| Summary | None |
| Owner | Matthew Gilbertson |
| Creation Date | 2008-09-23 19:43:32 UTC-0400 |
| Description | 9.19.2008
12:03am to 4:52am For the last year and a half, we thought, "man, it would be awesome to ride our bikes down the Auto Road." What better way to celebrate getting to the top of Mt Washington than to cruise down in style? We heard that bikes weren't allowed on the Road, but what about when the road's closed? If we do it in the dark, nobody will even know... Finally this year we got our chance. It's not any fun to ride up a hill, so we decided to hike instead. we needed to take the hardest trail too, so we hiked up Huntington's Ravine. Dana dropped us off at Pinkham Notch a little before midnight. We stealthily disassembled our bikes, strapped them to our packs, and disappeared into the night. Things got a little tricky in some parts of the ravine. It's tought to scramble over and under boulders at night with a 30lb, 3ft wide collection of jingly metal on your back. We popped out over the top of the ravine at about 3am and had an awesome view to the east. The lights of some little towns were twinkling in the distance, and fog had started to settle in like a snake over the valleys far below us. With 10mph winds and upper 40's F it felt downright pleasant. The moonlight allowed us to navigate rapidly and stealthily over the alpine boulders with our headlamps. We stashed our bikes behind a cairn and ran the last tenth of a mile to the top for the summit photo. Then we bundled up with all our clothes, assembled our bikes, and began our descent. It was exhilirating. Our headlamps weren't really bright enough to see very far, so we relied on moonlight to guide our path. We had been warned by many of the dangers of brake fade from superheated brake pads, so we stopped to rest our brakes. The air was cold enough that the brakes cooled off in a minute. It gave us a chance to grab onto the nice, warm rims with our cold hands and warm them up. we rested them four times. That road is steep! The farther down we got the colder it became. Some kind of inversion had set in and we were freezing. We had to go really slow once we got into the trees, which cast moonlight shadows on the pavement. As we neared the entrance station we faced our final challenge of the night. The base of the Auto Road is practically the drawbridge for a castle. The Peabody river acts like a moat, forcing you to take the bridge, with no other way around. We'd be pretty vulnerable if someone saw us. So we booked it. We raced over the bridge, threw our bikes over the gate, and snapped a quick picture of the Auto Road sign. Before anyone was around to witness our feat, we vanished back into the night. |