LE TOUR DE BEAR LAKE

Fellow riders,

I come to you with sobering news and research. As you well know, the tour rapidly approaches and training time dwindles as each minute passes. For this reason, I strongly encourage each of you to spend quality time in the saddle whenever the opportunity presents itself. As you will see below, the mountains we plan to climb are no small challenge. I tasted the wrath of half of the climbing we will do on this venture last Saturday; and let me tell you...the mountain b!%*# slapped me in the face and laughed at my under estimation! The following picture contains the total distance and change in elevation we will encounter on our "trek of all trek's.":


As you can see, we will travel (if starting at my house) a total of 168 miles to Fish Haven, ID.

Total ascent: 9,249 ft.

Total descent: -8,045 ft.

So, we will have a good amount of downhill/flat, but let's face it, those are some frickin hills!

You can clearly see that I've spent a great deal of time thinking about this. And if I may, I wish to propose something...After reviewing the map (a link will be provided below), I feel it would be prudent to tackle at least half of Monte Cristo in the first day. If you are wondering, Monte Cristo is the HUGE hill in the middle of the image. Here is my reasoning: It is only 71 miles to Pineview, where we originally planned to camp the first night. The last thing I'm going to want to face after having ridden 71 hard miles and sleeping in a tent over night is the most difficult climb of LE TOUR and the remaining 97 miles of the journey. According to my analysis, if we could make it about half way up Monte Cristo (~86 miles from the start) and camp there, we would afford ourselves a much easier ride the next day. Granted, this will require investigation to see whether it's feasible or not (campgrounds, etc...). Your research and opinions are highly regarded and warranted. Let's get to work gentleman!

Thank you for your time. May your preparation reward you accordingly! Sincerely,

THE BLACK STALLION

Link to map:

http://www.mapmyride.com/route/us/ut/salt%20lake%20city/671124224882157693