August 16, 2009
Day 38: To Lava Beds National Monument
I was up at 7 and on the road at 8:30AM after asking neighbors to fill my water bottles. Overnight it got down to 42F, but the morning was sunny and it warmed quickly. I'm traveling uphill, so it's easy to keep warm.
After 1.5 miles of gravel I resumed climbing on paved Forest Road 15 to the Medicine Lake Highlands. For quite a long distance the forest has been thinned, so the view is more open and it's less prone to a catastrophic fire. I saw maybe 1 car every 30 minutes. Many logging roads had signs announcing timber sales, but I saw no log trucks today.
At Obsidian mountain I turned right, off the paved road and onto a sand road that climbs along the north side of Little Glass mountain. Several turnouts offer easy access to the piles of obsidian.
The grade gets gradually steeper and the washboards get gradually worse, forcing me to lower the tire pressure to 30 psi. This road follows the main spine of the Medicine Lake Highlands. I was huffing and puffing by the time I got to the turnoff for Little Mt. Hoffman lookout. I debated not going to the lookout because it's a mile of even steeper grades. But I want to see a good view!
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The road was extremely steep, circling 1.5 times around the cinder cone. With the help of a few photo stops I made it to the top without having to push the bike.
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The spectacular views were worth the 20 minute lung-busting climb. In the Medicine Lake Highlands I've climbed very high, but the forest obstructs the mountain views most of the time. But from the fire lookout I have a 360-degree view, including the best view of Mt. Shasta on this tour.
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Unfortunately, at Little Mt. Hoffman I discovered that my underseat rack was broken. One of the four attachment points broke off the rack. It was easy to mend with zip ties, and I suspect they will last for the remainder of the tour. But the rack is now more wobbly than before, and I still have several more miles of washboarded gravel roads before I get back to pavement.
After descending back to the main forest road I still had more steep and rocky climbing up the Medicine Lake volcano caldera, heading east to Medicine Lake. There isn't much of a descent to Medicine Lake (6656 feet elevation). The lake was a disappointment. Pavement resumes for a few miles along the lake, but it has several large Forest Service campgrounds, water skiers, and jet skis. The lake is in the Medicine Lake Volcano caldera, but it doesn't really look like a caldera. It just looks like a high mountain lake surrounded by forested hills. Medicine Lake is a shield volcano, not the more obvious-looking strato volcano like Mt. Shasta. After heating a can of soup for lunch I continued on towards Lava Beds National Monument.
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Leaving Medicine Lake heading north, Forest Road 49 climbs up to 7100 feet to get out of the caldera. Pavement continues for a couple miles, but the road was only one lane. I didn't encounter any other vehicles on that section.
Then gravel resumes and the road begins a long and very washboarded descent to the Klamath Basin. I went only 6 mph for most of the descent because I didn't want the underseat rack to break again. It was painfully slow and tedious. At least there was no traffic.
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Pavement resumed for a couple miles, but it was so rough that I could only descend 10-15 mph. My mood picked up for the last few miles of washboarded gravel because I was once again on the dry east side of the mountains. No big trees to block the views. Fragrant sagebrush and juniper. Yellow blooming rabbit brush. Just inside the boundary of Lava Beds National Monument I stopped to look at "Mammoth Crater" which was the source of most of the lava flows in the area. The rough forest road ends at an intersection with Hill Road, a major north-south county road. There I turned south on blissfully smooth pavement for 1 mile to the Lava Beds National Monument visitor center and campground at 4700 feet elevation. $10, with flush toilets. I set up camp under the shade of small Desert Mahogany trees, enjoying the wide open desert views. That really cheered me up after several days of pedaling through forests. I made a much-needed shower, cooked dinner, and enjoyed seeing stars after dark.
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Today was sunny with a high temperature of about 80F. Perfect weather for bike touring. Today's route had 17.5 miles of gravel in 4 segments. More gravel than any other part of this tour. Average speed was extremely slow because of the steep climbs and having to go slow on the washboarded descent to keep my wobbly underseat rack from breaking again. I'm really glad I took the detour to Little Mt. Hoffman. Otherwise I would have climbed 1 1/2 days into the Medicine Lake Highlands without ANY expansive views. Overall, the trip through the Medicine Lake Highlands was a disappointment because most of it is forested and only the highest parts look volcanic.
Distance: 41.7 mi (67 km), 17.5 mi (28 km) on gravel
Climbing: 3273 ft (992 m)
Average speed: 6.9 mph (11 km/h)
Max speed: 28 mph (45 km/h)
Today's ride: 42 miles (68 km)
Total: 1,636 miles (2,633 km)
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