama blowout – a fun type of sand that was pretty hardpacked and easy to ride for the most part. There were endless steep rollers. Finally I made it up to the singletrack trails winding around lots of alpine lakes. Despite the mozzie danger, I was super happy to not be on dirt roads anymore. I remember these trails being quite flowy and fun to ride, but this time there were a lot of trees down. There were not hundreds, but a fair dozen or more, sometimes there were multiple trees down and they were very hard to route around. There were even a couple small patches of snow!
I camped here above the windy lakes dispersed camping area because it would be madness to sleep near the water. There was a slight breeze, enough to keep the bugs tolerable. I set up my bivvy right next to the trail (definitely would not normally do that, but I’d be gone by 4 a.m.), and then Brad who I met at the Pilot rolled up the trail! He was looking much better, and had decided to ride through the night to the finish. Oof. I wished him luck, ate the remaining half of my sub and then set the alarm for 3 a.m.
