Silver Falls the easy way

I've biked up to Silver Falls State Park many times, usually from home, resulting in an 85 mile ride.  Today I joined a group of folks starting from Silverton. That eliminated the 25 mile mostly flat commute to Silverton, and left us with about 2800 feet of climbing in about 25 miles to get to the park.  It's about as easy as this ride gets.

After a very wet and blustery day yesterday, the forecast this morning was for 0% chance of rain until 1PM, then the chance of rain jumped to 20%, and would rise throughout the afternoon.  It was obvious that finishing sooner rather than later would be a good plan.

However, plans were set to start out at 10AM. I thought it still looked good to finish before 1PM.

We started immediately climbing as we pedaled out from Silverton. It was a perfect day for climbing this hill.  The temperature was ideal at about the low to mid 50's.

I fell into line taking up cheering duties.  I would keep Sara company today. She was concerned that she couldn't keep up with the climbing, but all she had to do was keep moving, which she did quite well. Most of the day we ended up leading the last half of the peloton.

The climbing is not steep, but relentless.  14.5 miles in Sara needed a rest.  I rode a few circles as I waited for her.

At 15.8 miles I rode a few more circles.

Finally at 16.7 miles we reached the high point.  At mile 19.5 we regrouped at an overlook.  Sara was a trooper and stopped just long enough to be in the group photo, then was off riding again.

As we pedaled along I remarked that though it was really the wrong time of day, that I was surprised that we hadn't at least seen a deer or two. It was ideal deer habitat.  Dave was in the front of the group and said he saw a few, including this one bounding across the road.

 We passed near South Falls, but it involved a short hike to get a good view, and if we were going to beat the rain we had to keep moving. North Falls was more cooperative as we could see it from the road.

As we pedaled out the north side of the park, the first raindrops fell on us.  Right on schedule, it was 12:58 PM.  It dripped lightly for about 20 minutes then as we were descending quickly, the rain picked up for a time.  During the descent I reached 40.4 mph, and those raindrops were feeling like buck shot!
I had full raingear along, but didn't feel the need to stop and put it on.  We only had abut 6 miles to go, and were moving pretty quickly.  My windbreaker I had on does a pretty good job of shedding rain.

Sara and I ended the ride right where we had been most of the day, about the middle of the pack.  She had biked the route last Thursday and was very pleased to have completed it in 30 minutes less time this time around.

The numbers looked like this:
Miles, 34.4
Elevation gain, 2883 ft
Max speed, 40.4 mph
Avg speed, 10.7
Moving time, 3 hrs 14 minutes

It was a good day with good people

.........Road Bike.....Rollers.............MTB..........Lifecycle......Total
Today ......34...............0...................0.......................0...........34
Jan............0................0...............,...0.......................0............0
Feb..........124...............0...................0.......................0...........124
March......34................0..................0........................0...........34
YTD...... 158...............0...................0.......................0...........158