We arrived at Bass Lake on Friday afternoon to establish our base camp for the weekend. The Forks Resort on Bass Lake had a nice cabin to accommodate us. We checked in and went for a short walk by the lake. Our geographic location is just 25 miles from Yosemite. It might as well be 3000 miles from anywhere. The pace is much more relaxed than us city folks are used to, but I could learn to like it a lot!
We do the usual pasta carbo-load for dinner and wait for Ted Bradt. He arrived at 8:00 PM after a traffic hampered drive. We later found out Paul Vlasveld didn't arrive until 11:30! We retired early in anticipation of our early alarms.
Saturday we awoke to cool temps and cloudy skies. I decided after last weekend's Lake Tahoe Ididabike that we weren't going to mess around with not having enough clothes. I threw on one of the panniers and we packed it with all the winter gear.
The ride starts with a quick downhill followed by 73 miles of mostly uphill. The start was cool to say the least. North Fork elevation is 2560 ft. The climbing is steady but not too steep. You start in the Sierra foothills, with oak trees and manzanita. Slowly and steadily we climb with the scenery getting better and better with each turn of the cranks.
We're chuggin' along having a great time with Ted singin' us songs for entertainment. The total lack of traffic is something that makes this ride really neat. You can take in lots of scenery and really not have to worry about cars. Most of the cars that we did see where SAG wagons!
The first rest stop is at 10 miles. Way too soon so we don't stop. We're cruising along talking with people we have seen and ridden with on lots of other rides through the year. The mood is light and relaxed. This ride is an excellent season ending century.
We're working our way upward, the hillside drops away quickly and steeply on our right. The San Joaquin River has carved a steep deep canyon that we are riding along. We climb higher and the canyon gets deeper. Soon we find ourselves at reststop #2. This is at Mile High Lookout. Really at 5350', but hey who cares! This stop has been run by the North Fork Volunteer Fire Department every year of the ride. The support is excellent, the munchies supreme. What really makes this stop one of the "Best ever reststops" is the panorama that lies in front of you as you walk out onto the lookout. This year we had low unfriendly clouds hanging around so the view wasn't as great as usual, but it was still neat. The temperature was a little on the cool side so hanging around wasn't in the cards. We're getting ready to take off and it's down right chilly, in rolls Jim Molinari with shorts and a short sleeve jersey. I said "Jim aren't you freezing?" He said "No I'm quite comfortable really". I think Jim might have done a bit too much climbing this year, explaining his altered state of mind.
The oak trees and manzanita have given way to magestic pine forests. The scenery is truly awesome. Your mind wonders at all its grandeur. Your legs tell you a different story, we're still going uphill. There have been a few nice downhills, but the journey is still mostly skyward. Beautiful granite spires and formations are all around us.
After a 10 mile out and back route, uphill out, downhill back. This was nice we got to lunch. A nice friendly stop except for the temperature. Cold for sure. We load up at a quick comfortable pace before total hypothermia sets in. Get a few quick bursts of sunshine to tease us and then its gone behind the clouds. We remount and head down the road.
We had now seen Dan Pappone off and on while on the road. He took off saying "I'll see you down the road". The real climb of the ride was waiting for us just 3 miles from lunch. The Grizz has arrived! We stopped to peel off all clothes we had put on to stay warm. Having done this before we knew what to expect. So we told Ted it will be 15 miles of grinding uphill. He sounded real excited. The climb has a few steep burps in it but for the most part it's pretty nice. Like Judy said, it's more like hiking on your bike. The road is barely 1 and a half lanes wide. It goes up and up and down a little bit and up some more. Twisting and turning over false summits here and there. We finally catch up to Dan and he asks "How much have we done so far?" I tell him we've gone 5 miles. It's 7 more to the top of The Grizz and 3 flatter miles to the next rest stop. In between gasps Dan exclaims "There's a lot of climbing in this ride". I still am not sure why they call it The Grizz. We theorized with Ted that the climb might be described as a bear. Or perhaps after completing it you feel as though you have been mauled by a Grizzly. We felt like both theories were correct. We arrived at reststop #4 at the Cold Spring Summit elevation 7305'. Temperature 42 degrees, breeze cool.
By the time you get this far you feel pretty tore back. Rightly so I would say, we have 73 miles and 10100 feet elevation gain! We gotta start downhill soon! And what a downhill it is. 15 miles long and a 4500 ft loss! Big fun. It would have been more fun if it wouldn't have been so cold, but at least it wasn't raining! I just hoped we wouldn't come across Jim Molinari frozen solid somewhere alongside the road.
Dan The Downhill-man went first, then Ted, then we launched. Good pavement, predictable corners, and warmer as we descended made it pretty nice going. We bottomed out at Bass Lake and stopped to peel all the warm stuff off again.
A pleasant trip around the lake with a few rollers were all that was left. The pavement quality lacks greatly here, which is a real bummer this far into the ride. With all the great scenery we really can't complain about a few bumps in the road.
The last real insult is the final climb into the parking lot to finish the ride. This little hill really bites at this point. But happily we made it on another great addition of The Grizzly Century.
The ride is really a blast. The people are mostly non cyclists, so a simple thanks goes a long ways. You get alot of bang for you buck on this ride too. Included in the entry fee is a pre-ride breakfast, a t-shirt, and a post ride BBQ put on by the Forest service. Now I'd say that's a pretty good deal.
Thanks to Ted for hanging with us all day and the weekend too. Oh yea, thanks for the entertaining songs too. Thanks also to "The Judyrizer" for another totally fun ride, I couldn't ask for a better person to ride the tandem with!