Introduction
I used to ride the Markleeville Death Ride every year, until
the registration process became too cumbersome and I started racing the Everest Challenge instead. This year, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the Death Ride
hadn’t filled up, so I signed up with my daughter Alexa. Read on for all the
gory details. (Full disclosure: there is no actual gore.)
Executive summary
We ate like supermodels; we ate like kings. It was really
hot. The scenery was gorgeous. My daughter set some new PRs. Verdict: EPIC
PASS. (Any linguistic shimmer here involving mountain passes is involuntary.)
Here are the elevation profile, basic map, and Deluxe map
(with numbers showing what order we rode the passes in).
Short version
Seemingly following my own bad example, my daughter Alexa went into this ride woefully undertrained, at least by the
standards of anybody who takes preparation seriously. The Death Ride includes
five high mountain passes, but our plan was to tackle just three of them: #1
(west side of Monitor); #3 (Ebbetts); and #5, Carson. We figured this would be
about 100 miles with ~10,000 feet of
climbing … but this was just a guess based on nice round numbers.
Dinner the night before was at a somewhat pricey Italian
joint in South Lake Tahoe. I had an appetizer of stuffed mushrooms and then chicken
saltimbocca over homemade fettuccine. The portions were woefully small. I could
picture Kate Moss across the table saying, “Oh my God. I can’t believe I ate
the whole thing. I’m such a cow.” It was pretty tasty, though I could show
their cook a thing or two about making hand-cranked pasta; theirs was a bit limp. I inherited some of my daughter’s entrée because she
got tired of it … the spiciness pretty much overwhelmed everything else.
Breakfast was supposed to be instant oatmeal, but our
morning went totally awry (details below). We ended up scarfing a Clif bar
apiece instead. It was a new flavor I’d never tried: Apricot Lunacy. Wait,
that’s a Luna bar flavor. Or should be. But it was apricot, anyway. Pretty yum,
in a wow,-my-hundred-thousandth-lifetime-Clif-bar kind of way.
During the ride I ate a banana-and-trans-fat mini-muffin;
hundreds of Kettle-style potato chips; gobs of orange slices; about a dozen
really poor robot-made chocolate chip cookies; a cup of weak instant coffee,
black; five Pepsis; an electrolyte placebo capsule; three V-8s; 1.5 Cups-O-Noodles; several gels; ice cream bars; blah
blah blah (all the usual nonsense ride foods) and a couple big ham &
cheese sandwiches.
The post-ride dinner, which did not come with our $160
(apiece!) entry fees, was supposed to be at a far-flung restaurant (out of
spite), but in the end we caved and had the onsite $10-a-pop burger plates: two
burgers each (replete with trimmings, though the patties were cold), some
admirably non-vegan baked beans, and hella potato salad.
Full report
We camped on the ground at Turtle Rock Park, a Death Ride
tradition. It was surprisingly—almost eerily—easy to find a spot compared to
years past. I almost wondered if we had the right weekend.
We carpooled to the ride with Chris, a fellow Albany High
mountain bike coach, who was also one of Alexa’s teachers last semester. (Alexa
got an A- in the class; any lower and this coach/teacher would not have been
welcome in our group. Just kidding. Actually, if she’d scored lower, he surely
wouldn’t have deigned to go with us.)
Chris asked if we should set an alarm for the morning, and I explained the
Death Ride organizers’ tradition of blasting the Jimi Hendrix performance of
“Star Spangled Banner” at party volumes at 4:30 a.m.; i.e., no alarm needed.
Not far (enough) from our tent was a large party of
jackasses who decided to hit the road at 3 a.m., which meant waking up at 2 (or
maybe they never went to bed) and making a big breakfast in their stadium-lit
compound. They talked incredibly loudly, like a bunch of drunks, so I couldn’t
sleep. Without any knowledge of their leave-at-3 strategy, I kept waiting in
vain them to turn in, and finally gave up and went over to tell them to quiet
down. Most of them were so immersed in their 100-dB chitchat they didn’t even
see or hear me. What a bunch of tools. My take is, if you have until 8 p.m. to
finish a 125-mile ride, and you still need to start at 3 a.m., you’re not a
real cyclist and should go try some other sport, like cordless bungee-jumping.
Fortunately, they did quiet down, because my Plan B was to send them home to Mother in a cardboard box.
At 5:30 a.m., Chris woke us up. Evidently the 4:30 a.m.
Hendrix wake-up call is no longer a tradition. He was just heading out (for all
five passes) and we eventually got going at 6:30. Here is the “before” shot.
The ride begins on a descent
and we froze our asses off … a Death Ride tradition that will never change. As
the sun made its way up past the ridge to the west, things warmed up a bit.
Monitor Pass is a bear. So is taking father/daughter selfies
with my ice-cube-slippery phone, especially when a scorpion is crawling toward my neck.
The scenery was as breathtaking as the altitude, notwithstanding
fire damage.
The first rest stop wasn’t nearly as mobbed as in years
past, which was fine by me. They no longer have energy bars or gels available,
and the energy drink is either weak or diabetic-friendly depending on which
volunteer you overhear. But they have weak instant coffee now, which is a plus
at least from the hydration standpoint. You can tell Monitor was a tough climb
because my daughter is a bit surly here.
Here she’s a bit perkier, no doubt due to the dueling V-8
juices she quaffed. Chris took this photo; after descending the backside of
Monitor and climbing back up, he encountered us at the rest stop.
Wondering what ebvc is, on our jerseys? It’s just another
way of saying EBVC. Does that help? No? Okay, here.
Here’s the official summit marker. Monitor is the lowest of
the Death Ride passes, but not by much.
Not shown: the descent of Monitor. I don’t own a GoPro, or
even a StayAm. If that doesn’t strike you as funny, it’s because I’m trying to
avoid amusing even myself, due to my sunburned lips. If I were to smile too
much they’d crack. Maybe you’d think that’s
funny.
It’s a long run-up to Ebbetts Pass, with the temperature
climbing along with us. I would like to take a moment to point out that I have
done this pass with individuals (whom I won’t name) who whined the whole time,
and I didn’t exactly blame them: it’s a steep, long climb. But my daughter
didn’t whine at all. I’m not sure why this is. Maybe because no hill climb
could ever compare to Mount Evans, which she rode three summers ago. (Though come to think of it, she didn’t whine then, either. At the time I
chalked this up to lack of available oxygen.)
There’s a lake. Actually it’s Kinney Reservoir. This is at
8,350 feet elevation—so we’d already broken the climb’s back. It’s it amazing
how you, gentle reader, barely have to exert any energy to journey up these
passes with us, and yet you still complain about how long and arduous my blog
posts are. Man, you’re not just humorless … you’re downright grumpy.
Due to California’s modern all-precipitation-all-the-time
winter/spring format, there was still snow up there. It’s not hard to spot the
snow in this photo, but I’ll bet you can’t find Waldo.
To mark our progress I would tell Alexa how much vertical
gain we had left to go, but expressed as Berkeley-area climbs. For example, “We
have 1.5 Spruces to go” or “We have 1 Wildcat to go.” My bike computer was understating the elevation, though, so I’d just announced half a Spruce
to go when suddenly we reached the summit. Surprise!
This next photo doesn’t perhaps look very interesting, but
that’s only because my arm isn’t like eight feet long and my phone’s “lens” isn’t
very wide-angle. The point is, Alexa was so knackered, she had to lean her back
up against me for support. The position I had to sustain for this made my back
hurt quite a bit, proving what many of you already know: parenting is even
harder than cycling.
Amazingly, I didn’t get the song “Lean On Me” in my head
after this little exercise. Sometimes life is surprisingly merciful.
Check out this bag of chips. I wonder how high you’d need to
take it before it actually exploded?
In other news, what’s with the watermelon? I mean, why offer
what’s essentially a calorie-free food to hungry cyclists? Frustratingly
enough, this is almost all Alexa felt like eating. I had to plead with her to
eat more food. This is one area where you can’t
“listen to your body.” Your body is a freaking liar!
Here is the requisite elevation shot. For the second time,
Chris made the summit—his fourth, our second—right around the time we did.
Incidentally, Ebbetts Pass is 62 feet higher than the Col du Galibier, which is
the highest point in this year’s Tour de France. Does this
mean Ebbetts is harder than the Galibier? Ha. Ha ha ha ha ha. The Galibier is
way, way harder. It’s a beast. But Ebbetts is hard enough.
We safely descended, had a nice lunch at the base (I
grudgingly ate Alexa’s sandwich), and then the day got really, really hot: over
100 degrees for well over an hour! We tackled the seemingly endless Category 2
climb toward Carson Pass, and then it tackled us. It’s hard to describe how
tedious and strenuous it was so I won’t bother. Eventually we arrived at the
last full rest stop before the Carson summit. The Gu people were there handing
out free product, which probably rescued Alexa from total blood sugar collapse.
She loves herself some gels, especially their vanilla and their salted caramel.
The Gu-sters also gave me some electrolyte capsules, which I took a) just to be
nice, and b) as a placebo. I don’t doubt that these capsules are slightly useful, but potato chips have
plenty of sodium, and orange slices have plenty of potassium, and that’s all
there is to it.
While at this stop, some random woman came up to me and
said, “Look at this! Somebody put his water
bottle in my cage! What am I supposed
to do with it?!” I was utterly perplexed. I mean, why tell me about it? Do I have a sign around my neck saying, “Come to me
with all your problems”? Before I was able to come up with a response, I
glanced at the bottle and discovered that, in fact, it happened to be mine. I
have no idea how this happened; nor does Alexa.
Here is Alexa about to mount her bike for the final slog. If
her expression is sanguine, that’s only because I hadn’t yet told her we had
ten more miles to climb. On the map, we are at Picketts Junction where the boxed-in R is.
Beautiful meadow, snow-capped peaks, brisk headwind. Seconds
after I snapped this, Alexa asked me to take the lead again. She certainly got
to practice her drafting on this ride.
Up, up, and up.
Finally, finally we made the summit, then descended to the
final rest stop, which shimmered like an oasis. (Full disclosure: it didn’t
really shimmer, and I’ve never seen an actual oasis. But still.)
I knew there would be ice cream up there but I couldn’t find
it. I looked around for somebody who had some. The first guy I saw was wearing
a triathlon national champion jersey. He was eating a Drumstick. I pointed at the
Drumstick and said, “Excuse me, but … where did you get that?” He replied
(somewhat haughtily, I thought), “National championships.” As in, “This jersey you
cannot buy.” I said, “No, I mean the ice cream.” Ouch … I felt a twinge of
vicarious embarrassment. The champion pointed toward a huge truck with these
vault-like doors on it which contained all manner of ice cream bar. You can
imagine how tasty these were.
In the photo above, look at that little plastic strip
bisecting the middle vent on my helmet. It gave me the stupidest tan lines of
my life. No, I won’t be posting a photo of that. It sure sucks losing my hair.
And here’s the elevation photo. I suspect the height of the
pole is to make the sign readable when the snow is incredibly deep … but if so,
why is the Ebbetts Pass elevation sign so stubby? [Update: an alert reader has informed me that Ebbetts doesn’t need a tall sign because it’s closed in the winter.]
Descending Carson is an absolute blast. My brother Max,
during a long-ago Death Ride, passed a cop car at over 60 mph. We took it a bit
easier.
There’s one last uphill slog just before the finish, which
is tolerable only because the excitement of being nearly done always gives you
a final burst of energy. Alas, when we reached Turtle Rock we were at 96.6
miles with 9,750 feet of cumulative vertical gain. It goes without saying we
had to keep riding, just so we could round out our ride at 100 miles and 10,000
feet of gain. Two miles of downhill, then two grueling miles back up. Here is Alexa
stoically grinding out the last stretch.
I made a surprisingly unexciting video documenting the
culmination of Alexa’s first full-on century ride.
Here is the “after” shot. I cannot account for my totally
overblown expression. My only theory is that my crows’ feet are so deep they
were causing me physical pain, and that my crazy grin is actually a grimace.
Here is our dinner. I cropped Alexa from the photo because the
camera caught her mid-blink and you know how awful those shots can be. She
didn’t touch the burger, by the way, so I got it. She was oddly un-hungry for
someone who’d just conquered the longest bike ride of her life.
I’m sure there’s more I could write, but now it’s time to
apply another coat of Carmex to my poor lips.
Ride stats
Here are the stats based on my old-fashioned bike computer.
- 100.2 miles
- 8:49:47 ride time
- 11.4 mph average speed
- 10,249 feet cumulative elevation gain
- 40.1 miles total climbing
- 42.8 miles total descending
Further Death Ride
reading
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