Beautiful day on the bike.

Beautiful day on the bike. 4 of us rode a Skyline route that gave us 43 miles with 4121 ft of climbing. More details to come. (posted via my cell phone)

interim update:
It had been raining hard all day yesterday and changed to rain mixed with snow after dark. Somewhere between 8PM last night and daylight this morning it cleared up and got cold. We had ice all over this AM.... but the sun was shining brightly. A few of us decided we just HAD to get out and ride.

One of today's group, a recent transplant from the east coast, had never been riding on Skyline Road, and wanted to give it a go. We mapped out a 42 mile route that would take in 12 miles of Skyline and give us 4400 ft of climbing.

We began pedaling from Rock Creek Tavern at 10:45, and the temperature was 41 degrees.
We thought a bit about snow in the higher elevations, our high point today would be 1400 ft. The roads were mostly dry as we began our ride in the sunshine with a bit of wind to help dry things out. As we climbed up we were sheltered more by trees and lost the wind, and picked up shade.... and beginning at about 1000 ft started getting ice on the road.

By the time we got to just past the intersection of Skyline and Rock Creek Road it became apparent that we were not likely to get to Rocky Point and it's 1400 ft of elevation.
(Thanks to Mark H for the photos of today's ride)

We carefully picked our way along for another half mile or so and finally decided to turn around and find an alternate, lower elevation, ride today.



For those familiar with the area, we climbed Germantown Rd, Jackson Quarry Rd, and Logie Trail Rd.

We stayed off the north side of the hill (Columbia River side) because of ice concerns on the shady side. We picked our descents and climbs based on exposure to the sun.

It was 41 as we started, and 49 when we finished, but in the shaded areas we had snow and ice all day.

It was a good ride however, the glorious blue sky just sparkled!

..........road bike.......rollers.........mtb.....lifecycle.....total
Today........43..............0.............0..........0..........43
Jan.........474..............0............21..........7.........502
Feb.........332..............0.............0..........0.........332

YTD........816...............0............21..........7.........845