On Bicycling: The Call of Yosemite –and Mount Whitney, Too
By Alan Snel for LVSportsBiz.com
Whitney Portal, California 8,374 feet elevation — Still giddy and in a little bit of fun shock, I walked into small Whitney Portal package store and looked for my $5 souvenir pin Wednesday at mid-day.
The guy behind the counter who looked like a younger clean-shaven Willie Nelson locked eyes with me and the only thing I could muster, “Man, it’s hilly around here.”
And the Willie Nelson guy burst into laughter.
It’s the end of the line here at the sweet little store with Whitney Portal T-shirts, Clif bars and ball caps bearing the images of bears at Mount Whitney.
It’s a steep climb for miles to reach Whitney Portal. I told myself to bike to the next switchback and bike to the next pole and slowly ascended the narrow two-lane road climbing higher and higher into the Sierras west of the small town of Lone Pine.
Biking up a mountain is the truth. Most of our lives are filled with operators and bullshitters, but there’s fast-talking the mountain. It’s the truth because you get exactly out of bicycling what you put it into it.
And if you keep the pedals going you will eventually get to the top of the road — or Whitney Portal in this case.
I lingered at the top, looking at mountain all around me with a 360-degree perspective.
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Tuesday, October 22
If you think you take trips you’re fooling yourself. The truth is that trips take you. They worm their way into your head by arranging the constellation of your life’s responsibilities into perfect alignment so that you have no choice but to follow orders and pack our bags.
It all happened this week with the Golden Knights on the road and the allure of stunning 75-degree weather at Yosemite National Park combining to Hoover my bicycle and gear into my car for a 360-mile drive from Summerlin to California State Road 120 in Yosemite.
It was 3 p.m. when I was bicycling on the roller-coaster two-lane road that carved a paved path through evergreens and the Sierras. It enters the world-famous national park at Tioga Pass, the highest point of any state road in California.
My favorite segment of this Tioga Pass road is a stretch from Tuolumne Meadows to Tenaya Lake. The road slices through the evergreens, with access to hiking trails and campgrounds along the way.
Tioga Road is right up there with other national park beauties like Going to the Sun Highway in Glacier National Park and the road passing through Rocky Mountain National Park.
Stay tuned for more coverage of this mid-week bicycle journey.
