Mark cresting the fourth ridge line on Black Mt.
Rode over the top of Black Mt. with Mark in a bit of a logging road epic.
We were just 30 verts under my best one hour pace ever (2200 verts on Anderson Mt. in June 2000 on the Jekyll), and we continued to climb nearly a vertical mile to the third and fourth ridge lines under a high haze that blunted the August heat.
The first Black Mt. Over The Top mission began to look like a lark when we immediately found the mainline on the way down the other side of the mountain. A short time later, however, we made a serious error in leaving the 5700 Rd. to descend a heavily traveled road where logging was underway.
After we descended nearly 1300 verts, we found that there was no way through: the
loggers had the road totally blocked with a half dozen cranes, skidders, etc. The meant we
had to climb back out on a horrible new gravel road that was almost entirely composed of
large, uncompacted rock.
When we got back up to the 5700 Rd. again, it was about 3 in the afternoon and we were getting a little tired. We decided to press on at least a little farther to see if the road did in fact go through.
Happily, the farther we went, the bigger and more obviously well-traveled the 5700 Rd.
appeared. When we got below the logging operation that had blocked us two hours before, we
knew we had it made.
Mark and I traded bikes here, with him taking the Specialized FSR XC with IRC Notos racing semi-slicks, and me taking his medium sized Cannondale Jekyll. I told him he should have traded when we were still climbing since that's where the FSR shines, but he kicked my butt on the rest of the descent.
When we got to the very bottom there was one last surprise in store for us. We weren't at the Boulder Creek gate where we had parked Mark's pickup truck. Instead, we found ourselves a couple miles further up the Mt. Baker Highway across the from the scenic viewpoint for Mt. Baker and the North Fork Nooksack River, so we had to ride the road back to the car.
Approximately 5700 verts. |
