By stopping at the displays I learned three fun facts from my 6 hour 89 mile solo jaunt through the Grand Teton National Park:
The uplift of the Teton Range and coincident sinking of Jackson Hole is caused by the uplift of the Yellowstone area by its geological hot spot. (I'd only heard of tectonic plate collision as a reason for such significant uplift before now.)
A full grown wolf's skull can be as big as black bear's. Maybe the bear wasn't the biggest, but it was mature.
The Yellowstone-Teton ecological area has not had a single extinction from all the native species that were there when the white man arrived.
Not to brag, but when I posted today's ride to Strava it dissed me by saying "This was easier than your usual effort.
Know when your training is on track blah blah blah." It is true, though, that I usually dial it back a notch or two when I'm riding by myself.
I've got to say I'm blown away by the high quality of the bike paths provided in this area by both local government and the National Park Service. A lot of the road / path surface was "butter", a word sometimes used to describe smooth low resistance pavement. Because I felt sorry for those riders in the tour that didn't ride on these great roads today, I thought I'd create a few short videos of what it was like. So interspersed with still photos, in chronological order, I present today's ride: (I recommend you turn your sound down now as the sound track on the videos is just noise).
On the way out of town the path crossed the Snake River. The bridge shown here is only for the bike path! Not sure where the money came from, but most other localities don't seem to have it.
The path turned north and ran parallel to the river
Before reaching open fields with a view of the cloud-topped range:
Looking across to Teton Village and ski area I saw a string of boxes glinting from reflected sunlight on the hillside,
then I did a double take when I noticed they were moving, so I assumed it was a ski lift in operation. That piqued my curiosity so I had to take a side trip to check it out. When I got there a hiker informed me it was a "tram" not a "lift", and yes it was operating and his group were about to use it to "get all the way to the top."
We're talking real money again:
The sign on the terminal says the summit temperature is 36° and wind speed is 4 mph - good info to know before you go.
When I reached the national park access gate there was a long line of cars for a single open lane. Selfishly I rode by them all and found that fellow rider Luis had just got to the head of the line, so I swung in behind him, intending to show my lifetime national park pass. However the ranger asked if I was with Luis and I said yes and she said I was good to go. Having only one lane open was great because it meant only a trickle of traffic could come through on the spectacular smooth road:
After second entrance gate where I was waved through after assuring the ranger I had a pass, the path climbed onto a higher drier level that provided some perspective of the river valley to the east
By this time I was riding much closer to the Tetons. Each peak had a cloud train off of it, showing the wind direction up there.
About this time I hit just one bike-path-frost-heave-seam too many and the mount holding my front light and bike computer broke. For your entertainment, here is a true-to-life reenactment just like the crime shows do:
As you can see, the only reason that heavy unit didn't go into my front wheel was that the tether on the front light went around the handlebars instead of around the mount. Without a mount I pocketed the light and tucked the computer into the little bag on top of my bike frame. For the rest of the ride I was habitually looking down for info on speed, grade, watts, time, navigation, etc and not finding it. Man! I have really become reliant on that thing. Luckily I could still access it by pulling it out while trying not to push any of the buttons which screw up its display. I think I unintentionally reorganized several of the data fields.
After a lunch break of coke and potato chips at the Jenny Lake visitor center, the route went down a loop road with a one-way bike path that was the "left lane" on a one-way road for cars going the other way. The road showed the lake to advantage:
Still heading north, I took a spur road to climb Signal Mountain which is a popular destination in the park. The climb up the hill wasn't very steep (how steep? I don't know ... I couldn't see the percent grade on my Garmin 😜 ).
On reaching the south shoulder of the mountain, I took the short trail to the viewpoint
and got a friendly stranger to take my portrait.
The road went on up for another half mile
before leveling out with a view over the Snake River valley and mountains on the other side:
The descent was fun and included seeing a bunch of cars coming up the hill being led by decent sized fox. I stopped and it looked at me in an irratated way, but didn't break its pace as it came by within a few feet. As I struggled to get my phone out and NO I'M NOT DRIVING DAMN YOU IPHONE! the fox decided this running down the road was getting old and dodged off into the woods.
After crossing the Jackson Lake dam over the Snake, the road (and river) ran quite a way east providing a whole new perspective of the Teton Range
The only way down that side of the valley is on US Highway 89, but this far north of Jackson it was pretty quiet and had a good shoulder
A bunch of cars pulled over ahead.... Oh look! Oh look! There's a herd of pronghorns! A herd of one that is.
We call them antelopes but they are not related to them or goats or deer. Just now I googled them. It's a North American specialty and they are supposed to be able to run 88 MPH, fastest of the western hemisphere indigenous species. That one sure isn't running anywhere.
Although I was theoretically going down stream with the river, the road kept going up until reaching a plateau with another nice perspective:
Then I just had to ride 30 miles to Jackson with the afternoon headwind picking up more and more. Just like a regular day on this tour.
Jackson has an REI so I walked over there after shower and message to see if I could get a mount for the Garmin (bike computer). Gotta have it! Of course I have several at home, but ... So REI has mounts but not for Garmin but they've got an adaptor:
My rigging skills were tested but came through by using the adapter with the old broken mount.
As I mentioned at the end of yesterday's rest day post, the weather for today's 135 mile route from West Yellowstone, Montana to Jackson Wyoming via Idaho was looking like it may be daunting. It did not disappoint, which is the explanation for the dearth of photos in today's post: the effort of getting the camera out from under multiple layers with bulky gloves quickly discouraged capturing the moment.
The temperature at the start of the ride was a bit over 40 and it was dry but windy. After 1/2 hour it had started to spit rain that felt cold enough to be sleet. After a short climb to Targhee Pass, I left Montana
and entered Idaho (no sign was there, but I found this picture on the web for what was there in summer 2016).
Before I reached the bottom of the descent to the valley floor carved by Henry's Fork of the Snake River, the rain started coming down hard driven by a 20mph headwind. It was still 41°. The wheels started shooting up "rooster tails" from the water on the road. This is when a cyclist goes from being wet to being drenched.
I was one of the first riders to reach the first rest stop at mile 25. With numb feet and hands in a downpour. Contrary to recommendations I had not packed water proof clothing although I had on a wool jersey, wool glove liners, fleece leggings and wool cap. Over that was layered normal long-sleaved Lycra cycling wear. As I struggled to remove my soaked gloves and liners, Lon H (tour organizer) took a look at me and said that my outfit wasn't doing me any good. He then pulled out a long sleeve semi-waterproof jacket from the trailer stash and told me to put it on. Lon started up his crew-cab pickup truck and turned up the heater. As I took refuge there to warm up with a cup of hot cocoa two other riders arrived, jumped the truck and stated they were through for the day! Their thought process ran along the lines of hypothermia and potential for illness. Mine didn't; it seemed like if I kept generating heat by pedaling I'd be uncomfortable but OK.
By the time I reached the second rest stop 22 solo miles later, the rain had stopped but the temperature had dropped to 40° and the headwind was stronger than ever. The chill had moved up from my feet to my legs and even the lower abdomen. This was getting beyond the chill of my winter rides at home where numb hands and feet are fairly frequent. I was starting to doubt my philosophy of pedaling being a sufficient source of heat.
At any rate, after a session warming up in the minivan, adding hand warmers to gloves and socks, and being loaned a pair of shoe covers, I was ready to head out again. Micheline M had arrived at the rest stop by then and we set off together as a two-person pace line. It wasn't too long after that the temperature rose to the mid 40's and we went down into the Warm River valley which gave us the first real protection from the head winds. As I descended I surprised a bear cub in the middle of the road just before Bear Gulch - its rare that a street name is so appropriate! The lack of wind didn't last long as we were soon riding through flat potato and alfalfa farms, but the shift was enough to thaw the hands and feet.
Micheline and I rode together to the lunch stop at mile 75 and once again experienced the chill that quickly sets in when you stop moving and have wet clothes on. Susan N, another tour organizer supplied latex gloves to put on under our wet ones. Micheline's wet feet had been bothering her so she improvised an alternative use:
After hot bean soup and hot cocoa and another warm-up session in the
minivan, we set off on the gradual climb toward south Teton Pass. At the
top of one of the many rollers I stopped and fished out my phone to
take these, the first is looking southeast, the second west.
The possibility of getting caught under a cloud burst was certainly in the air. The original route plan was to have two rest stops after lunch: at 93 miles and 110 miles. Since so many riders had decided to quit, the tour vehicles were occupied carting them into Jackson and they decided to cancel the service at mile 93. Which was OK because there was a general store at about the same location, so we could resupply ourselves. A couple miles before the final rest stop the sky opened up and we received a fresh drenching.
When we arrived at the 110 mile rest stop,
we were told that the rest of the ride was being cancelled and we were going to be sagged in from there. The miles from 110 to 135 were by far the toughest of the day as it involved a 2200' climb with grades as steep as 12%. So it was a mixed sense of relief and disappointment that we could not continue the very immoderate activities of the day. We pressed Stop on our bike computers and started waiting for a vehicle to take us into Jackson. Here are some of the "survivors" chilling out (literally) during the wait.
After an hour and a half wait, the van arrived. Some of us waited out of the wind while bikes were loaded, etc.
By then the number of folks needing to get to Jackson had
increased to 18 to fit into one 11 passenger van and a 4 seater minivan. Of course we squeezed in:
The overloaded van ride over the pass was as harrowing as anything else had been that day, and after seeing the traffic, lack of shoulders and road condition I was glad that we'd been forced to skip the experience.
I was glad for a day off the bike. Doing some sight seeing at
Yellowstone with a few miles of walking were just what my legs needed to
recover. Also staying at the same hotel for two nights meant none of
the high pressure logistics to get everything organized at the crack of
dawn. Also for the first time in four days there wasn't any noticeable
smoke in the air!
Since Tuesday (Sept 10) was a short day,
Rachel rented a car and we made an excursion to Old Faithful in the late
afternoon. The timing was good - we only had to wait a few minutes for
the next spouting.
You can't say they weren't warned:
Then
on Wednesday Rachel, Mollie (her roommate) and me took another trip
into the park to do some walking around Yellowstone Falls. The Park
Service labels it "The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone" which I gotta say
sounds a bit pretentious. Why not call it "The Niagara Falls of
Yellowstone"? It is a nice river canyon for sure, but "grand"?
Especially in the context of so many actually unique and magnificent
features in this park!
Liking the way they build this to allow water to drain off the road:
Nice culvert!
Looking ahead to 135 miles tomorrow to get to the Grand Tetons with a bit of dread. Temperatures expected to be 40-50 all day with some rain. Good thing we got some rest today.
