28.84 mi / 2:41:42 time / 10.6 mph avg. / 34.0 mph max / 1887 ft climbing
Staying in Kaibab National Forest

Today would be a short day, so I slept past 7, getting nearly 10 hours of sleep. I was actually camped right near some sort of forest garage / work area, and a crew pulled in mere seconds after I finished taking a dump. Whew, they almost got to see my bare white ass!

I rolled the two miles into Jacob Lake, of which the Jacob Lake Inn is basically the only establishment (well, and the National Forest campground, which opened today). The Inn has a store and cafe, so I got some second-breakfast there, and stocked up for another day and night in the wild. I also spent a lot of time chatting with people outside, particularly a couple of guys doing Census work (tickled pink to be getting paid to drive backcountry roads, with very little else to do since there is no one to count out here!) and a couple from Anchorage, who gave a good scouting report on the road ahead. See, technically the road from Jacob Lake to the North Rim (AZ 67, 44 miles long) doesn’t open until tomorrow, but I was hoping to get a head start. This couple had gotten in there by taking backroads, and had done a mountain bike ride. They said no one had given them any hassles, and though the gate on the main road was closed, no one was manning it. So it sounded like I’d be fine.

I went ahead, and found that the closed gate was even nice and tall, so after removing my handlebar bag, I barely had to lean the bike to get it through. I still had a bit of climbing to do, up to 8840 ft. (marked accurately this time!) and it was into a headwind, so I’m glad I had this extra day to shorten tomorrow. Much of the forest was burned, until I reached the summit, past which it became green again, and then broken by high alpine meadows dotted with small lakes and patches of snow under the trees. Beautiful riding.

Still, for a closed road, there was quite a bit of traffic. Far less than there will be tomorrow for sure (the ranger said he’s seen 50 cars lined up when they open the gate at 8am revvin’ to go like the Indy 500), but I saw a vehicle about every 15 minutes. About half trucks delivering food, drink, and other supplies to prepare for the National Park opening, and half private vehicles who presumably got on the road via gravel Forest Roads.

I stopped four miles short of the National Park entrance, and about 19 miles short of the Canyon rim. I found another sweet spot with a massive fire ring and log seating set up already. It was only 2pm, so I set up my tent and spent the next couple hours dozing in the filtered sunlight shining through the pine trees. At Zion, nearly 5000 ft. lower, it would have been brutally hot, but here at 8800 ft., it was a perfect 72 degrees.

Eventually I roused myself, wrote some journal entries, built a snowman, cooked some dinner, and even built a campfire! A perfect day in the National Forest. A couple in a pickup-camper actually just pulled in a little way down the road from me, but I don’t think we’ll give each other much trouble.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 14th, 2009 at 2:54 pm and is filed under 2009 Bike Tour, bike. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.