Quick Findley Ride

Dan and I had a chance to get out on the bikes on a beautiful sunny day. Shorts and T-shirt weather... Took about 52 minutes round trip to get to the top of Findley and back to the house.

A fast clapboard ride

We headed out from the house towards clapboard gulch. It was a 14 mile ride and took 1 hour and 21 minutes. I turned over 200 miles on my new bike today. After riding up Findley this ride doesn't seem like much of a climb at all.

A little too wet

Too slick to ride up today

I have been pretty lucky lately dispite of all the rain we have been having.  Lucky, except today.  I was watching the weather outside for some breaks.  It was raining, then it would stop.  At one point it was sunny- I actually saw some blue skies!  It was raining very lightly and I wanted to get out on the bike so I headed out.  I rode up Findley and then headed down Ferris Gulch and connected with hwy 238, turned on Williams hwy back to the house.  Findley road has a river coming down it.  I was still able to get up to the top in 38 minutes. This is a good time dispite the snow.  I couldn't pedal the last section because the snow was so wet/ slushy.  I wasn't able to get traction.  The last section looks pretty unassuming from the photo, but it is a pretty steep section that is the last push to get up to the ridge.  After the ridge I headed down into ferris gulch and then back up to the Ferris Guclch main road.  I came out right at the big rock pit and snapped a quick photo.  By then, it was starting to rain harder.  As you may guess due to the snow, it was pretty cold too. 

 

Looking to the North from just below the Rock Pit at Ferris Gulch.

There was quite a lot of snow on the main road up there.  I was going to head down panther gulch but figured I had better get off the mountain the quickest way possible.  As I headed down the slushy snow would shoot up and basically soak me.  I had to keep my speed down so that I would freeze or slide off the road.  Once I got to the bottom it was raining pretty hard.  I got on the highway and worked pretty hard to get my body temperature back up again.  It was sort of a losing battle because of the wind chill.  My hands were the only thing that was cold really.  I kept about 20 mph til provolt store and then went up wiliams hwy back to the house.  Total Ride 14.2 miles and 1 hour 20 minutes.  It would have taken much less time but I went slow down Ferris Gulch.

Fastest time yet

Today I headed up Findley feeling pretty strong.  On the short section of road I went pretty hard maintaining about 18 mph most of of the time.  Once I hit the off road section I kept it in the middle chain ring for longer than ususal.  I tried to use my larger gears whenever I could.  My goal is to get up that hill sometime without using the granny gear.  Anyway, I made it up to the top in 35 minutes.  Before that, my best time to the top was 38 minutes.  Round trip took 51 minutes but I rested at the top for a few minutes.

Finally, a new ride

Dan and I wanted to try something different today. It was a fantastic hill climb with a fantastic view of the Thompson Creek Valley and Williams/ Applegate valley towards Grants Pass. We took the highway towards Ferris Gulch and rode up to the top of the Ridge. We got lucky again and hit some great weather. There were some nice easy road miles but the hill climb made up for it. 19 total miles in all. There are some nice motocross trails up there. It was pretty busy with motorbikes today so we stayed off those trails.

2 rides today

This morning I woke up pretty early and decided to head up Findley Rd. It was a little cold taking off about 8 am. There were some low clouds in our valley, I was hoping once I got up to the top it would clear out a bit. The road to the top is still very wet, regardless I was able to make it up without much trouble. I felt OK but I was cramping a little- I think I was a little low on water. Took 40 minutes to get to the top, not my best time... It was an incredible view towards the Williams valley. There was a blanket of clouds that covered the valley that seemed to continue up towards Greyback mountain. As the blanket began roll up the mountain it began to dissipate showing the recent covering of snow.

Later that day, I did an easy 14 miler on the road with my sister-in-law. Interesting weather- sun and hail at one point. Overall, the sun was out a fair amount.

Lucky with the weather again.

The weather report said rain was coming in later tonight. It was clear most of the day. Of course around 5:30 when we decided to ride, it started to rain. I was anticipating a lot of rainfall during the ride. We started off thinking it would be a wet, cold ride. By the time we got to the Williams hwy/ Findley rd junction the rain stopped. We headed up the road pretty happy we didn't have to deal with rain. Dan had some mechanical difficulties up the hill where he couldn't get into granny gear. This ride, you need the granny gear. Other than that it was a good ride under an hour. Findley has turned out to be a great "training ride". I'm hoping that there will be good weekend weather to get another ride in on Saturday or Sunday. Till next time.

Who ordered the double?

I would consider today's ride a double- at least for Dan and I.  We took off Saturday am about 9:15.  It was raining fairly steady and we had talked about a ride up Panther Gulch.  We decided we would ride up to the top of panther and take the ridge road over to the single track that connects the lower road.  On the top of the ridge road we started seeing the sun- never would have thought that it could happen when we started the ride.   The single track was pretty slick in spots but a great downhill. We connected up with the lower road and then hit that old jeep road that connects with the big turn out on the top of East Fork road.  That jeep road is pretty fun with those large water bars.  We started heading downhill back to the house.  Shortly after that, I asked Dan what about hitting the clapboard gulch/ brush riders single track ride?  He was game, so we connected up with Clapboard off of East fork Road and started climbing again.  By then the sun was out and when we hit the bottom of Brushriders there was beautiful blue sky.  The round trip was right at 24 miles and took about 2 hours and 10 minutes.  A great ride!

No fenders!

Happy without fenders..

I've went on two other rides since I last posted. I should be better about keeping up on it. Today I went out after work. It has been raining all day. I heard some places got up to two inches of rain! I knew it was going to be muddy, without fenders it gets messy... I'm not completely anti- fenders; however, it takes away from the complete experience. I guess I still like getting muddy. It was one of my favorite wintertime activities as a kid- see how muddy we can get while we make the water fly out of the mud puddles. Again, I rode up to the top of Findley taking a little more than 52 minutes round trip. Saturday we are going on a longer ride, probably up panther gulch. I can't wait!