This morning we woke up at 4:15 inside of a hotel. This was the first time in a while where I got really good sleep. I probably went to bed at 9:15 and woke up at 4:15. I only woke up once and fell back asleep right away.
Right away we were slammed with hills again. Pretty much for all of the passes so far, we have had to do some sort of climbing to get to it. After around three miles of riding uphill, we arrived at the bottom of the pass.
The first mile and a half of the pass was extremely hard. It was probably at an 8% grade, and was absolutely non stop. This sunk our hopes of this being an easy pass. After the first 1.5 miles, we had a slight grade uphill. This was really good for my legs to be able to recover. After a section of nice uphill, the grade became steep again.
This was definitely not as steep as the beginning, but was hard to do again. After five more miles of riding on this, my group (Max, both Daniels, and Blake) decided to take a break. After getting water in our systems, and a little food we were on the road again.
The next section was a lot like the second steep section. After grinding it out, we finally got to the top! Today felt a lot easier, because we decided to go slower up the pass. I would rank the passes from easiest to hardest, in order of days done, 4, 3, 2, 1.
After the pass, we had a crazy steep downhill. I got up to 43.6 miles per hour! This is a new record for me. After going all the way down the pass, we had breakfast in Twisp. Every other bike trip has stopped here for there cinnamon rolls, and we did the same. I got a cinnamon roll, and a bacon eggel. This was one of the best breakfasts that we have gotten yet.
After the pass, we had a steady climb to the end of the day. We wanted to get to our campsite as soon as possible, because we did not want to be riding when it was extremely hot. The high for today was 95!
Four passes down one to go! Huge day tomorrow