Week 11

Date
March 16th, 2012


Distance
100 miles

Time
06:45:24

Route Map/Profile

Weather

Picture

100 feet below sea level

Ride Report
I took a trip to Death Valley and got in a couple good days of riding. I've been to Death Valley a few times, but never with my bike. As you can imagine, I've wanted to do some riding in the park ever since the first time I visited.

I camped at the Emigrant Campground, which is a free tent campground in between Panamint Springs and Stovepipe Wells. My century route took me down Emigrant Road towards the Wildrose Campground and the Charcoal Kilns. Emigrant Road was a nice road with some decent climbing and not much traffic. The road becomes a dirt road a few miles before the Charcoal Kilns, but I've seen them before so I just turned around and headed back towards camp. After a long descent, I made it to Stovepipe wells and continued on past Mesquite Dunes. In this area the elevation is sea level or lower, so it's nice and warm. As an added bonus, the Mesquite trees were flowering with bright yellow flowers.

I made a left turn on Scotty's Castle Road and then a quick right towards Hells Gate for another climb. The thing about some of these Death Valley climbs is that there aren't many twists and turns in the road like I'm used to. It might sound crazy, but this makes the climbs seem longer. The road doesn't look as steep as it really is and it seems to just go on and on forever. Once I finally made it to Hells Gate I took the Beatty Cutoff towards Furnace Creek and then turned around and headed back to camp, where I was greeted by another one of those long, straight climbs.