Down There

With more warm weather in the forecast, I hatched a plan to seek more shady redwoods. Meeting some shady people is often part of that bargain.

Climbing up Native Sons, a woman heading down in a large pickup stopped next to me. “Did you come from down there?” she asked. Which, on the face of it, is a patently stupid question. I gave her a friendly “yes” and continued on my way.

“Down there” is a gate at the end of the public road. The gate happened to be open today, but we respect private property. I should have replied “We came down from the top and made a u-turn at the gate,” which might have allayed her suspicion that we had somehow trespassed “down there” on our way to Skyline. Or maybe not, since none of us are Native Sons of the Golden West.

It is easy to forget that, to a hefty person driving a beefy pickup truck, it is inconceivable that anyone would deliberately ride a bicycle downhill on a dead-end road just to turn around and ride back up. Today we did that not once, but twice: first on Native Sons, then on Star Hill. Having first climbed Kings Mountain, we climbed some 3,500 feet on our little 25-mile excursion.

These narrow back roads might leave you wondering why they exist, until you pass the decaying stumps of huge redwoods. It is a good guess that these were once logging roads; most of the towering trees are second-growth, but a few are large enough to suggest they were spared (back in the day).

The descents were—dare I say—cold. And that was oh-so-refreshing.