The Big Climb: Out From Utah, Into Wyoming.

Capt. Jackass and the Flaming Gorge Reservoir

The cold, gray morning hours were exactly what I needed to wake up feeling uninspired.

The night’s rains had slipped past my cheap rain fly, successfully dampening about a third of my sleeping bag. The tent was a claustrophobic, dripping place, but right then I preferred it to whatever lay outside. Finally, I wriggled my way outside and flopped onto wet clay. 

There was my bike, flopped on its side in the mud. There was the desolated plain of ATV tracks and scrubby juniper that I'd camped in. The low clouds overhead looked like they would be happy to dump some more water on me if they felt like it.

I packed up my gear slowly and with little enthusiasm. I lashed my backpack onto the backboard under a waterproof nylon then hoisted the dry bag behind it.

“Don’t fall.” I told the bike.

The handlebars bucked left and right as I wheeled my bad idea over the dirt ruts toward the pavement. I felt some resistance coming from the back wheel. It was the brake pad. Sonofabitch.

I eased the bike down on its side and used my Allen wrench to let out a little more slack in the mechanism. It took time because the bolt was already pretty stripped. For a while, it looked like I wouldn’t be able to loosen it at all. Besides, this was usually the kind of thing where I just made things worse. Maybe I would just have to peddle back to the bike shop with my tail between my legs. Maybe I would just go back to the car and call off the trip, which had been half-baked from the start.

 But no! After the appropriate amount of turning and threatening the bike, I got the bolt loose enough to pull the cable and guestimate the right distance between the bike pads and the tire. I righted the beast and wheeled it again. It seemed to go OK now, and when I squeezed the brake I found it clenched the tire acceptably.

I put grundle to the seat and started for the pass.

The first quarter-mile was on a downhill. Enjoy it now, I thought. I tried to keep as much momentum up as possible before I took the 90-degree turn onto Highway 191. Within a minute, I was barely managing five miles an hour against the steep grade. I shifted to low gear, forcing my legs to turn the peddles over as my lungs burned for oxygen and my heart pounded in my head.

Each of the many switchbacks in the road took me approximately one lifetime to climb. Every decade or so, I rolled by another dash in the passing lane. A steady drizzle froze my hands to the bars, while I roasted underneath my rain jacket.

Sounds pretty crappy, right?

I didn’t mention that this must have been RV Clusterfuck Day in Utah. Every minute several of these mcmansions on wheels roared up from behind me and flew by in a wash of fumes and destabilizing wind. Also, I was lucky if I had more than 18-inches of breakdown lane at the edge of the road. Not much of a margin for error. It was worse considering that many of the drivers weren’t very interested in moving over.

All the weight on the back of the bike meant that it had a strong tendency to swerve, a tendency that was especially strong on the uphill. Then some retirees in their Wilderness Advantage RV would barrel past, bringing me within inches of a speeding wall of deadly metal. I would clutch the handlebars in desperation, praying that my wheels wouldn’t swerve left. Each vehicle left a vacuum behind it that yanked at my bike toward the center of the road and oblivion.

Finally, the vehicle would pass and I would puff out the breath I’d been holding in. An instant later, Death would get a second swipe at me when the inevitable pickup truck or motorboat pulling behind the first unit flew by.

The road got steeper I was strained to the utmost keeping my bike upright and moving in a straight line. The sound of another engine coming up from behind was like the wasp buzzing in your ear while you’re trying to haul a filing cabinet up a flight of stairs.

Something told me that the driver wasn’t about to make room. The engine grew louder. It sounded like it was headed right for me.

I veered off the road just before the monstrous trailer flew past at top speed. The bike bucked like it was going to veer left, but I fell over instead. I got up shaking with adrenaline. The driver barreled on oblivious, disappearing into the mists above.

This wasn’t working at all.

I looked at my set up, trying to think of something I could change to make things safer.

Finally, I unstrapped my drybag from the backboard and put my arms through the shoulder straps to wear it like a backpack. I didn’t relish the extra weight on my shoulders, but figured that taking some of the weight off the back of the bike would help with stability and steering.

When I got going again, I found the weight put an uncomfortable strain on my back, but I also felt more in control of the bike than I had before.

My heart went like a jackhammer as the wheels slowly carried me up the switchbacks. The fog got soupier; ghostly stands of aspen appeared as shadows in the mist.

I heard a series of moans and bellows from somewhere up above: a cattle herd. The river of bovines clomped along a soggy ridge while cowboys on horses shouted them along. So there was something out there that felt worse than I did.

The long climb topped out at a small rest area. I wheeled over to the outhouse and leaned my bike against it, taking shelter from the drizzle beneath a tiny overhang. The bellowing and clomping of the cattle stayed my ears like a weary dirge. The cowboys guided the sorry lot of them right up to the edge of the rest area and then started herding them across the road. One calf had other ideas and broke out of line, stumbling for the fields. A couple of cowboys spurred their horses and rounded him up.

It must have taken about 15 minutes for the herd to make it across the highway with traffic stopped on either side. Finally, an ATV at the rear ushered the last of the animals across the road. It was time I got going as well.

I peddled slowly out of the parking lot and back onto the road. The bike began to accelerate. I was going downhill! How sweet it was to move without doing work! Soon I was whipping at over 20 miles an hour and freezing cold with the sweat from the last hours evaporating in the wind. The sensation didn’t last. In less than a mile, the road went up again and I was back to working my weary legs against the mountains.

The top of the pass was at 8,422 feet in the midst of a lodgepole pine forest. I had climbed just about 4,000 feet from where I’d started that morning. Now, I could enjoy a long downhill on the way to Flaming Gorge — or would have enjoyed it if not for the icy rain. I flew down the wet pavement, squinting against drops of water and trying hard not to wipe out on the turns.

I turned left just before the Flaming Gorge Dam so that I could follow the west shore of the reservoir on the way to Manila, Utah. The town, which sits just south of the Wyoming border, was another 28 miles ahead. My downhill lasted for a couple more miles and then I was going up again. The road never seemed to flatten. First, I would be sweating as I pumped the bike against gravity, immediately after I would be shivering in the wind on the next downhill. 

I took a quick break at Moose Pond to eat lunch and took what warmth I could from a feeble sun breaking through the clouds.

And we go down again

Not long after I got on my bike there was blue sky and the mercury was climbing. Soon it was like any other hot, sunny, summer day. The landscape became dry again as well. The lodgepole forest gave way to fields of sage and desiccated mesas. I forced my way up a series of massive hills, until I finally came to an overlook. The Flaming Gorge Reservoir lay below, with its dark blue water framed by desert cliffs.

The bike and I flew down a series of switchbacks, losing at least a 1,000 feet in just a couple minutes. It was funny to think that it would have taken me a good chunk of an hour to cover the same distance had I been going in the other direction.

Of course, right after my break, I started into another massive climb. The veins bulged out of my neck as I struggled to keep my momentum. A pack of motorcycles came thundering down the other way. One of them gave me a thumb’s up. I was glad I was doing something crazy enough to be worth noticing.

At the top of the hill, the desert landscape gave way to green, irrigated farm plots. The town of Manilla lay just a few miles ahead, but it took a monumental amount of energy just to drag myself that far.

The sight of a puny gas station convenience store on Main Street was like oasis in the Sahara. I filled my canteens up at a faucet outside and shoved my face with Oreos and Fig Newtons that I bought within.

“Are you ill in the head?” the woman behind the register asked when I told her I was biking from Utah to the Pacific Northwest.

I peddled out of town with rubber legs on an uphill grade. There was a KOA campground nearby. Tempting. If I just paid out the $25, I wouldn’t have to worry about finding a tent site on the rangeland up ahead, most of which was bound to be private property, with few places to hide from well-armed ranch owners.

Still, I was only another four miles to the Wyoming border and I was determined to wake up in the next state, if only to prove to myself that I was making progress. I peddled on.

Dark clouds had gathered in the northeast by the time I crossed the state line. I watched the dark bands of rain with trepidation. Normally, I would expect bad weather to come from the west of me, but this was marching right for me. I needed to get the tent up, pronto.

The problem was that all the land that I could see was wide-open ranch land, within view of the road and the ranch houses up above. Wyomingites are not famous for their love of trespassers.

Tall barbed wire fences cut the land off from the road. It was a super fence with sturdy wire mesh on the bottom and strands of barbs at chest-height. Usually, I see fences that are just three parallel wires and are pretty easy to duck through. This stuff was going to be a challenge.

I peddled furiously for a couple miles, looking for a break somewhere. All I saw were empty plains and the unbroken fenceline. The clouds marched closer. Finally, I saw a small gulley behind a clump of trees: 10 square feet of land where no one would be able to see me. It looked like I’d have to hop the fence after all.

I dismounted and lay my bike behind some sage. Then I tossed my drysack over the fence. Getting myself over was a little more challenging. I climbed the mesh and then grabbed hold of one of the posts for support when I swung my leg over the top. The operation brought my crotch within an inch of the wire skewers. Finally, I landed gracelessly on the other side and went down into the gulley.

Cow shit everywhere. I pitched my tent away from the center of the gulley in the hopes that it would be out of the path of any run off from the storm. If I moved five feet to the left or right, I would be in clear view of the ranch house nearby. I still worried that someone might find my bike near the road so I went back and heaved it onto my side of the fence.

I ran back to the tent and zipped myself into my sleeping bag. Two minutes later it started raining like all hell.

Is there a place anywhere in this view where I won't get shot?

Saturday, September 14, 2013 — about 69 miles