Of course, things came to a temporary stop when I saw the concrete barriers shown in the photo above! Fortunately not so tall you can’t lift a bike over them. I’ve posted a rant on Facebook about them and won’t get into all the details here. Clearly we are not wanted on that road, so if you’re riding it, you need to consider it as, at best, an act of civil disobedience.
As I approached LaHonda I still had some thought of cutting the planned ride (Pescadero Tunitas) short, maybe by heading up West Alpine, but y’know, on a hot day, climbing the upper section of West Alpine just didn’t seem terribly attractive to me! So I dropped into the La Honda market for more water and a Mtn Dew and set off for Pescadero. Amazingly, Haskins Grade seemed not-so-bad! Things just got better and better as I went.
Curiously, very few people in Pescadero today, despite it being a very pleasant 74. I did do something a bit different than normal, heading up the coast instead of Stage Road, thinking it might be just a little bit cooler. Probably was; 72-76 degrees between Pescadero and Tunitas.
Tunitas? I took it fairly easy, stopping twice on the way up (once to take a picture, another to deal with the very large amount of water I’d been drinking, some of which needed to be, er, released?), trying to actually enjoy the climb.
Crazy busy up on top due to the Kings Mountain Art Fair, with quite a bit of traffic on Kings itself. This would not have been a good day to be riding up Kings, that’s for sure!
Temps never got higher than 97. I can deal with that! Really glad I didn’t turn back earlier. –Mike–