Siskiyou Mtns

I just got back from an epic 2 day bike tour into the Siskiyou mountains with Tim. oh my god i have not ridden that hard or long in a long long time. We left yesterday at 11 and covered about 46 miles with 6800 ft of climbing! much of it quite gnarly, it was so pretty.. we could just barely see Shasta to to south in a veil of smoke, mcgloughlin to the west and much of the siskiyou range! thankfully we were not in the smoke. Our plan was to go to two small lakes that I've driven out to in the applegate valley called Squaw Lakes via a small trail that was on the map but we had not been down.

It was getting late... at about 7 we headed our way down a rolling 7 mile section of rolling dirt road. my legs were burning so bad during the last section! we finally got to where the trail was supposed to be around 8. Needless to say we didn't find it, there happened to be a stream just up the road and a flat spot to camp. we scrambled to set up camp and eat dinner before dark. mmm mmm mac n cheese and tuna never tasted so good!!

The next day we rode back on the same 7 mile section that we got to camp on and made bombed down to the Applegate valley with one detour... we rode up an incredibly steep side road trying to find a connecting road across the mountains back to talent (where my dad lives). It turned out to be a dead end and thanks to a friendly fellow doing bird surveys and his far superiro map, we didn;t ride to the end of it. It was steep as shit!!

We bombed the rest of the way down to the valley and got some snacks mmmm salty chips..... it was but ass hot for the rest of the day! we climbed out of the valley in 100 degree heat! argg. We opted to take the easier more gradual climb back to the Rogue valley that would spit us out in medford rather than talent. Tim showed me some roads that he used for a time trial race he used to put on. Ah what a couple days... overall we covered about 105 miles and 10,000 ft of elevation gain! i think it will be a good intro for the next few months ahead.