Yesterday I did 3 passes over the Sierra Nevada Mountains. I
found out this morning that I had saved the best to last! I went over Sonora Pass, which is over 9,000
feet, and it provided the best views. When I
am riding, some roads you want to do a “sporty” ride and enjoy the road. Other roads you want to take it easy and
enjoy the views. Senora Pass is one to
enjoy the views. They were breath
taking. One this pass, as well as one
yesterday, I encountered road signs saying 26% grade. I don’t believe I have ever seen this sharp
of grade on a public road before. Now I
have seen it two days in a row. Going
down a 26% grade and doing tight hair-pin turns at the same time will test your
riding abilities. It feels like you are
almost standing on your head while turning. That is how they get you from 9,000 feet to 5,000 feet very quickly. What a blast!
The next highlight was Yosemite. As I said previously, this was my first visit
to Yosemite. The centerpiece of Yosemite
is a rock called “Half Dome”. It is a large dome rock that half of it fell
away. You get to see Half Dome from
several different angles. Typically,
Yosemite is also known for its waterfalls.
With the drought conditions California has been having for several
years, the falls were either pretty small or nonexistent. I have included a couple of waterfall photos,
the first is Bridal Falls (which has very little water coming over it); the
other one is of larger falls but you were unable to get any closer to them.
And now for the goat paths!
The first one was when I was going between Senora Pass and Yosemite. Somehow my Garmin GPS put me on this backroad
that was really more like a goat path going down one side of the mountain,
across a river, and back up the other side.
This was a single lane road. There was no place to turn around. How Garmin determined this was the fastest
route, I will never know! The road name
had something to do with a ferry so I was concerned I was actually going to
have to take a ferry across the river, but about half way down the mountain, I
did see the bridge so at least that fear was relieved. When I approached the bridge, my next concern
was that Billy Goat Gruff was going to not let me pass across his bridge
without paying him; but again this did not happen either. However, it looks the bridge is used as
a large graffiti space more than anything else.
Almost the entire bridge was covered.
The second goat path was back to my campsite for this
evening which is in Yosemite National Park.
The road to the campsite is again single lane. It had been paved once but in many places the
asphalt has been broken up and/or filled with pot holes. Some holes have filled in with sand. Some placed crushed rock was used. I had no idea how far down this road the
campsite was. It didn’t look THAT far on
the map. Well it turns out, it is exactly
5 miles in the goat path, which took me 23 minutes. It turns out though, that the campsite is
wonderful! I am right next to a babbling
creek (Yosemite Creek). This is by far
the best campsite of the trip and it was also the cheapest at only $10 No worry
about live music concerts or freeways at this campsite. While many of the other campgrounds are full,
there are a lot of empty spaces here. I
think most people are afraid to come this far back. I actually had a pick-up pull over as I was
coming in the first time and he let me pass him; I could go faster than a
pick-up – go figure. The trick to riding
roads like this is to stay loose, stay relaxed, picked your smoothest line, and
just take your time. The reward is at
the end of the goat path!
Tomorrow I am going to do another look through a different
part of Yosemite and then head towards Death Valley. My plan is to get a place near there to spend
the night and then go through the park early in the morning before it gets too
hot. We will see how well this all works
out.
Here are some photos from Yosemite.
Here is today's route.
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