Pine Mountain Club to Bakersfield

Finally, after a 30 minute, 2 1/2 mile climb from Pine Mountain Club its a quick downhill on Cerro Noroeste before the next climb. I left Wednesday morning, the 4th, at 6am to ride to Bakersfield from PMC. It's about a 65 mile ride with plenty of early climbing. The first part is the hardest with the 1000' climb. From that peak, it's a roller coaster for about 15 miles before it turns into a 5 mile downhill to Highway 166. The 29 miles took one hour from Camp Condor turn off to 166. Quite a bit of wildlife was along the way too, coyotes, rabbits, eagles, etc.


You have to be creative taking your own picture so I've done my best. This is about half way down the mountain where the trees and junipers turn into sage and scrub oak. The nice thing was that there was no traffic this early on the holiday. After reaching 166 it was a quick 30 minutes flying down Grocer Grade to Maricopa. After a quick stop in Maricopa to load up on water - it was 104 yesterday - I was off, east on 166 to Basic School road. From there, since 166 across the Maricopa flats doesn't have much of a shoulder to ride on, I rode over to Copus Road to cut down on traffic. Unfortunately the tomato truck drivers don't take the 4th off. There were dozens of big trucks but they were really great, giving me a lot of room on the road. I road east on Copus to Old River road and then north to Bakersfield. The entire ride took about 4 1/2 hours, including rest stops so I felt good about the trip.

Tomorrow it's a quick early ride from PMC up the road toward Mt. Able. We'll see how far I can get. My knee is a little sore but nothing too serious. More tomorrow.