When I got the flyer for this year’s Tour of the Unknown Coast, I sent it along to nephews Loren and Tim, thinking one or both of them might be interested in California’s self-proclaimed Toughest Century. I also suggested that the way to get in shape for it would be to go touring for a week or so in advance of the ride. My cup ranneth over: I got both Loren and Tim, as well as Loren’s fiancée Shannon, whom I had not previously met. They borrowed Allison’s car and drove non-stop from Lincoln.
I thought it would be nice to tour northern California. As well as showing off California, there were places I hadn’t seen myself, such as the wild and scenic Feather River canyon, the Warner Mountains, the Trinity Alps. At the same time, I recognize it’s early in the season, and I don’t really know what kind of weather to expect. And it’s clear that we can’t cover all that distance purely by bicycle in the time available. So flexibility will be the watchword.
Since the Kids (with my grey beard, I’m allowed to call them that) expected to show up around 4, I went for a ride. Cupertino, 9, 35, Page Mill. Standard weekend short loop, got home about 1, just after the Kids had arrived.
Their car (Allison’s car) was an old blue Ford, a monster car… until I considered fitting four of us into it, together with bikes and luggage, and then it didn’t look so big after all. Bigger than my Civic, at least, and it has four doors, so there’s no doubt which car we’ll take.
Loren and Tim and I went out for a little sport ride to Woodside, Portola Valley, Westridge and Golden Oak (26 miles, 1200 feet). I told Shannon to speak up if she got bored and felt left out. To keep her in the picture, we may need to do more non-bicycle things such as hiking.
After we returned home, Loren and Shannon went out to explore the town. I fixed up a big pile of Spanish rye. No Loren, no Shannon. At 7:30 we went ahead and ate without them. They were late getting in; it turned out they had gone to the beach at San Gregorio. Moomph!
54.39 miles, 3050 vertical feet, average 12.9 miles per hour
Loaded up the car. Tim brought his own bike, a carbon-fiber Trek, and Loren borrowed Jacky’s bike. He had to start by patching a tire.
My rack is only good for three bikes, but Shannon isn’t a hard-core bikie anyway. She said she might borrow one of the other bikes from time to time. Ok. The main nuisance is that we can’t get at the trunk from inside the car: we have to unship the bike rack to get things. Loren later got good at unloading the rack with the bikes still attached, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. We hit the road about 8:30. Shannon drove all the way to Oroville, 200 miles, which we reached about noon.
We skipped the suburban fast-food places in favor of downtown. On Sunday, that’s a big mistake. After walking through all three blocks of downtown Oroville, we headed back to the urbs, found a Mexican restaurant. There was a mountain bike race here today; some of the usual random pedestrian traffic may have been off viewing it.
The idea was that Loren, Tim and I would ride up highway 70, the wild and scenic Feather River canyon, while Shannon would find us a place to stay in Greenville or Quincy. She would then meet us on the road. I recommended she go see Feather Falls, which were probably pretty good this early in the season. She thought that sounded interesting; we therefore expected that she’d pass us along the road. We asked her to bring along drinking water, in case there was none to be found along the road. A hot day in Oroville; we didn’t even take jackets. I realized later I should have done a short seminar on rendezvous protocols and the mathematics of time and distance, but it didn’t occur to me. No reason Shannon should know what the average speed of a bicycle is – but I certainly do.
We three rode out of downtown, followed the 70-Business sign until it joined the main highway again. The highway is a freeway, with bikes not allowed. But there were no apparent alternate routes. I figured we had a pretty good chance of getting through the freeway section without getting caught, and if we did get caught, we’d just get growled at. We could deal with that.
Not a whole lot of fun: hot and noisy. At the next exit, Tim hit a stone and flatted out. A snakebite with some damage to the tire itself; he tried three times to patch it, unsuccessfully, before I finally talked him into a new tube. While we spent an hour fussing with this nonsense, of course, the CHP came by.
I bowed and scraped and asked him what the alternate route was. He was grumpier than I had expected. One bow and one scrape wasn’t enough. So I bowed again and gave him two more scrapes, and he finally told us how to reach Table Mountain Boulevard, which bypassed the freeway section. A much better route: no question that we would have gone this way had we known about it.
Once we were finally rolling, we found ourselves on a hot, sunny midafternoon climb above Lake Oroville. Pretty enough in a foothills kind of way, but it would sure be nice if the nature of the country changed. It’s not my idea of a beautiful ride. Now and then we could see the lake, far below.
Jarbo gap at 2250' was the top of the climb and the boundary of the ecosystem change. Much cooler, with forest, rock, a narrower canyon that left most of the road in shade. From the gap, the road descended slowly over the course of many miles until it met the river.
I remember reading about the heroic efforts that went into building a railroad through this canyon. I can see why. There are tunnels everywhere, including some through solid granite and others through what we hope are stabilized rockslides. The only thing more difficult than building the railroad through here would have been building it somewhere else.
There is granite here that would do itself proud in Yosemite, and at least one waterfall. Lots of other waterfalls, little creeks tumbling down the canyon walls. An outstandingly pretty road – perhaps the most beautiful of the Sierra roads over an extended distance. Good surface, moderate grades. Cool and sunny, not much traffic. Couldn’t ask for a better ride on a better road anywhere.
There were signs here and there marking the high water point of floods. The most recent was January of this year – we would have needed Scuba gear to ride along this road.
Kopfmusik for today, after my encounter with the CHP: the Long Tall Texan song:
Not that I have anything but the most profound admiration and respect, of course, for the CHP…
There are three tunnels on the road. Two of them are short, but one goes on for maybe half a mile. I dropped to the back, turned on my belt flasher; fortunately no cars came along while we were in the tunnel. And fortunately, there were no potholes in the road inside the tunnel: we would never have seen them. A true act of faith.
Starting to get tired, starting to get sore, starting to bonk. Starting to wonder why Shannon hadn’t caught us. From time to time one or the other of the Nephews would fall off the back, but we kept it going. 5 PM, 6 PM. No Shannon. I remembered how poor the road to Feather Falls was, and figured she might have had car trouble. That could be a major hassle!
The store at Storrie was closed, perhaps permanently, by flood damage. The resort at Tobin had not yet opened for the season, but we were at least able to refill the water bottles. That helped.
Sunset is around 8, but in the canyon, it was getting pretty dim and cold by 7. I was thinking it was a serious mistake not to have brought along jackets. We estimated another sixteen miles to go to reach the junction with highway 89, where we were supposed to meet Shannon, and even that wouldn’t help. There was no town, no lodging at the junction, so we would still not have shelter for the night. We could try hitch-hiking, but with three bikes and three people, the chances were pretty slim. Not much traffic to start with, and with the onset of night, almost none. So I was more than a little relieved when we came to Belden and found the resort open. We left one of the bikes locked up at the main road, as visible as possible, so Shannon would see it if she came along the road.
The resort and the town are really the same thing. They even share a single phone listing: Belden Town and Resort. We got a cabin overlooking the river for $60, separate bedroom for Loren and (if she shows up) Shannon. The Belden store had hot dogs and cold sandwiches. Tim is a non-meat-eater, so Loren and I got wodges of turkey from his cold turkey sandwich. That, with a hot dog, helped stay the pangs. I won’t say it was good, but compared with the alternative…
Bought three toothbrushes and a little tube of toothpaste. Aside from having lost touch with Shannon, what’s most unpleasant about this arrangement is that tomorrow we’ll have to put on the same clothes we wore today.
It was dark by now, so we went out and retrieved the bike from the roadside. Phoned both Allison and Jacky to see if Shannon had called and left a message – no. Showered, went to bed.
Riding: 31.56 miles, 1910 feet, 13.5 mph. Hiking: 8 miles, 450 feet.
Sometime in the wee hours there was a knock at the door and in came Shannon. Good to have her back. We’ll hear her story in the morning.
And then I couldn’t sleep. Trains going through, sound of laboring engines in the uphill direction, sound of brakes as they slow down. We discovered later that there are extensive track repairs under way from the winter floods, so we probably didn’t get the normal level of rail traffic, just trains delivering material for the repair work.
The day dawned cold, clear, pretty. Time for a short walk around Belden while people got ready to go.
The door to the old fire station is blocked, but that’s ok, because the vehicle inside is an antique car of some kind.
As to the fire truck, it had seen better days. I don’t know what happens if something actually catches fire here.
Shannon said she had done some hiking, but had not gone to Feather Falls. She must have passed while we were messing around with the flat tire and the side road. When night fell, she had gone to every motel between Quincy and Greenville looking for us. She tried the CHP, but someone inside the building just waved her away, wouldn’t talk with her. Finally she called the sheriff, who asked her if she’d checked Belden.
“Belden? Where’s that?” The sheriff made a phone call, came back in a minute: “They’re in cabin 3.” Just to make her night complete, a headlight was burned out and she got pulled over for that.
I phoned Jacky to let her know we were ok, asked her to send email to Allison, since it would be too late to catch her at home.
We went a couple miles up the road for breakfast – the Belden town business didn’t open until later. Loren had a cough today, didn’t ride. After breakfast, Tim and I rode on to Greenville (map), enjoying the rest of the Feather River canyon and the open country above the Quincy junction. Highway 89 is a road that Jacky and I saw before on our 1992 tandem tour – not that I recognized much.
Loren and Shannon went to Quincy for a new headlight, passed us on highway 89 and were waiting for us in Greenville. They had stopped at the ranger station to check conditions at Lassen: the road is still closed by snow, two miles into the park. So we reluctantly abandoned our ideas about visiting the attractions at Lassen. We’ll find something else for this afternoon.
We loaded the bikes onto the car and found a pizza place for lunch. Thought we might try camping tonight, so we drove up the east shore and out the peninsula until we found the Lake Almanor Resort, somewhat out of the way.
Early in the season – we’re the only ones here. Very friendly host had to come out to the bathhouse to turn on the water heater. He recommended some places we could go hiking this afternoon. He says it will be about 38° in the morning (wow!).
After setting up camp, we drove out Warner Valley to the end of the pavement, and hiked back to Drakesbad, which is inside Lassen park, but not one of its exceptional attractions. Nonetheless, it’s a beautiful place, wide grassy meadows surrounded by steep evergreen-covered mountains. Reminds me of Colorado.
As to the name Bad, it rather looked as if there might be a spa there, but we couldn’t tell for sure. It wasn’t yet open for the season, though there were a few people fixing it up and getting it ready. There was a stream through the meadow, with a giant woodchuck lurking under a bridge, just waiting for Tim to take his picture. The water was cold, but nothing like as numbing as fresh snow-melt would have been, so we speculated that there were hot springs not far away.
Back to Chester, where we ate at Knotbumper’s. Got back to the campground at dusk; discovered that our host had missed turning on the breaker for lights. Sorry to have to disturb him, but he was very friendly and apologetic about it. Nice fellow; maybe we’ll stay with him again someday (he had a few cabins as well as RV and tent sites).
Hot showers and into the sack. In view of the 38° prediction, I wore a considerable layer of clothes into the sleeping bag.
Dave Hood home
Email: 