Camp Lynda, over and done

Dave and Lynda's route today was a fantastic beast, and the weather couldn't have been better - 50s and partly cloudy. After 10 or so miles through town, we climbed up to a great overlook of the Virgin River Canyon.

Chris near the top of the overlook climb

Then we dropped back down and struck out across fast desert roads for 20+ miles. Chris and Dan were undergeared on their singlespeeds so we just coasted along with the strong tailwind.

Then things got muddy. It wasn't so muddy that it clogged up the bikes like yesterday, but it was slow and sucked a lot of power out of the legs.


A few miles later we ran into Dave Harris hammering out the loop in the other direction. It turns out our group of three was riding the outer loop backwards, so we soon saw the other ~10 riders over the next hour as we pushed into a nasty headwind.

Climbing over the high point on the ride had fantastic desert views...



And the descent down Blake's was fantastic...far more fun than riding up it like everyone else did.


We pushed a hard pace back west into a strong headwind and eventually caught Jeff Kerkove and Dave Byers. We pedaled on ahead of them and eventually regrouped near town when we stopped for a Pringles break. We cruised back into town together, total ride time of just over 8 hours (somehow we spent 1.5 hours not riding!? Compare that to Lynda's 21 minutes) for 107 miles and ~8000' of climbing.

Refueling some more after going out for dinner

Camp Lynda has now run its course. 3 days, 3 great rides, 17 hours in the saddle, and my bike and body both more or less held together. Now back to reality.

And it's raining yet again. And the forecast for the Colorado mountains is for 1-2 feet of snow over the next 36 hours. That should make for an interesting [possibly impossible] drive back to Boulder.