March 30, 2019
Day 6: Furnace Creek to Shoshone RV Park
Last Long Day
This was the last of the long days for us, as the final day of riding would be a mere 28 miles.
The first fifty miles were rolling to flat (truly flat, not Death Valley 4% flat) so that was a welcome situation. We also had a palpable tailwind which made it easy to barrel along. If you look at the Strava map of the day's ride below, you will see we were riding underwater again, being well below sea level. In that vein, one of the highlights of the day was stopping at Badwater Basin, the lowest point in North America. A great trivia note is that Mount Whitney, the highest point in the contiguous US at 14,505 feet, is a mere 85 miles away from Badwater, the lowest point in North America at 282 feet below sea level. Go figure.
There is something about DV which seems to attract people who yearn for extremes. At Badwater, taking some pictures, I eavesdropped on a conversation between two runners ... one middle age and the other a young guy. They were strangers but both separately out for a long run in DV. The older guy was telling the younger about having recently taken part in a 100K endurance run somewhere in California, and that someday he hoped to do the Badwater Ultramarathon. The younger guy was impressed and self-deprecatingly said "all" he had done was a few marathons in his career. Yeah, slacker.
Indeed, here we bikers were seeking a bit of the same "high" from exerting ourselves in this foreign and vaguely dangerous-feeling place. There really is something about this environment that draws out your inner adventurer. So long as I can get a hot shower at night, anyway.
Lunch was at the ruins of Ashford Mills, a place where generations of gold miners had done some basic milling and processing of gold discovered nearby. In true Death Valley "sad-ending" fashion, the gold find was so meager that none of the dreamers ever made enough money to recoup what they spent in equipment, supplies and food. There are a handful of buildings scattered in the area, surrounded by miles and miles of rock, dirt, and scrub. This is where we all huddled up and ate lunch before another couple big climbs. They were Jubilee Pass, which at our team meeting the night before was described as steep but shortish, and Salsberry Pass, which was described as long but less steep. A post trip glance at Strava showed them both to average 5%, so I'm going with short, then long, and steep all around.
There's no need to dramatize the climbs at this point as you've heard it all before ... grind, grind, grind, whew. Grind, grind, grind, we're done, high fives all around. Long steep climbs are humbling.
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The end goal was the itty-bitty town of Shoshone, California ... population 31 as of the 2010 census. The word around the campsite is that the resident count is down below twenty now. But, it was a little bit of heaven for us. The RV park had a lovely grassy section for tent campers, with vertical wooden wind blocks that also had little bench seats built in. There was a common area with a fire ring, and honestly the cleanest shower and bathroom combo we'd seen the whole trip. Xanadu. There was even a little "canal" near us with water diverted from a natural hot springs. Indeed it was warm and some of us washed our biking jerseys and shorts in it. That's not environmentally unsound, is it?
The special occasion of it being our last night together meant we were all taking the van down to the "Crowbar" ... a local bar and grill. And when I say local, let's be clear that nothing in Shoshone is more than a 1/2 mile away from anything else in Shoshone, so everything here is truly local. But, man, did the Crowbar have ambience galore! It was awesome! There was one little kerfuffle when it became apparent that a miscommunication had taken place between our group and the cook. He thought our group of 15 contained 13 vegetarians, when in fact there were only two. So instead of heaping portions of chicken, there was an absolute dump truck full of refried beans, rice and roasted peppers. I few of us (especially me .. hand raised here in shame) were slightly crabby with hunger knock about that outcome. But chicken was air-lifted to our table from the kitchen pretty quickly, and in the meantime we salved ourselves with beer and the cheery disposition of our waitress, Ariel. She was truly the most genuine, upbeat, and competent young woman I'd seen in a long time. What a champ, and she rocked her extensive collection of tattoos like a pro without an ounce of pretension. She told us all she commuted to this job from Pahrump every day. I tipped her big time for making sure our spirits were well-tended during the Great Shoshone Chicken Mishap.
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After dinner everyone was in a great mood (even me, what a frickin' grump I can be when not fed properly) and we walked out to greet the arrival of dusk. We hung around a bit waiting for everyone to climb into the van and drove back to our tents to crash and get ready for our last day of the trip.
Today's ride: 74 miles (119 km)
Total: 383 miles (616 km)
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