XC Day 15 - Hanover NH to North Conway NH
For our penultimate day cycling, we biked through the White Mountains, and they were every bit as beautiful as the Adirondack Mountains.
Our day started out in heavy fog.
It took almost 2 hours for the fog to burn off.
However, once it did, we were in for a visual treat.
We entered the White Mountains region relatively early in our ~100 mile ride.
Early on, we did pass some ponds and lakes, but somewhat fewer than on our Adirondack day.
Instead, we had more visuals of mountains in the distance.
We had several moderate climbs and two big climbs. The big climbs were 1600’ and 1900’.
All told, we climbed over 7000’ today.
I was quite concerned about how my legs would hold up today after showing increasing distress the past 3 days.
I biked slowly today, mostly by myself, to try to limit the stress.
Overall, my legs held up surprisingly well. They were certainly sore, but not as bad as yesterday.
Later on during the day, I reconnected with Jesse and Ruth.
At one of the rest stops, I commented to them that the last time I had been there was biking with them in the middle of October of 2020. At that time, the mountains were topped with snow, and we were snowed on during at least one of our rides that weekend.
Today, the temperatures were in the mid to upper 70s.
We have had extraordinary weather for this last stretch of cycling.
As you can see, I am not the only one taking photos.
Jesse has been here so often that he can look at any of these vistas and tell me which peaks I am looking at. For me, they are just mountains in the distance despite having been here a couple of times in my life.
Here I am at the top of the Kancamagus Pass. The climb up was over 1900’.
The descent was fabulous, but I did stop at every turnout to take photos.
We did both run along some streams as well as pass over some streams such as this one.
This photo gives some sense of one of the descents.
One final vista shot for today’s blog.
Tomorrow we have only 70 miles to get to Portland. There are no major climbs and only about 2500’ of total climbing. I will have biked over 1300 miles since arriving in Madison WI. Everyone else will have biked about 3800 miles from the coast west of Portland Oregon.
I am looking forward to some days off the bike, but will miss biking with this group as everyone splits up and heads home.