 Rancheria River view (Left) 6/12/96 |
 Rancheria River view (right) 6/12/96 |
It was real pretty here yesterday.
Rancheria River view (Left) 6/12/96 |
Rancheria River view (right) 6/12/96 |
It was raining and 35 degrees when we got up this morning. I
hated to get up. It felt real nice in my warm sleeping bag and I could see
it wasn't nice out at all. Then it got worse. IT SNOWED.
Today was our worst day to date. We were all chilled to the bone.
Nelson and I decided not to expose our cameras to the rain, so we didn't
take them with us (we put them in the baggage trailer on the sag van). We
all dallied at breakfast, not wanting to actually step out into the snow
or rain.
I wore my Polartec top, Bellwether bike pants, full Bellwether
rain suit, Polartec hat, Tim's neoprene rain booties (he rode in the sag
van), my full fingered Specialized bike gloves, my Prima Loft vest, bike
shorts, a bike jersey-- and I still froze all day
long. Uphill, I sweated profusely and downhill I froze. At rest and
food stops I froze even more. I know I was doing it all wrong, but I was
so cold I couldn't stand it. Several times I considered flagging down the
sag van or bailing out to some lodge, but, there were just enough hills
(3,150' vertical) to keep me warm enough to avoid hypothermia and I managed
to make it to Watson Lake.
We were also bothered a bit by warnings from several folks about a sow Grizzly
Bear with her cubs in the immediate vicinity of Rancheria. The lodge owner
noted that the game folks had clocked one at 53 kph. So, at the first lunch
stop, all 9 of us were there at the same time. Nelson and I were pumping
so hard (no extra handlebar bags or panniers) that we kept Bob in sight
all the way to the first lunch stop. Bob is faster than greased lightning
(even in the snow, sleet or rain).
They say you don't need to be faster than a grizzly
bear--just faster than somebody else.
After lunch, the weather tempered a bit and I actually removed some of my
layers of clothing. I also fell back with Ritt and Carol once again to watch
the birds. We stopped for coffee outside Watson Lake at a place that billed
itself as the "best coffee shop in the Yukon." We don't know how
they determined that, since they'd only been in business for 1 day. The
coffee was good--but to three absolutely frozen bicyclists, warm dishwater
would have been interesting. Burning 9,000 calories a day, we'd eat anything--and
we do eat everything in sight.
We built a campfire and warmed up in the evening.
Ritt was attempting to teach Bob how to juggle.
It is a whole lot colder in June in the Yukon than it ever is in Singapore and Tim was suffering from the cold, so he rented a room at a nearby motel. We were scheduled for a day off in Watson Lake, so I decided to rent a room too in order to get the website up to date.
Flying a helicopter into Watson Lake one time, I was routed
over the lake. I didn't like flying over water, but followed the control
tower's orders. The air over a body of water can be really "squirrelly."
We hit an incredible updraft and came within about 3 degrees of rolling
over backwards. It is almost impossible to do a barrel roll in a helicopter;
you have to apply power downward to recover and there isn't room to do so
before you hit the ground. We were really shaken up figuratively and literally.
77 Miles
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© Ed Noonan 1996, 1997