Century Ride to Mt Baldy (10,064ft)

Summary
OwnerMITOC Gallery Administrator
Creation Date2007-07-03 00:36:51 UTC-0400
DescriptionJune 30th

Eric Gilbertson

Distance: 112 miles

Cumulative Elevation Gain: 12,000ft

Bike repair issues: 0

Woody was going night skydiving this weekend so I decided I should

also do something crazy. From my trip in the san gabriels in early

June I remembered spotting a patch of snow in the distance on a

mountain called mount baldy, which happened to be above 10,000ft.

Can you imagine how awesome it would be to bring snow to pasadena?

The one catch about mount baldy was that it was about 50 miles away,

and I would be starting basically at sea level. That sounded like a

fun trip to me, so I headed out just before dawn at 5:30am on

Saturday morning.

The first 15 miles were easy and flat as I rode southeast to the

town of Azusa. From there it was basically all up hill. I headed

north into the Angeles national forest, past the san gabriel

reservoir and up into the canyons. By about 9am I reached a ridge at

about 4500ft and for the next 20 miles it was all rolling hills -

which meant no smooth cruising on the way back.

I got to the 4000 ft ski village of Mount Baldy at 10am, and then it

really got steep. The base of the trail up to the summit was just a

few miles up the road at 6000ft, and from there it was a dirt fire

road to the top of the ski lifts at 8000ft. I made it there for

lunch, passing tons of people who were astounded someone would bike

up that (they thought I should just take the ski lift).

I knew that the farther up I biked, the easier the descent would be,

so I managed to power my way up another thousand vertical feet

until the trail got too sketchy to be safe. I stopped just before a

rocky knife edge with multi-thousand foot scree dropoffs on each

side (commonly referred to as "the catwalk"). From there the summit

was only 2 miles, so I thought I could jog the rest of it. So I

locked my bike to a tree and took off.

Unfortunately I didn't beat the crowds like I had on half dome the

previous week - it was 2:15 by the time I reached the summit and I

was greeted with a crowd of 20 people. I searched around for snow on

the north slope, but unfortunately it was completely dry. I was

probably a week late.

I talked to one lady who couldn't believe that I had biked from

pasadena that morning. When she learned I was from MIT she said

something like "oh, well you're smart though", which seemed to mean

she thought what I was doing was stupid, but since I was from MIT I

would somehow make it work out.

I jogged back down the trail at 2:45, realizing that it was late in

the day, but that biking down 10,000ft would be a lot faster now

then biking up it. In fact, I burned the 5000ft from my bike to the

ski village in about 30 minutes. From then on it was some rolling

hills but mostly down hill.

I eventually made it back to Pasadena at about 8:30, just in time to

not need my lights. I had originally thought the trip would be

almost exactly 100 miles, but with the help of google maps found it

to be 112 miles. Coincidentally if I could have just swam a few

miles and run a marathon I would have done exactly an ironman

(though I don't think the biking portion of those climb as much as I

did).

Aside from not finding any snow, I deemed it a successful trip. I

even had enough energy on sunday to bike another 60 miles to the

beach.