Initially, I wanted to just go down to Circle Bridge but during the night I spent a lot of time thinking about it and realized that if there’s no way to get across the bridge, I would have to not only climb back up to Big Trees but I would also have to climb to Robinson Flat anyway. As the distance and elevation gain was similar I decided to just go to Robinson Flat.
When I woke up at around 6 o’clock, I packed without eating. The mosquitoes had never let up all night. I slept with a tarp on my face. I dreamt of a Twitter user, who would not stop posting in the background of my timeline, and when I woke, I realized it was because of the mosquitoes.
I rode out to Mosquito Ridge Road and onward until cell service was OK. Then I made a hotel reservation in Auburn. I rode to Robinson Road and refreshed myself. I made screenshots of the map because there was no cell service. As the climb got incrementally harder, I noted that while it would get progressively worse the rest of the ride was mostly downhill.
The road followed some old irrigation infrastructure but I couldn’t see any of it. The road got a little bit worse once I got to the end of Flat Ravine Creek which feeds Secret Canyon. After that the road became really hard to use and was practically powder. It was even harder when pickups passed me especially since much of the traffic was due to the Circle Bridge closure. I walked the last 100 feet.
After I took a few pictures from the top, I rode to the Robinson Flat campground and got water. I also took all my mosquito protection off and ate a little bit of food. It was 1130 and the ride to Foresthill was almost entirely downhill. There was a fire crew and some lady at the road intersection. I descended to a spot where I could catch my breath. I looked at the geology. I found some slate, but the road cut seemed to have a lot of different types of rock in it. I admired the view. I was passed twice by motorists.
My descent was epic. I had to climb about 300 feet at various points. The descent from Canada Hill was really steep. This section went east and west in a giant arc with a few turns. I was passed by cars about three times. Some guy in a pick up truck offered me a beer while I was looking at quartzite on a big descent above Secret Canyon. As I climbed out of the canyon on the other side, I noted that the area looked like it may have been a community at one time.
I noted every time the road would become steep, I would have to climb a little bit and that affected my average. However, once it leveled off through Westville, and during the approach to Hamburg Road, the road started trending downward on an easy grade. In fact, every uphill from then on was mountable and I really didn’t lose my cadence all the way into town. I think I rode the fastest I had ever ridden my bike in my life in this section. The ride lasted almost an hour here at an average of 20 miles an hour.
I passed forest highways 66 and 10 and entered residential areas. In total I was passed six or eight times by the time I got to Sugar Pine Lake Drive. From then I had traffic regularly and they were rude. In Foresthill proper I nearly passed my lodge – The Miner’s Camp. When I finally got in, the staff got me set up. They even ran a load of laundry for me, which was very nice. I went to the supermarket, which had a great view of the Desolation Wilderness. When I returned the staff were gone.
While my laundry was drying, I went to the Bar and Grill across the street to have a beer and got to know the local color. There were people dressed nicely outside and I noted a lot of people older than me inside with their families. However, the staff was all pretty young. I posted to Twitter as much as I could about my trip at that point. After I put my laundry away, I returned to the grill and had food. Then I stopped by my room for a while.
I went to the mountain club to finish my tweets and found they had a nice bartender who knows everyone in town. There was a gregarious lady playing pool who also seemed to know everyone. The locals ended up asking me a lot of questions about myself and eventually about my trip. I was back to my room around 1 am.
In the morning of the day that I wrote this, I was up at 9 am and went to the local breakfast place. I wasn’t impressed but it was a small town. Then I returned to my room and raced to pack. The staff was very nice. I looked at my maps in the common area. Then I took a series of back roads through town and ended up at the national forest service district office where I started writing in my notebook.
This is an occasional series chronicling my life. This Notebook Analysis series is meant to be contemporaneous piece developed as an agglomeration of my notebook pages. In each of these posts I used my notes to develop my recent thoughts.
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