The Rise Up Ride: Day 32, Up and Over the Bighorns
Date: 24 May 2021
Start Location: Buffalo, WY
End Location: Ten Sleep, WY
Distance: 56.5 km
Time: 3:56
Total elapsed: 8:16
Elevation: 659 m
It wasn't the climb that I wanted or the perfect day that I'd hoped for, but I made it over the top (albeit on foot) and the descent was spectacular!
After waiting over the weekend for the rain and snow to pass, I was too anxious to get going and not patient enough to wait for the wind to stop howling. Tomorrow would have been the better day with lighter winds, but I rode today and paid for it.
Big breakfast in Buffalo and once on the road heading up to nearly 3000 meters, I immediately slowed to a crawl straight into the teeth of the wind, grinding up a 6% grade. Terry, a cyclist from Gillette who was heading to work on his cabin in a pickup, offered me a lift part way up. Hell yes!
Conditions above 2000 meters were such a contradiction; bright and sunny but with gale force winds as I got closer to the summit at 2946 meters. Unable to keep the bike upright, weaving dangerously on the shoulder between the ditch and the road, I had to push it on foot for the final kilometers. But it was glorious! As Murakami wrote, "Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional." A splendid day and the last bit hurt.
But going down… oh, what a ride dropping into the most amazing slice of nature, sailing the bike through the crosswinds and the hairpins along Ten Sleep Creek at full flood. Nothing but bike and rider gliding through the spectacular scenery of Gallatin and Leigh Canyons.
Tonight I'm bunking at Ten Sleep Rock Ranch, a climbers hangout just outside of Bighorn National Forest, east of town. Tomorrow begins a two-day dash across the High Plains between the Bighorn and the Rocky Mountains, stopping in Basin before arriving in Cody and then Yellowstone.
All good, feeling strong and ahead of schedule. With two weeks to cover the 442 km between here and Climbers' Ranch, there may be time to explore a few days in Yellowstone or the Tetons. Onwards!
