August 11, 2016
to creek camp: mostly hiking
“The road looks rather benign from here” Rachel says looking back across the valley. “We can still see where we camped” Patrick adds. We’ve been mostly pushing our bikes up the steep switchbacks. After the storms last night, we didn’t know what to expect of the road surface. Deep ruts, big stones and steep that is for sure.
We are trying to get over the first pass today, about 2400 meters high and then a downhill to a river. This will get us in position for the “big” climb up to 3200 meters tomorrow. It takes us 5 ½ hours to climb the 22 kilometers to the summit. The profile shows a plateau of sorts which made us hope it would be flatter but that is not the case. There are several river crossings which mean down and back up.
All around us are green rolling hills with plenty of yurts and livestock. The good thing about all these river crossing is that there is plenty of water, no need to carry much. The bad thing is all the ups and downs….. Even though this area looks deserted there are lots of people around, mostly on horseback or on donkeys. Very little traffic though.
We walk most of the uphills, but the downhills are almost as tough; they are very steep with occasional deep ruts. We cross a big river, a potential camping spot, but there are many yurts and lots of kids. We decided to continue to the next river crossing where we find a nice secluded camp spot. This is not the actual “low” spot we had aimed for, but in hindsight it was a good choice because the next valley turns out to be steep with not much apparent camping opportunity.
Today was an exhausting day; we were rewarded with views of local life and nice scenery. We decide we will try to get a ride up the big hill tomorrow, another day of pushing our bikes does not appeal to us.
Today's ride: 31 km (19 miles)
Total: 1,686 km (1,047 miles)
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