I rented a bike from South Maui Bike. They now feature Trek 5000, all carbon for $250/week. You can call in advance to reserve it and make sure you get the proper frame size. The bike was in decent condition, but don’t expect too much. I started from Paia as planned, and got rolling shortly after 6:30 am. Plenty of daylight at that time of the year. Baldwin Beach Park is the perfect location to take a picture and a toe dip in the water before starting the ascent.

Baldwin Beach Park, Paia HI

Here is what I carried with me:

• Arm warmers
• Knee warmers
• Rain jacket
• Long finger gloves
• 2 extra portions of cytomax in ziplock bags
• 4 energy bars
• 4 dates
• Some chocolate covered coffee beans
• Digital camera
• Cell phone (reception can be a bit spotty up top)
• Cash to pay for the park entrance ($5) and for emergency ($60)
• iPod shuffle
• Additional sunscreen
• Trek seat 75-cubic-inch seat pack
• 2 spare tubes
• Tire levers, compact multi-tool, patches

I ended up eating everything and wore all the clothes I brought. The weather was pretty good, slightly overcast. The arm warmer came handy once I reached 8,000 feet. I wore everything for the descent and I was glad that I did. Unless you like more abuse than necessary, don’t attempt a descent without long finger gloves and a wind jacket at a minimum.

You should check out the weather forecast and pick the best day to ride. You will notice a big difference between weather at the summit and forecast at the base.

• Haleakala Summit weather forecast
• Windward Haleakala weather forecast

The route is pretty straight forward. The only tricky part is the right turn off Baldwin or else you’ll be climbing an extra 1,700 feet for nothing like Mike did. When you see the horse arena on the left, it’s your cue to make a right.

Turn right after the horse arena

The first 3,500 feet of the ride are pretty easy. I stopped at Sunrise market and indulged on Maui potato chips and fresh cut pineapple chunks. Apparently, you get good karma points for going up judging by my short exchange with the cashier:

Cashier: Are you going up hon?
Me: Yes.
Cashier: You’re a good man.

After a short rest, downhill riders in full gears including motorcycle helmets and rain coveralls started to appear. Expect to see a lot of them. As of end of 2007, the tour operators are no longer allowed in the park proper because of too many accidents resulting in death. As a result, their tour start right below the entrance of the park at around the 6,500 feet mark.

Make sure to refill on water at the Sunrise market. Your next opportunity will be at the visitor center in the park at 7,000 feet. The next leg of the climb is pretty cool. Lots of switch back with pretty vistas.

One of many switchbacks

Along the way, you won’t see many elevation signs but if you pay attention, there are marking on the asphalt. A blue number below a yellow sun. I’m assuming that they are for the Cycle to the sun race.

Elevation markers

The marking stops as you enter the park.

Park entrance

I payed the $5 entrance fee and off I went. Next stop is the visitor center several hundred feet up. There is a water fountain by the restroom and plenty of space to sit, relax and recharge.

As I continued the ascent, I started to feel the effect of the elevation. I don’t know if it was the lack of oxygen in my brain but the sight of the 9,000 feet sign felt exhilarating and I could not suppress reading it out loud with the mandatory expletive: nine f#&*ing thousand feet!

The last 1,000 feet go by pretty quickly. Once you see the summit and Science City, you know you’re home.

Summit and Science city

The steepest portion of the ride is on the road joining the lower parking lot to the upper obeservation deck. Or maybe it just felt like it.

Mandatory summit picture

Although the ride is pretty long, once I reached the 10,023 feet mark I was surprise that it was over already. I took the time to look around and take pictures of the crater. I had fun watching people’s reaction of finding a lonely rider that far up. A nice couple took my picture and confessed they thought about taking a picture of themselves in front of the bike so they could pretend they rode up.

The ascent took a little over 6 hours with plenty of time to stop, enjoy the vista and take pictures. Although the climb is never very steep, I found the ride to be somewhat difficult because of its length and elevation. I also think that I screwed up the adjustment of the seat and had it too high. As a result, I developed a pain on my left glute that made it pretty uncomfortable to stay seated. I also did not train much prior to it, relying on miles accumulated previously in the season. Ok, that should be enough excuses to ignore the crushing realization that the best rider in the Cycle to the sun race made it in 2 hours and 51 minute, wow.

After dressing up with all the clothes I brought, I started the descent. I was surprise how easy and pleasant the downhill turned out to be. As I lost elevation, the weather warmed up gradually and I passed a couple riders on their way up.

I made it back to Paia in a couple of hours, in time for a celebratory Gianduia Gelato at Ono Gelato.

Overall, the ride went very well. The only problem was a total failure of my Garmin Edge 305 computer. After I turn it off at Sunrise Market to preserve batteries, it would not re-acquire satellite signals. Because the bike was a rental, there were no sensor mounted so without GPS, I lost elevation and distance tracking. So, no route and no stats to share for posterity. I guess I’ll have to do it again.

Complete picture gallery

Route

• 0: Start on Baldwin Ave (downtown Paia).
• 6.5: Pass Makawao Park and town. Baldwin change into Olinda Rd.
• 8: RIGHT to Hanamu Road (as you’re passing the horse stables).
• 9: LEFT at intersection.
• 9.1: LEFT on Haleakala Hwy.
• 13.5: LEFT on Haleakala Hwy.
• 14: Last chance for food STOP at Sunrise Market (3,500 feet)
• 23: Park entrance (7,000 feet)
• 34: Summit (10,000 feet)

Google map or Cycle to the sun map

Joe, Jay and I setup for an early start. We figured we wanted to leave plenty of time to make the check points and finish the ride. We had a great carbo load dinner at Passaratti’s the night before and set the alarm for 4 am. We arrived at the Turtle Rock park shortly after 5 am. There was already a lot of people there as everyone was trying to get a headstart. The temperature was warmer than expected and after much debate about what to wear, we were ready to roll at 5:30, heading south towards Monitor Pass.

The day was off to a good start. The sky cleared up from smoke the day before and we were all happy to finally see some blue sky and clouds. Lake Tahoe had seen some pretty bad air quality recently, so bad that several events got cancelled, including the Donner Lake Triathlon the day before.

Monitor Pass

The climb up Monitor Pass (el. 8,314 ft. / 2,534 m) was relatively easy. The pavement is in excellent condition as the road is closed most of winter. We reached the summit quickly and got our first sticker.

The first long descent on the other side of Monitor Pass was awesome. One of the great thing about the ride is to be able to experience riding on closed mountain roads. Once we reached the rest stop down by Topaz Lake, time to get our 2nd sticker, turn around and go back up. This is when it dawns on you that the exhilaration you’ve experienced during the downhill will now become sheer pain, ridding the same road back up. When it comes to climbing I’d say ignorance is bliss.

Ebbetts Pass

With Monitor out of the way, we headed towards Ebbetts Pass (el. 8,730 ft./2,661 m.). While Monitor landscape is more reminiscent of high altitude desert, Ebbetts is more of your typical high mountain pass, with lots of trees and stunning views. The road is fairly narrow and is one of the most scenic, least travelled in the Sierra. It even has its own web site.

The first several miles seemed like a gradual climb, with what felt like many flat reprieve. Needless to say it did not last for long. Before reaching the top of the summit, I was welcomed with a steady 12% grade that lasted forever.
Mentally, this was certainly the most difficult part of the course for me. I knew I was not even half way thru the whole ride and started to doubt my ability to finish it. Then when you’re ready to give up, the summit shows up right around the corner. Cycling is as much a mental as a physical exercise. 3rd sticker down.

The back side of Ebbetts is relatively short compared to all the other climbs. Going back up, we passed some crazy guys from the Rolling Bones team (08/04/08 UPDATE: See picture below). One of the guy was towing a trailer in the form of a coffin with a skeleton having a drink inside. I don’t know whether he finished the whole ride, but at that point he was on his 4th pass. I can’t imagine what it must be like to do this towing an extra 20 lb or so. Once we reached Ebbetts summit again, all that was left was to go down, have lunch and power thru to Carson Pass, a 45 miles or so journey away. Time to go get that last sticker.

Carson Pass

The road back to Carson has a slight incline and can be long and discouraging, partly because of the frequent head winds. We got lucky to hook up with an impromptu pace line, which we drafted all the way past Markleeville. At Markleeville, the whole town (population 200) was out cheering the riders, with claps and bells. There were many spectators supporting the riders along the course, which was really neat.

To get to Carson, you have to go back to Turtle Rock Park, which means passing your car. I thought this would be more difficult because at this point you’re 88 miles into the ride with over 11,000 feet of climbing and need a very good reason to stop you from calling it quit. I was determine to finish and the prospect of an ice cream at the top of Carson Pass was good reason enough for me.

The climb up Carson Pass is comparatively the easiest because the grade does not go much above 8%. A little garden hose shower at Woodfords made it easy to reach the rest stop at Picketts Junction, sitting half way thru the climb. With 10 miles left to climb to reach the summit, the finish was within our grasp. However, at that point, a storm was moving in quickly in our direction. It started raining and as we were heading up again, we got caught in a nasty hail storm. It was so bad that cars were stopping, waiting for it to get better. Our handy bike helmets were fending off the giant piece of ice hurling down from the sky and bouncing everywhere. The cacophony of hail hitting the carbon bikes and the metal railing on the side of the road almost made the climb humorous. We kept riding while the hail storm turned into plain rain storm. There was little reprieve until we reached the summit.

Once we reached the summit of Carson Pass, we got our pin and started huddling with other rider in a futile attempt to get warm. We were so wet and cold that the porta-potties became the most, ahem, inviting place to keep dry. Despite being on the verge of hypothermia, we were determined to enjoy our you-made-it-to-the-last-summit ice cream. I went for a Choco Taco which had the sweet taste of victory. We waited for a while for the weather to calm down and our body heat to raise while trying to scrounge any plastic bag that could be used as wind breaker. We knew we had a long, cold descent ahead of us.

On the way down, we got hit with hail again. At some point, I had to stop because my bike was wobbling. I feared a mechanical problem. I soon came to the realization that it was my body shaking uncontrollably that caused it. After several miles of this, we finally reached some sunny spot and started to dry off. This is the amazing part about mountain storm they go as quickly as they come in. We then rode all the way back to Joe’s truck by Turtle Park without any problem.

After a quick change of cloth, we hit the post ride BBQ at Turtle Park. There was a band there and the mood was cheery. We were looking forward to celebrate our accomplishment with some cold beer. Our dream got quickly shattered when the guy in front of me finished the last of the keg. They ran out of beer. How can you f***ing run out of beer? They’ve only been organizing this ride for over 25 years! Completing the ride was grueling enough, but depriving us of a finish beer now that’s simply cruel. How well, we quickly recovered from this last blow. We were not going to letting anything spoil the joy of knowing we accomplished a hell of a great ride that day.

You can view more pictures from the ride.

Stats

Unfortunately, my Garmin Edge bike computer ran out of battery before the end of the ride. Here is a compilation of my data and some from Joe’s computer.

• Distance: 128 miles (206 km)
• Elevation gain: 15,287 feet (4′660 m)
• Time in the saddle: 10 hours
• Average grade: 5.2 %
• Steepest grade: 18 %
• Average Speed: 12.9 mph (20.7 km/h)
• Top speed: 46.4 mph (75 km/h)
• Calories burned: ~ 8,000
• Gears: 52/39/30, 12-25

You can view a complete profile for the ride.

Elevation Profile

The complete official elevation map.

Resources

Surprisingly, there isn’t much information about the Death Ride online. One useful resource is this “just made it in time” sheet that basically let you know the bare minimum cut off time in order to finish the ride.

08/04/08 UPDATE: Picture of the crazy Rolling Bones guy and their contraption.

Photo (c) Copyright West World Images

The Best Buddies Challenge 2007 concluded with great success last week-end. The weather was perfect and the organization flawless, thanks in part to Audi and other sponsors who covered all the cost of the events so that 100% of donations would go directly to helping people with mental disabilities.

The 100-mile ride started at 7 am in the Chateau Julien Winery in Carmel and we were sent off by no other than California’s first lady Maria Shriver. Form there, the peloton was escorted to Highway One by a full CHP motorcade. Leading the pack was actor Rob Lowe (Brothers and Sisters, The West Wing) in an Audi RS4 Friendship pace car, hand painted by Brazilian artist Romero Britto.

As we reached the coastal road, my teammate and I started to form a paceline and ride south towards Hearst Castle in San Simeon Hills. Amongst the riders were many members of the T-mobile pro cycling team. Olympic medalist and 9 time tour de France rider Axel Merckx (yes the son of legendary Eddy Merckx), Olympic medalist Mari Holden, two-time National Champion Kimberly Baldwin and few others. I got to ride along (ok, draft along) for about 15 miles with some of these team members. What a great experience.

The ride along the coast is stunning. Imagine going up and down windy cornices, looking at 200 feet cliffs down to beautiful ocean water. My weeks of hard training paid off and I completed the ride with relative ease (to be clear, the double climbs between mile 70 and 80 still hurt).

The ride concluded with a wonderful celebration held at the Hearst Castle Ranch. We go treated to a lavish barbecue and private concert by classic rock icons Cheap Trick. We got to rub shoulder on the dance floor with Maria Shriver and her husband, Arnold Schwarzenegger the governator, Olympic Gold medalist Carl Lewis and other celebrities.

Thanks to the generosity of many donors, we raised a whooping total of $3,427,371 for this worthy cause. Many thanks again to those of you would contributed to this great cause and made this ride possible.

Now that BB 2007 is over, training season for Best Buddies 2008 is officially starting. The local century event, Tour for Woodside will be a nice way to keep the momentum going.

You can check the ride profile and overview below or fly the course in Google Earth.