Lee and Kat on Palomar - where we turned aroundAfter another night of wakefulness I was hearing something outside that sounded oddly like (gasp) rain at five o'clock this morning. Sure enough, it was raining in Southern California, and cold too. We loaded the vans after a quick breakfast and headed out with full rain gear in tow, hoping that things would clear up by the time we arrived at Jilberto's Taco Stand, our departure and rendezvous point for the ride. We went into Jilberto's before the ride and for some reason, a couple teammates and I grabbed some small plastic bags to take along, just in case we needed to cover our toes or something. The plan for the day was to climb Palomar Mountain, supposedly one of Floyd Landis's favorite climbs. The ascent is supposedly 6100ft in about 12mi with something like 21 switchbacks (not counting turns or curves, switchbacks) to the summit.
The pavement was wet but the sky seemed to be clearing as we started on our way, clueless as to what the next two hours would hold. Have you ever seen those MasterCard "priceless" commercials on tv? You know which commercials I'm talking about - keep that in mind as the story unfolds here. As things went up our group got more and more stretched out along the side of the mountain and the temperature began to drop. I had a feeling that we were in trouble when I began to notice that the cars coming down the side of the mountain we were ascending were covered with snow.
I'd settled into a good rhythym and was actually climbing pretty well (thank you very much to the guys back home who regularly drag me around), feeling quite good. When we got to within about a mile of the summit, it became clear that going all the way to the top was a dangerous proposition today. There was a lot of snow and slush on the road, it was very foggy and the air was tremendously cold and damp. Most of us had rain gear but not really any thermal or windstopper clothing on so we were all pretty cold - we knew that the descent was going to be treacherous because of falling rocks and slippery conditions so we chose to turn around and carefully head back to our departure point. I'm pretty fearless when it comes to descending and cornering at speed so I dove down first and just let it rip all the way until I could no longer feel my hands - I was wearing long finger gloves that were completely wet so my hands were totally frozen. I still had a fair amount of descending to do at that point so I.....pulled out the plastic bags and put them on my hands!! I really had no choice - it was either that or just stop and hope to be retrieved by one of the vans after everyone else got back to the parking lot.
What can I say? My hands actually warmed up and I was the first to make it back. As the commercial goes....
Blue Precision Cycles RC-7 bicycle equipped with SRAM Force, Zipp 404s with wireless Power Tap and other ridiculous high-end stuff: $5000+
Fully custom Rocket7 carbon soled cycling shoes (embroidered with "velogoddess"): $550
Ultra-chic Assos rain jacket: $250
SRAM 12/27 cassette - a mountain climbing necessity: $100 (you are DAMN RIGHT I used that 27 tooth cog today!!)
Two stupid plastic sandwich bags swiped from Jilberto's Taco Stand: Priceless
Thanks for reading - I'll try to check in again soon!
