Saturday, March 23, 2013

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The plan for today’s ride is to go up Mt Diablo and do repeats-4X’s; up North Gate to the summit, descend North Gate and climb back up to the summit lower parking lot. Descend South Gate and climb up to the lower summit parking lot and repeat.

We ride out from Martinez to Walnut Creek and take North Gate Rd up to the Junction Ranger Station. It’s a 6.5 mile climb with an average grade of 6%; the one steep section begins at the 1000′ elevation sign with grades of 10-13%.

The climb up Summit Rd to the lower parking lot is 4.3 miles with an average grade of 7%. The steeper section with gradient ranges of 9-11% begins at the Toyon Picnic Area, continues pass Blue Oak, Oak Knoll and ends at the Grapevine Picnic Area. The road eases up as you make you way up to Juniper. 

We descend the summit back down to North Gate Rd and repeat the climb up to the lower summit parking lot. We descend Summit Rd down to South Gate Rd.

The climb up South Gate Rd from the lower gate up to the Junction Ranger Station is 5.9 miles with an average grade of 4.5%.

Today is a busy day up Diablo; there’s a ton of cars and cyclists going up and down the mountain. Bad driving and cycling behavior is a common scene for the day. Cars are passing cyclists on blind turns on the ascent and cyclists are dangerously passing cars on the descent. One guy decides to descend pass a string of cyclists ahead of him and cuts into our lane and whizzes by within a foot of Michael-it’s really outrageous!

After getting up to the Junction Ranger Station from South Gate Rd, we decide to bail out on completing the 4x repeats. The straw that broke the camel’s back is the sight of a female cyclist tailgating a car in front of her; she’s like two feet behind the vehicle followed by a car tailgating her from behind! Can someone say DANGER! We certainly don’t need to be caught up in someone else’s bad choices.

We fell short of our goal today but it’s better to live to ride for another day! Diablo will still be waiting for us-next time we’ll schedule to do the repeats on a weekday with fewer cars and cyclists and under less windy conditions.

We still got in 2.5 repeats up Diablo with over 9000′ of climbing!

Garmin Stats:
77.3 Miles with 9076′ of elevation gain

Weather: GREAT! Sunny, clear and breezy. Min Temp-33.8F, Max Temp-78.8F. SW winds

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It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.  ~Edmund Hillary
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Follow this route for today’s ride: