Bend to Boise - Day 9
Today was the last day of our Bend to Boise trip, so while I will provide some narration of the ride along with photos, I will also let my commentary meander. Today we had a short ride of 40 miles from the park on the Snake River where we ended yesterday’s ride to Cambridge ID.
We started by bicycling up the Oregon side of the Snake River towards the Brownlee Dam, the final dam of the Hells Canyon Hydroelectric Project that I mentioned yesterday. Some bicycling trips are true point to point trips where one starts at point A and bikes every mile of the way to point B. An obvious example of this type was my 2019 cross country trip where I bicycled with Trek Travel from Santa Barbara CA to Myrtle Beach SC. In contrast, I would describe this trip as “We are going to bike lots of awesome roads between Bend and Boise.” One advantage of this type of approach is that the rides can be constructed to maximize beautiful roads and scenery without feeling constrained to get plot a route all the way from A to B. While the cross country trip had amazing beauty, there were many miles which weren’t nice back roads with stunning scenery. Sometimes, the miles were just about getting from here to there. The biking on this trip was overwhelmingly beautiful.
After about 12 miles, we crossed over to the Idaho side of the Snake River just below the Brownlee Dam pictured here. For this stretch, many of us rode in a paceline because of a headwind. I generally prefer not to ride in a paceline on these trips. In a paceline, I need to concentrate on the wheel and rider in front of me. To maximize the energy savings from the draft, I want to have my front wheel very close to the rear wheel of the rider in front. However, the closer I am, the easier it is for the two wheels to touch which would likely result in my crashing. This makes it difficult to enjoy the scenery to the same extent or to do things like take photographs. Consequently, I prefer to ride either by myself or with one or two other riders where we may ride side to side or one behind the other but with ample space. However, the stronger the headwind, the greater the advantage of drafting.
After crossing the river, we started a 13 mile climb. Climbing naturally starts to split up riders since there is limited drafting advantage due to the much slower speeds and people have different power to weight ratios. In general, the short and light riders leave the taller and heavier riders behind. The photo above was taken just around the corner from the dam looking back down river. The gentle slope of the road is clear on the right hand bank.
Here is a picture looking up the Snake River. As I look at this photo, I realize that it cannot capture what it feels like to be seeing this as I bike. The scale of the vistas out west are remarkable. We could easily be looking at over 10 miles of shoreline. Notice that there are essentially no structures of any sort. There is simply a vastness and an emptiness of space here.
After a couple of miles, we headed away from the river and much more significantly uphill. Right now, I am both carrying some additional weight compared to past rides as well as not being as strong. As a result, the other riders slowly pulled ahead and shortly I was back to cycling by myself. Over the next 7 miles, I would climb about 2200’ in elevation. Mostly, the climb was a reasonable 5% - 7% grade. Because there was almost no traffic, I could constantly be looking around at the surroundings. I saw two beautiful birds along the way: the Western Tanager and the Lazuli Bunting. In both cases I stopped and tried to get a photo. The Western Tanager flew off as soon as I stopped. It has brown wings with yellow stripes, a yellow body, and a flame orange-red face. The Lazuli Bunting has a head of light azure, orange breast, white belly, and white, black, and gray striped wings. I was able to get my camera out before it took off, but only got one out of focus shot. Since I have developed my interest in bird photography, I find myself constantly looking at the birds as I ride.
As we climbed, I looked back at the Snake River for this photo. This section is also called the Brownlee Reservoir since it is formed by the Brownlee Dam.
Looking forward, this fork of the Brownlee Reservoir would be the last we would see of the Snake River. We were very fortunate in our weather for all but the first couple of days which were just very hot. I am very grateful for the cooler weather as I certainly struggled in the heat of the first 2 days. For me, taking the third day off and photographing birds was fabulous, both because the rest day helped me throughout the trip and because I enjoyed photographing the birds.
As I climbed out of the canyon, I found myself just enjoying the scenery. This photo was taken relatively shortly after a van stop, far enough that we are spacing out as each of us finds our own climbing rhythm, but still within sight of each other. By a few miles further into the climb, I was by myself with all of this nature surrounding me. Butterflies would swoop by. The buzzing and clicking of cicadas would mix with bird songs. There is a peace and serenity I can find cycling even when I am working hard climbing a hill. Rides like this are why I bike.
Eventually, the top of the hill came in sight along with our last van stop of the trip. The final 15 miles were a long descent into Cambridge. I think I averaged just under 30 mph for the 15 miles which explains why this is the last photo for this blog post.
I want to end by thanking our two fabulous guides: James and Elise. James has been guiding for over a decade, and his experience showed constantly. However, even more striking was his passion for this ride, the land, and its history. He was constantly full of stories about what we were seeing whether it was about a ghost time or the geology. This was Elise’s very first trip guiding, but you would not have known it. It did not matter if she was riding sweep or settling up a van stop, she and James worked seamlessly together. They were always asking each of us what they could do to make the trip better for us. For my hard core cycling readers, I would absolutely recommend this trip.
I am now off to South Dakota where I will be doing 5 days of gravel riding with Trek Travel. I have never done a gravel trip, so I am not quite sure what to expect.