USA - Day 17 - Rancho Mirage - Pinyon Flat Campground
This is the route we biked today
Yesterday we took an unplanned rest day because rain and thunder was coming in and we wanted to avoid that. We knew that this part was going to be heavy so adding rain onto that wasn’t a good idea.
We started this morning at 07:45 at the hotel and gradually made our way up to the trail.
On the trail
We got overtaken by multiple mtb ebikes who were going up to do some single trail. We talked with two Canadian guys and managed to keep up for a while (because one guy didn’t have an ebike 😅).
We knew that the first 7 kilometers of the trail were the steepest. And it was gruesome, regular stops to catch your breath, no shade, ….
At one point there were machines maintaining this road it seems.
Cycled 9.8km, climbed 569m, currently at 626m high.
At the 4 mile point we saw some benches and took a break. We rode a tiny part of another trail so we could see over the valley. We could even see the point where we had exited the other mountains from Joshua State park two days before, really cool.
Looking out over the valley
Cycled 11.7km, climbed 680m, currently at 731m high.
After this the climb stayed real heavy. It took us most of the day to get to the top. At a certain point Bart’s rear brakes where making a sound again so he had to fix that as well.
We entered the campsite around 15:30 and were both pretty tired. Let’s hope we’ll sleep well tonight!
See you tomorrow