Road near Beaver Creek
Casio QV30 photo
Well first I must confess, I cheated. Just a mile or two into today's ride, I developed a severely upset stomach. It was cold (frost) and the sky was gray. Though I continued on 33 miles to White River, eating some stew at the White River Lodge, put me over the edge and I felt there was a significant likelihood that I'd "lose my lunch," so, I rode in the van for about 15 miles.
From Beaver Creek to White River was one of the worst construction zones
yet. We started right off in loose gravel.
At one point we reached the beginning of heavy construction activity,
but everything was shut down for lunch break, including the pilot cars,
so the flag woman told us to proceed on our bikes, not in her truck as was
done previously in heavy construction zones. There was no road for the most
part and where the road existed there was no pavement. At one point we had
to walk our bikes about 1/2 a mile because there was nothing but loose sand
and huge dump trucks to move the earth around.
The Alaska Highway is shrinking in length because new construction straightens out the curves and grades. There was considerable evidence of blasting and major earth moving activity all day today.
The last few miles into Kluane Wilderness were loose gravel. They say the Eskimos have a hundred words to describe snow. Today we were working up a similar vocabulary to describe gravel. There was the hard packed kind, then the hard packed kind with larger rocks protruding from it, then sharp rock chips, and rounded pebbles, etc., etc. Some gravel was rough to ride on, while other was impossible to ride on.
I felt like I was riding a mountain bike. I geared down real
low and rode slowly. In some cases, when cars/trucks came by, I had to get
right off the road and come to a complete stop because there was too much
dust for them to see me despite my bright orange flag and TCBA bike club
jacket and I was concerned about falling real fast if I got into soft gravel.
I was worried about people passing toward me and those behind me. Progress
was real slow.
I didn't see any wildlife today, but Bob saw a wolf in the road.
Despite the horrible road conditions, we climbed about 2,100' vertical today. My Trek Radar bike computer died on the bumpy road, so I'll need to get the mileage each day from somebody else until I can replace it.
As usual, Cyclevents' food was gourmet quality. We had tacos and beans and Carol managed to find some Corona beer to go with our Mexican food. I don't think any of us had more than 1 beer--bicycling and beer just don't go together, but after a long day in the dust, a beer sure hit the spot.
End: 85 miles
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