TandemHearts

We spent a couple of days camping at Grover Hot Springs State Park near Markleeville, CA, just south of Lake Tahoe. We wanted to do a short “test” camp out to work out the bugs in our equipment and figure out what else we needed to buy. Of course we also had to do a little bike riding. On the drive up we passed some guys riding out of Placerville. They were headed up a huge climb and were taking a break. We stopped to make sure they were fine.

These 3 guys were from England and were riding from San Francisco to Washington D.C. as a fund raiser. One of them had lost his wife to cancer and wanted to find a way to honor her memory. So, they decided a fully loaded, self-supported transcontinental fund raising trip was just the ticket. Unfortunately for them, they landed in California in the middle of a heat wave (104+) so their first few days were very rough. When we caught up to them, they had suffered through a truly ugly day of steep, long, hot climbs. The heat was really doing a number on them and the altitude wasn’t being kind either. They were up beat, but having a hard go of it. We offered to shuttle their gear on to their campground and they were happy to take us up on the offer. Once we got to their campground at Silver Lake, we split up. Thom went on to our camp site to setup, and Veronica (never missing a chance to climb) rode back over the pass to meet them and ride in with them. Thom eventually looped back and everyone got to Silver Lake. We celebrated with a trip out for pizza. We wish Dave, Brian and Roger the best of luck as they continue on their journey. By the way, none of them are under 64 years young.

Markleeville is the home of the Tour of the California Alps - better known as The Death Ride. This ride takes you up and over two mountain passes - Ebbet’s and Monitor (with a return from the far side) and up and back down a third - Carson. That’s a total of five passes, with the summits around 8,000 feet. We were out late the night before and did not get as early a start as we would have liked so we rode to the top of Ebbet’s Pass (8,739) and turned around. Things were going pretty will until we ran out of air. Around 7,000+ feet most people start to notice the thinning air. We got to about 8,000 feet before it really hit us. Sitting at the summit was tiring if we just took shallow breaths. The scenery was very nice.

It was a good ride, but there is no way we could do all five passes of the tour. Maybe over a long weekend.

As always, more photos are in the gallery. Click on the photos to get there.