zee Gaps!

Many of these were burnt through for the evening


Erich spying one of the goals for the day


Goal for the night: Climb two gaps of the Tour de Gaps ride. Mission accomplished in a different way. We had planned on following the course from Squirrel Spur over, but when we got to the top of the second gap (Willis Gap), we spied a gravel road off the parkway so we followed it for a while.


While on the gravel road, we got on this downhill and killed it. We were probably hitting about 30mph when we both hit some semi disguised braking ruts that nearly ended with us picking lots of gravel out of ourselves. Somehow were delivered to the end and tt ended up taking us the couple miles over to the top of the third gap (Orchard Gap). We refilled bottles at the little market on the Parkway before heading down. I snapped this photo at the top: Dirty legs from the gravel:


So we bombed down Orchard, turned around at the bottom and climbed back up to the Parkway.

Climbing Orchard


We then turned and took the Parkway all the way back over to Squirrel Spur and bombed back down to E's truck. The ride total of 33-34 miles isn't much, but when it includes nearly 4500 feet of climbing in that short of a ride...ouch.