Carbon River

200k From Redmond to the Carbon River ranger station with the Seattle Randonneurs. A very pretty day. 200 kilometers (about 125 miles) may not sound like much, but it's a bit uphill getting there, and of course the downhill is nice, but you never make back coming down what it cost you going up. In this case, total ascent was just over a mile. My stats below show the profile.

The bit past Wilkeson tips up rather steeply. On the graph, that's the cliff around miles 50 and 75. That got my attention on the way up, but it was mostly steady work riding with strong riders with nothing to prove but no reason to dilly-dally.

Incidentally, the store in Wilkeson has an informal museum on the town's history as a sandstone mine. The store is collecting donations for a skate park.

The picture at the top of the post is the new ranger station. It's closed of course, along with most of the government, so there was nobody to sign our cards. We can work around that of course, but there were no other services either. Not so bad in late fall, but in Summer it would be both a figurative and literal mess.

Thanks to John Pearch for organizing a very nice ride!