Sierra Song, Part II
As I sat and drained the last of my second bottle at the Mosquito Flat trailhead, the headache washed over me, reminding me of my lack of acclimation and need to drop, post-haste. Mosquito Flat is the highest elevation I’ve gained by bicycle without prior altitude acclimation. It’s as high as I’m willing to consider, which is why I never really engage friends’ invitations to do the Triple Bypass or Mt. Evans.
The descents of these mountain roads were generally something other than what I had hoped for. With few switchbacks, cars could overtake me, even when I was doing 50 mph. That was less than fun. And due to the often steep grades, it was easy to spend miles at or near 50 mph. Because I didn’t know the roads and because rock fall was common, I eased up on the speed in many places.
The most enjoyable descent of the bunch came in a surprising location. I had expected Onion Valley, with its many switchbacks, to offer the most Alpine-like descending, rock fall made the descent a greater challenge than expected. It was Lower Rock Creek where the road was clean, the turns frequent and the grade steep but not crazy steep where I most enjoyed the drop. I could do that five-mile descent on a daily basis and not get tired of it.
I keep asking myself what my takeaway from the trip has been. I went to recharge my battery. Between work for clients, editorial for peloton magazine and posts for RKP, I had composed some 50,000 words—about half a novel—in less than three months. For the first time in my professional life, I had exceeded my bandwidth and was paying for it. The time alone (my family was in New Mexico visiting friends) gave me a chance to read, stare at maps and go to bed early, all salves for my fatigued brain. But I keep returning to the thought that I should have uncovered some larger truth, larger than knowing that next time I shouldn’t pack the car until I have a compact crank installed on my bike.
Answers rarely appear like sodas at the bottom of a coin-operated machine, though questions arrive even more easily. There was a moment that haunts me, though. As I descended from South Lake there is a mile-long stretch where the gradient is nearly 9 percent. My speed, already in the 40s, climbed to a max of 52.7. That’s not the fastest I’ve gone, but something unusual happened as my bike accelerated. Somewhere in the high 40s, while I could still feel gravity pull the bike to greater speed, chills washed over me as if I’d had some intense emotional experience. I looked down at my arms and legs and could see goose bumps standing on my sweaty skin.
Research has shown that flow states and the chills are cousins, that those who are prone to experiencing chills tend to be more open to flow states. None of that explains what happened. My sense, at the time, was that I’d passed some sort of threshold, that it was some internal analog to passing the sound barrier. How or why I’ve no idea. It was a one-off experience, at least, so far.
All I’m left with is confirmation of a truth I hold to be self-evident: The mountains are a place of discovery and mystery and what comes from those encounters can never be guessed, which is why I keep returning.
