Copyright 1993, David E. Cortesi
The Grizzly is a century in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada range in California. It was a nice, if strenuous, ride in the piney woods.
Friday Oct 8, 08:30: my wife and I climbed into our van anticipating a quick start on a long weekend camping in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, with, for me, the highlight of riding in a century called "the Grizzly."
As I started backing the van out of the drive there was a sliding sound and a thump. What...? "The bicycle!" we said in chorus. Sick, I shut off the engine and climbed out.
I had left my Miyata Team, companion of 3 years' commuting and touring, leaning against the side of the vehicle -- and driven over it. How could I be so STUPID?
08:35: The damage wasn't so bad after all. The front wheel of the van had run over the saddle, crushing it and warping the clamp on the seat post. The pressure had driven the right handlebar into the ground, bending it over and putting yet another scar on the brake lever. But it was fixable -- where?
09:55: Garner's Pro Cyclery opens their door early to us, only to say "Sorry, we might get to it by late afternoon but probably not."
10:05: Wheelsmith offers me an appointment for three weeks away!
10:10: Palo Alto Cycles says "No chance. Try Charlie at Menlo Velo."
10:11: Charlie, on the phone, says "Sure, bring it over right away."
10:25: We leave the bike with Charlie and go off to kill time, since Charlie doesn't look as if he appreciates being hovered over.
12:30: Charlie hands back the Miyata with a new seat and post and new "anatomic" bars neatly taped. The bill is $117, a cheap enough penalty for such gross stupidity. "So where is there a century this weekend?" Charlie asks.
The unincorporated village of North Fork announces itself on a large sign at the town limit as being "The Exact Center of California." It is a resort town in steeply rolling terrain, 2500' [750m] up into the jumbled foothills of the Sierra Nevada range, west of Fresno and south of Yosemite National Park. There are several thousand patrons of the North Fork Post Office, many of them retirees living in rustic seclusion in the wooded hills. Quite a few, it would seem, are enthusiastic civic boosters.
This is North Fork's big weekend, encompassing the Spaghetti Feed, the Art Show, the Craft Festival, the Chicken Dinner, and as a centerpiece, the "first annual" Grizzly Century.
I had picked up a brochure for the ride in a bike store 200 miles away. "The Grizzly is a bear!" it warned, "Intermediate and advanced riders recommended." But it promised terrific scenery on the "Sierra Vista National Scenic Byway." The Byway is a paved, 80mi [130km] loop through National Forest lands dotted with campgrounds and vista points.
"Oh, the views are INCREDIBLE," we were assured by a nice lady who sat across from us at the Spaghetti Feed in the town hall. "And it isn't so steep. Why, all the climbing is in the first fifteen miles, then it flattens right out." She was wrong on both points, but her friendliness was genuine. Every North Forkite we met seemed genuinely concerned that we enjoy what most of them persisted in calling "the bike race." So we ate quite a good spaghetti dinner ("That's the Chamber of Commerce cooking tonight. Tomorrow night it's the Boosters doing the chicken.") and drove back to the campground we'd selected to bed down.
My watch alarm woke me at 5:30 from the first sound sleep of the night. In 30 minutes we had converted the van from a bedroom back into a vehicle, made coffee and breakfasted. I unlocked the bike from the madrona bush beside which it had spent the night and put it carefully into the van. Then we pulled out, still in darkness, for the 7-mile drive back to North Fork.
Not far from the campground, a deer bounded out of the darkness into the headlights. I braked hard and barely missed it.
At the North Fork High School, registration was being handled briskly in the foyer of the gymnasium. Inside the gym yet another civic organization was operating a Pancake Breakfast. The smell of pancakes frying interacted with adrenaline to nearly turn my stomach, but quite a few people in cycling garb were eating heartily. "When should I expect you back?" my wife wanted to know. "Are you doing the metric ride or the real thing?"
"I still don't know," I said. I had never gone more than 90 miles in any terrain. I had never ridden at altitudes above 5000' [1500m], and this ride peaked at 7000' [2100m]. And I was just recovering from a cold. On the other hand, I had been training toward a century all summer and was in my best condition ever. "At the metric turnaround point I'll just have a serious talk with my body and decide then."
"OK, if I don't see you around 1PM I'll look for you about 4," Marian said. And then it was time to start.
The ride started with a brisk plunge down and up the sides of an arroyo, then turned onto the Scenic Byway route. The Byway proved to be a very well-maintained, paved road. In its first 15 mi [24km] it climbed fairly steadily from 2500' [750m] to 4500' [1400m].
The terrain was typical California foothill country: steep ridges above, deep valleys below; the dusty, reddish soil densely wooded with a mix of oaks, madrona, and digger pine. No high mountains were in sight, only ranks of wooded ridges. Half an hour along I turned a corner and met the sun just clearing the ridge ahead. Five minutes later it went behinda shelf of cloud that had slid up from the west. The sun didn't appear again all day, with the result that temperatures were ideal for riding.
An hour along, my rear tire flatted. I had just changed the tube when a support car pulled up. The sag driver offered a floor pump and cheerful words. I may as well say here that the North Forkers did a terrific job of organization and support for this ride. They had five well-staffed and -stocked snack stops, two other water stops, several patrolling sag vehicles, and an ambulance on call at mid-circuit. All the course workers were solicitous and encouraging to every rider.
Along much of this climb the road was bordered by a high bank of red earth on one side, and a drop to a river valley on the other. Cliff swallows were nesting all along the bank, and in the early light they were working hard for their breakfasts of insects. Much of this stretch (indeed, much of the ride) I was alone. There were no more than 200 riders all told, including the metric.
During this first leg my adrenaline level did battle with my common sense for control of my cadence. From painful experience I know how crucial it is to warm up slowly at the start of a long ride, but I felt strong and it was hard to let the occasional other rider go by and climb on ahead of me. One talkative group of three caught me up and I stayed with them up one of the long grades. But their climbing pace of 8mph [13kph] quickly pushed my pulse rate past the level I could sustain for long, so I dropped back to a comfortable, if unexciting, 6mph [10kph]. I finally found someone that I could outclimb: two men on an exceedingly trick mountain tandem, with all its hardware bits anodized irridescent lavender. The bike was new to one or both of them. I don't think they were able to apply themselves with optimum efficiency, and I overtook them in the manner of a snail overhauling a slug.
After 10mi of rolling up and down and curving through pleasant woodlands of pine, the Scenic Byway gathered itself again and leaped to "Mile High Curve" at 5500' [1700m]. Here there is a dramatic view over a confluence of two steep valleys, with the real peaks of the Sierra Nevada ranked on the horizon. In my opinion this is the only "wow" view along the Scenic Byway, the rest being "incredible" only to someone who's never visited real mountains.
Not far beyond was the 50km point, the turnaround for the metric century route. To continue was to commit to the full ride or a sag, since there were no shortcuts or bailout routes after this point. It was 3 hours into the ride and I felt fine, with the sole exception that my nose simply would not stop dripping. (It ran continuously throughout the ride. There are few sensations as dampening as the realization, in the midst of chatting to a friendly worker at a rest stop, that a string of mucus is dangling from your hooter.) Most important, I could detect no symptoms of any kind from the unfamiliar altitude. Onward!
In order to get the full 100mi, the Grizzly turns up a side road for a 5mi [8km] out-and-back (more correctly, an up-and-down) to a place called Minaret Summit. I can't say what the summit looked like. At the rest stop at the foot of this climb I had another planning meeting with my body, and we decided that in order to be sure of climbing the principal summit ahead, I should take a bye on this side trip with its 1000' [300m] climb.
From this point on the scenery began to look like the real Sierras. As the road climbed past 6000' [1800m] the forest became dominated by pine and cedar of considerable size. Bare sheets and cliffs of granite began to appear. The air became somehow crisper and brighter (or was that incipient anoxia?). Occasionally the road circled an alpine meadow. Near one of these boggy green spots grew several sequoias, although these were not the giants found north and south of here. They were overtopped by some striking specimens of what I think was western red cedar, easily 8' [2+m] thick at the butt and neck-stretchingly tall.
The excellent route map I'd been given had grades marked with one, two or three chevrons for steepness. Between 50mi [80km] and the peak altitude at 70mi [112km] there were three, 2-chevron climbs and two, 3-chevron ones, as well as a couple of 2-chevron descents. None of these proved to be as steep as some of the home-town hills on which I train, but they were relentlessly long.
Throughout this stretch I concentrated almost obsessively on husbanding my resources. I climbed at speeds so slow as to be laughable in order to hold my pulse rate down. I drank, ate, and stopped to rest at measured intervals. I argued with myself where a 2-chevron climb might have merged into a 3-chevron one or vice versa. And I watched at every curve for the cattle guard after which, according to the map, there would remain only a one-chevron climb to the summit.
The cattle guard appeared and I relaxed -- too soon, as it proved. Confident that I faced an easy run to the summit rest stop, I speeded up and stopped snacking and drinking. But the 7 or 8 miles that remained were mostly a steady, shallow upgrade that took nearly an hour to negotiate. I found myself going slower, slower, looking ahead around each curve (the road was still winding through woods and alpine meadows) for a break, and always being disappointed. The last quarter-mile [half km] to the summit brought me almost to a stop. When I reached the rest stop and started to take off my helmet, my hands were shaking.
But I drank, and ate, and sat on a rock for ten minutes, and settled down. From here the course was literally all down-hill. The Byway dropped 3000' [900m] in 10mi [16km], then rolled mainly downhill to the end. I put on my windbreaker and started down the hill, then very quickly pulled over and put on the tights I'd taken off just after sunrise. The fast descent was fun, thanks to the excellent condition of the pavement. There were few straights, so I could reach only 39.5mph. The new handlebars with their "anatomical" bend did make a difference on the long descent. Instead of all my fingers going numb, only my thumbs did!
At the end of the drop, the Scenic Byway terminated and the final 20mi ran over the rustic streets and back roads of the resort town of Bass Lake. In contrast to the Byway, these roads were extremely rough and uncomfortable to ride. The North Forkies aren't much for road maintenance. But still, they put on a really fine ride. At the end, back at the school gym, there were yet more free snacks and drinks, and a masseuse.
My final time: 95mi [153km] in 8:28 riding time (11mph [18kph]). Total elapsed time, an unstunning 10:15. Well, heck. It was a nice ride in the piney woods. The Chicken Dinner in the town hall was not quite the culinary experience that the Spaghetti Feed had been (the Chamber of Commerce definitely has an edge on the Boosters in the food department), but most of the paintings we liked in the Art show had received ribbons. The next day, after a 10-hour dreamless sleep, we drove home by way of Yosemite valley.