I woke up today and the weather was mid 40s and being in Washington it was misty. I piled on my winter gear for what I thought would be a long and cold 70 mile day up and down the back side of Stevens pass.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevens_Pass It was 16 miles to the 4000+ elevation top. It was HARD. WOW. The way up was freezing, I saw my breath at one point! It took almost 2 hours of hard climbing to get to the top. They said once you are at the top the hard part of the day is over and the rest is downhill. The ride down was FREEZING!! I maxed out at 43mph which is the fastest I've ever gone on a bicycle.
About halfway down I saw blue sky and joked with the people around me that we better cherish that cause it will be the only blue sky we will get today. Was I wrong, and thankfully. I slowly shed all my cold weather cloths as the cold and miserable day turned into sunny and 70's. The farther and farther I descended the warmer and more sunny it became. It was an amazing transformation. It was amazing to see how everyone’s moods changed throughout the day.
Not only was the 50+ miles after Stevens pass a gradual downhill, but we also had a TAILWIND!! I have never been so lucky. It was absolutely amazing, I rarely saw the speedometer slip below 20mph. This gets better though. The entire way down was the most amazing scenery I could imagine. Most of the time we were side by side with a white water river down inside 2 huge canyon wall. I was constantly getting out my camera and snapping photos the entire way down. Today was by far the best day of the FBA, which is hard to believe because the other days were pretty amazing too.
