San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
WAS IT AWFUL? WAS IT AWESOME? DEPENDS ON WHOM YOU ASK.
This article was written by Brian Coyne and annotated by his wife and cycling partner, Lily Janiak. Her reactions to the text are printed in the margins.
Etna, June 14, 425 miles into the trip — As we ride out of Etna (Siskiyou County), into the crisp, not-fully-light morning, the biggest climb of our trip looms: Etna Summit, which crosses the Pacific Crest Trail at nearly 6,000 feet. And it starts practically out the doorstep: just the thing to get the blood moving on a chilly morning. 1
Just outside of town, the signs on Sawyers Bar Road are the kind that let you know you’ve picked a great bike route: “No services next 50 miles.” “Not recommended for inexperienced mountain drivers.” “Intermittent road closures ahead.” 2 Looking at the route on the hand-drawn
maps that we made 3 for each day of our 12day, 850-mile bike trip through Northern California, we’d already taken to calling this day, our seventh, the Wilderness Day. Our typical riding day is crowded with towns and the things towns are known for, like food, water and supplies. Today’s route is a lonely, 64-mile squiggle through Klamath National Forest 4 on the way to the one-store town of Orleans, where we’ll stay the night at the Sandy Bar Lodge, a collection of rustic cabins by the Klamath River.
We’re bicycling for vacation because we bicycle for everything: grocery trips, daily commutes, weekend jaunts. Lily, The Chronicle’s theater critic, caught the bug from her mom; in 2006 she rode across the country. Now she frequently rolls up to the Bay Area’s theater companies in a helmet and with a giant yellow bike bag. 5 I converted to the church of two wheels later, but I now regularly log 6 more than 1,000 miles in the saddle per month, regularly biking from our San Francisco apartment to my job at Stanford. We’re both entranced by the magic of exploring California by bike. This is why setting out for a giant climb at 7 a.m. in 48-degree weather sounds like a plausible vacation day. 7
So far on this trip, we’ve crossed the Sacramento Valley, followed the Feather River through its famous canyon and skirted the lower slopes of Mount Shasta. Now, we’re in Siskiyou County, one of the more remote corners of Northern California. We spent last night in Etna, population 737, which is the biggest town we’ll pass until we reach the coast in two days.
Animals are more common than cars on this 10-mile, 3,000-foot ascent that begins today’s ride. We’re city people: We like animals but aren’t always sure how to interact with them.
Waiting for Lily to catch up with me 8 a couple miles into the climb, I spy a snail making its way across the road. I don’t want it to get hit by one of the occasional vehicles, so I pick it up to move it to what I think is its destination. 9
Rather than give me a friendly antenna wiggle,
the snail tucks its head into its shell. 0
The climb has been gentle ! so far, following Etna Creek, but we both know it’ll get harder. One of the bicycling rules of thumb we’ve picked up is that these back roads follow creeks as long as they can but then launch themselves up cliffs with precipitous switchbacks. @
Hills feel longer when you’re expecting the top around the next bend. So we repeat the
mantra, There is “The nothing whole in the world universe is just except this hill. this hill.” above # When the tree we reach line, we the see bare June granite snow summit, sticking the Pacific to north-facing Crest Trail slopes, $ in and the distance. thru-hikers We on take a few minutes to stretch and take photos but don’t dawdle long. % We need to get through a long stretch without services before we run low on food and water.
At the bottom of the steepest part of the descent is the town of Sawyers Bar. The various towns in rural California called “Bars” are not
places to get a drink ^ but instead gravel banks along rivers. (That’s why there’s a Mormon Bar &.) Sawyers Bar huddles in the narrow spot between the north fork of the Salmon River and the almost sheer canyon wall. * It’s not connected to the electricity grid; every house has its
own generator. A resident I met on a previous trip told me the road isn’t plowed in the winter and the town is cut off for weeks at a time. (
Following the river downstream, we begin descending to sea level. It almost feels like
cheating. ) We arrive at Forks of Salmon a, which is somehow even smaller than Sawyers Bar. We mail Father’s Day cards to our respective dads and take a photo of ourselves doing so as proof of the attempt, in case the cards don’t make it out. Google lists a General Store in Forks of Salmon, but there’s no evidence of it on the ground. b
We’re rationing water for the last 15 miles to
Somes Bar, where we’ll get dinner and breakfast provisions at a grocery store whose motto is “Better Than You Expected.” c Beyond Somes, all we know about our destination, the Sandy Bar Lodge, is that it’s on Ishi Pishi Road
d. But when we get to the end of Ishi Pishi, there’s no Sandy Bar. I start to wonder whether its website was a scam. e I wonder, “How many hours would it take to ride to the nearest town? Could we eat raw eggs and uncooked onion for dinner?” f
At the Orleans Market, the clerk reassures me: “No, no, you just passed it.” We poke around for signs of life but find only a sleepy black Lab and a sign reading, “Gone Fishing.” Other guests, blissed-out middle-agers, materialize to sip white wine on Adirondack chairs. They introduce themselves: “We’ve been here a
week!” g They look incredulous at our plan to stay only one night but are happy to show off their knowledge of the property and point us to our cabin amid the trees.
We lie out by the river, marveling at its locomotive churn. h Much weaker swimmers than bicyclists, we know the current would swallow us whole and so keep to the rocks. The river is hypnotic, and we start to understand how folks could stay here a week. When the sun starts to dip behind the canyon walls, we befriend the lodge’s pen of goats and then let ourselves into our cabin. We cook the kind of meal, from our “better than you expected” groceries, that a long day of riding makes delicious: pasta, beans, bratwurst, cucumber, onion, mushrooms. i
Tomorrow we’ll hit the coast, Highway 101, cell phone service, crowds. For now, we fall asleep hearing nothing but the river. j