I was out in Humboldt Redwoods State Park camping with friends and flew with my bike so I could get in some riding. We rode from Avenue of the Giants along Mattole Road to the Pacific Ocean. In total it was 50.5 miles and 10,000+ feet of climbing with another 10,000+ of descending! It was the hardest ride I've ever done in my life. I felt so great after we finished that ride, such an accomplishment for me. :)

Here is my Garmin Log (http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/episode/view.do?episodePk.pkValue=3935296) from the ride for those interested.

We got to ride grades that ranged on the high end of 20-40+%! It was crazy steep. We were told about an uphill at the end of Mattole along the ocean known as "The Wall". We didn't ride up it since we didn't know how far away it was and we were waiting for a ride back to camp as it got too late in the day... but that road we drove up and it had to be 50% or great in several sections. it was NUTS! I provided a pic if you've never seen it before.

Just wanted to share a fun ride and a great time in NorCal... will be heading back there next year for certain! :)

Great job, congrats! Very impressive!!!
:beer:

Looks like an awesome adventure. That Humboldt fog sure keeps you cool doesn't it? :)

Nice job! Mattole Road is awesome and the whole lost coast area is one of my favorite places in the state. Been up there on my motorcycle a few times and I was glad to have some internal combustion power beneath me on those hills ;) I recall hearing about an annual Mother's Day bike ride that climbs "The Wall" but my google searches are turning up nothing

Looks like a great ride. Any more pics?

Great job, and it looks like a great ride! How fast were the descents?

wow, that is some ride. I wonder about some of those % grades and the total elevation gain, though - could your Garmin have doubled everything related to climbing? The total change in elevation (lowest point on the ride to highest) was what, 2,500 feet? There was only one sustained climb, and it doesn't look like the rollers would add up to another 7,000 feet or so. 100 feet per mile of climbing for this kind of ride is a hard ride; 200 feet would be extremely painful.

Another way to look at it - the Sierra Rd. climb is a Cat. 1 climb on the Tour of California. It climbs 1,800 feet in 3.5 miles or so - the average grade is 10.5%, and none of it is much over 20% - certainly not for any distance. Check it out here: http://www.caltriplecrown.com/images/DM03Sierra.jpg

The climb on your ride looks like it goes up 2,300/2,400 feet or so, but takes about 7 miles to go up that far, so the average grade should be less than Sierra Rd.

When I hit a grade much over 20%, I have trouble keeping the front wheel down, and the Fargo St. hillclimb in L.A. is about 32%, but is supposed to be absolutely brutal (a lot of riders use special bikes with small front wheels to manage the weight transfer). Don't get me wrong - even at half the elevation gain, your ride was tough. The numbers just don't quite make sense (and I'm a bean counter, so I can't help it).

JB

The Mothers day ride is the Tour of the Unknown Coast, and it is a century. (http://www.tuccycle.org/).

Wow...all the way from NY to ride that course? Nice! Panther Gap is a nice climb. The Wall and the Endless Hill are also challenging climbs. I believe the Wall is no more than 18% for the 1st mile or so, then it levels out a bit towards the peak. At some point you may hit 20-25%, but nothing steeper than that.

We found someone who partook in the Tour of the Unknown Coast (http://bushnell.homeip.net/~bill/bike/ride_stories/tuc.2006.05.13.htm) which rides most of the road that I did, plus it went up The Wall and continued over. He has some amazing pics and had a much nicer day than we had.

As for my Garmin possibly being off that day, I don't think it was. My mileage figures from what I have found online are pretty accurate as are the elevation gains/losses. My friend took my data and plugged it into Ascent to get me the grade % on the various points on the ride. The "rolling hills" as someone called them would be very surprised at how little rolling is actually in those hills. lol

I've been on 25% grades before and these roads were definitely steeper so I know for that much my Garmin was accurate. As for the 10,000 feet of climbing, I think that was accurate too. I rode the Montauk Century on Long Island which obviously is a fairly flat place to ride and it is on the South Shore of Long Island... that ride had over 4,000 feet of climbing believe it or not. When you go up and down even hundreds of feet at a time it all adds up over a distance. If your ride has just a single mountain and the rest is an actual flat road then I would agree that the 10,000 figure wouldn't be accurate. But these roads were just crazy up and down.

Either way... I'll be heading back to Cali again next year. We're already planning on riding PCH for either a few days or a week, then I'll head back to NorCal and tackle Mattole Rd again. :)

The downhill section had a 30% climb in it for a short period of time! lol

The speeds we reached going downhill were only in the low 40's because of the number of turns. We also slowed down a little after coming across what turned out to be a bad bicycle accident on the descent. The rider told the police that someone came either off his bike or off him and went into his rear wheel and caused him to go off the road and down an embankment. The officer said he was pretty banged up and left it at that. The road had some cracks and holes that we needed to avoid as well as 2 short sections with what the signs termed "loose gravel" which in fact were unpaved roads that were hard packed dirt and gravel. These only lasted 50-200 feet so we just coasted across them instead of walking.

I didn't take as many pics as I would ordinarily take on a ride because we spent so much time either climbing or descending. My pics can be found over on picasa.google.com/ljoffe <-- I think that's the URL, I'm at work and can't access it, so if that's wrong let me know and I'll correct it when I get home.

Ok, I don't know the road, and my inherent NYC skepticism kind of kicked in there. I was just reacting from experience (a tough Spring learning to climb and getting in shape to do the Death Ride), and what I hear from others. I'm still having trouble with the idea of someone climbing a grade much in excess of 30% - it's just so far beyond what we normally talk about as a tough climb.

I do know that people can climb that much in 50 miles - last May I climbed Mt. Diablo 3 times, which worked out to a bit more than 10,000 feet of climbing in 62 miles. However, that was HARD - and I certainly did not average close to 14mph doing it. The max. grade on Diablo is around 20% (the tough top part is 16 - 18%, but I think there's a short section going up from North Gate that is steeper).

By the way, I would get your Gamin checked and recalibrated every now and then - the altimeter is independent of the distance traveled function, and it can be off by a lot. A friend's Garmin pegged the top section of Diablo as close to 30%, which it is not. After calibration, it read just under 20%, which is pretty accurate. I'd also recalibrate when you travel - if it was calibrated in humid, sea level Long Island, and then you used it here it might have been off by quite a bit.

JB

PS - I've ridden in the Montauk Century, back in the early 1990's. I don't remember any hills (it reminded me of the Jersey Shore, where I grew up), but we had a nasty headwind all afternoon.

edit - ok, reading that description of the Unknown Coast century made more sense to me - a long, hard ride with some tough climbs. However, he shows 8,000 feet of climbing in 96 miles (and the max. grade he talks about is 20%). Still an awful lot of climbing.

edit again: wow, those pics in that Unknown Coast link are something else! Makes me want to go do this ride!

My avg was nowhere near 14mph! I only wish. :) It was closer to 11mph and I was surprised at that.

As for my Garmin, it was actually a brand new device as I had them send me a new one because that is what they insisted on doing to replace the mounting clip. lol Don't ask... I don't think his numbers are accurate but I sent him an email asking what he used to measure everything with. I have a feeling he used a program called Klimb which bases its number on USGS terra maps.

It was no more humid when I left Long Island than Humboldt was... it was actually much more humid in Stockton where I stayed the day before we drove up.

As for Montauk, I agree there aren't any climbs to speak of. But there are lots of gradual rises and falls which add up to close 4,000 feet of climbing believe it or not. I've checked many different sources for that as I didn't believe it either.

Edit I received a reply back from the guy and he only measured one section he said and it was calculated using a topo map and he said it was an approximate number as the climb had much steeper sections according to what he said. He said that someone he was riding with had an altimeter that they used to get their stats off of.

Sorry, I picked up the avg. off of the file you'd attached.

I looked at the TUC website, and as far as I can tell they make no claims for the total climbing. However, on one of the route maps: http://www.tuccycle.org/map.html they label the Wall as being an 18% grade (for a mile? Yuck - I struggle with the 16-18% section at the top of Diablo, which is probably only a quarter mile). None of the other climbs are labeled, which makes me think they probably are not quite as steep. I'm not saying that because it's on their website it must be the truth, but it does seem like a more reasonable answer.

Either way, it still one heck of a lot of tough climbing.

JB

PS: for a glimpse of a 32% grade, check out the Fargo Street hill climb in L.A. http://www.pbase.com/coaster/fargo_street_hillclimb_2007

Not to bust anyone's chops but I think a little perspective is necessary here. I am a volunteer for the US Geological Survey mapping project on the North Coast of CA. I think for the sake of comparison I present the following bench markds most Northern Californians know. Mt Shasta, the tallest mountain in CA is just over 14,000 feet. Donner Pass is 7,085 feet and the surface of Lake Tahoe is generally assumed to be at 6225'. Kings Peak, the highest point in Humboldt Countyis 4087' and, by the way, the highest point on the Western coastline of the continental US excluding Alaska. If you look at the topos for the Cape Mendocino area you will see that Mattole Rd peaks at about 1500'. Now I don't know what model of Garmin was used, I like my MAP60CSX for most general work and I would not trust an elevation unless I was able to check in with a local controlled airport and find out what the Kollsman setting was (the Kollsman indicator is the dial that sets altitude in standard aircraft altimeters). I ride my bike with my MAP60CSX attached and carry a weather readio with me so that I can check the barometric pressure when I check my altitude. Depending on the atmospheric pressure at the exact time of the measurement and at the exact point in the pressure through the readings could get skewed substantially. Some GPS are able to read altitude by difference between the positions in the satellites but those types of altimeters are generally not in the domain of hobbyists. I would log onto www.topozone.com (http://www.topozone.com) and enter Cape Mendocino as the location. Then you can check the elevations contours where they intersect Mattole Rd. It doesn't get much more accurate than that and any arguments should get settled with some concrete data. Now that being said no one should minimize that bicycle ride. Most experts agree that the Lost Coast Ride is without a doubt one of the toughest centuries in the world.

I guess I shoujld learn to read all the items in a thread. If you are taking all the ascents and adding them up then 10,000' is not a problem, I'm sure that the total ascents added up to that and more.

We found someone who partook in the Tour of the Unknown Coast (http://bushnell.homeip.net/~bill/bike/ride_stories/tuc.2006.05.13.htm) which rides most of the road that I did, plus it went up The Wall and continued over. He has some amazing pics and had a much nicer day than we had.

As for my Garmin possibly being off that day, I don't think it was. My mileage figures from what I have found online are pretty accurate as are the elevation gains/losses. My friend took my data and plugged it into Ascent to get me the grade % on the various points on the ride. The "rolling hills" as someone called them would be very surprised at how little rolling is actually in those hills. lol

I've been on 25% grades before and these roads were definitely steeper so I know for that much my Garmin was accurate. As for the 10,000 feet of climbing, I think that was accurate too. I rode the Montauk Century on Long Island which obviously is a fairly flat place to ride and it is on the South Shore of Long Island... that ride had over 4,000 feet of climbing believe it or not. When you go up and down even hundreds of feet at a time it all adds up over a distance. If your ride has just a single mountain and the rest is an actual flat road then I would agree that the 10,000 figure wouldn't be accurate. But these roads were just crazy up and down.

Either way... I'll be heading back to Cali again next year. We're already planning on riding PCH for either a few days or a week, then I'll head back to NorCal and tackle Mattole Rd again. :)

The downhill section had a 30% climb in it for a short period of time! lol

The speeds we reached going downhill were only in the low 40's because of the number of turns. We also slowed down a little after coming across what turned out to be a bad bicycle accident on the descent. The rider told the police that someone came either off his bike or off him and went into his rear wheel and caused him to go off the road and down an embankment. The officer said he was pretty banged up and left it at that. The road had some cracks and holes that we needed to avoid as well as 2 short sections with what the signs termed "loose gravel" which in fact were unpaved roads that were hard packed dirt and gravel. These only lasted 50-200 feet so we just coasted across them instead of walking.

I didn't take as many pics as I would ordinarily take on a ride because we spent so much time either climbing or descending. My pics can be found over on picasa.google.com/ljoffe <-- I think that's the URL, I'm at work and can't access it, so if that's wrong let me know and I'll correct it when I get home.

Ridden it with a altimeter 8 or 10 times - 9500 feet plus or minus is my best guess. It ain't the amount of climbing though, it's the fact that close to half of it is north of 10%, and half the climbing is in the last 20 miles and a lot of that is north of 15%. Never underestimate the crushing headwind along the coast from mile 70 to 80.

I've ridden lots of places, and the Dolomites is the only riding I like better.

Ridden it with a altimeter 8 or 10 times - 9500 feet plus or minus is my best guess. It ain't the amount of climbing though, it's the fact that close to half of it is north of 10%, and half the climbing is in the last 20 miles and a lot of that is north of 15%. Never underestimate the crushing headwind along the coast from mile 70 to 80.

I've ridden lots of places, and the Dolomites is the only riding I like better.

That makes sense for the full century - everyone I know who's ridden it agrees that it is one of the toughest centuries around. It was the 10,000 feet in 50 miles in the original post that kind of had me wondering (to say nothing of the 40% grades).

JB