The day broke with the same anxiety we experienced every day of this trip. Knowing that we would be spending the next 8-12 hours in some form of discomfort or another, always made the mornings a bit stressful. We also had the pressure of putting down miles. Add those two items to a morning ritual of packing, eating and prepping for a day on the move, and things weren’t always calm and serene.
We were hoping to be in McCall by the end of the day. This would be the first time we would be staying in a town. We looked forward to a possible shower, cleaning of the clothes and maybe a cold beer, but to get there we had to make it over Lick Creek Summit.
Lick Creek Summit is a 15ish mile climb with 3000 feet of elevation gain with no reprieve. It’s a constant grind. We could tell this was going to be the case based on the elevation profile for the day and had to make peace with that fact.
As far as mornings go, it was a pretty one, albeit a bit on the chilly side. We had about 17 miles of flat and/or downhill to the base of the climb. We began the day bundled and coasting on smooth pavement. The road was void of traffic and we clicked off the 17 miles in short order. We knew the climb was about to start as we made a hard left onto a dirt road following Lick Creek.
Climbing is more a mental game than it is a physical one. Sure, you need some sort of physical ability to get to the top of a long climb, but the fight that happens inside your brain is where climbs are won or lost. Unless you’ve hit that line where you physically can’t continue, it’s simply convincing the voices in your head to be quiet and let your legs do their job. Often, that isn’t an easy job.
Over the years, I’ve developed a few methods that work for me to silence those whisperings telling me to stop. For whatever reason, doing maths helps me. If I know how far it is to my end destination or the top of the climb, I start ticking off miles dividing the distance up into different sections and celebrating as I hit 1/10 of the way, 1/5, 1/3, 1/2, 3/4 and onward.
Lick Creek Summit was the first climb that I learned how to make the climbs not hurt. Not that the physical pain was no longer there, I don’t think that ever goes away, but I ticked my mental game up a notch from using math to distract me. Instead, I reveled in the beauty that surrounded me and embraced the pain not wanting to be doing anything else. The desire to not be climbing was replaced by gratitude to be able to be where I was, the pain was just a feeling in my legs that I could ignore because the granite spires were so bitchin’.
Unfortunately, my attitude adjustment didn’t work on the downhill.
The descent is supposed to be the hard-earned reward to a long climb. The equation goes like this, hard long miles up + reaching the summit = long, smile-inducing descent off the back.
We got to the top. The usual feelings of elation were present, we got our summit pics, chatted with an old couple going slower uphill than we were in their car who couldn’t believe we had ridden our bikes up that hill. And then we headed down, thinking we had a nice coast right into a cold beer in McCall.
The descent started with a gradual descent off the pass, we were immediately hit with washboards, slowing our forward momentum and forcing us to pedal downhill. The grade steepened and our pace increased, but the washboards were so deep, we might as well had been riding down a mogul course.
I stopped after a few miles to let my hands rest. Kathleen rolled up and realized she had not completely latched and she had lost her rain jacked and a base layer. Having no idea where she lost them, we decided to try and find one in McCall to replace what she had lost. We continued down. The road conditions did not improve and we were delighted to finally hit some pavement as we rolled into the outskirts of town.
The road was good, it had been recently built or repaved. We rolled through a quite neighborhood and then hit the main road. The road conditions detioriated and we were hit with a headwind. We didn’t have too far to go. So we powered on. As we got closer to the city center, the road got narrower and traffic was insane. It was a line of cars buzzing us for about 30 minutes.
We found a campground close to the route that had an open spot. Luckily, we were the first tent camper for the evening as there was only one spot that was somewhat flat, we took it. It also had a tree, which was key as it was pretty hot early in the afternoon. We showered, which felt amazing and was our first time being clean since we had started the ride. And we threw our dirty clothes into the washer.
And then headed for that cold beer which meant getting back on that highway for a few miles and heading back into town. Had we not been so motivated to have a good meal and a chilled beer, we probably would have bailed on going out to eat. We found the brewery and a spot next to the front window where we could watch our bikes. The beer was good, the food was ok and pretty soon, we were both feeling pretty good.
We wandered around town for a little bit, stopping into the local shops as I had this unfounded fear that my brake pads were going to disintegrate in the backcountry, no one had the right pads. It was busy. It could have been the fact that we had just spent 3.5 days more or less without people, but the vibe was weird and after a bit, we decided to get some beer and go back to camp. Hoping to avoid the nasty road, we made our way as far as we could on neighborhood streets and then wheeled our bikes under some fences, through some lots that we probably could have got in trouble for crossing and we were back to camp. We settled in and went to bed early hoping to get the hell out of town before the roads got busy again.
P. L. and R.
