Aug 11. Ram Wigwam to Eureka

I took no pictures today. It rained from the start of the ride for most of the first half of the ride. Luckily the first half of the ride was the"easy" half. The contour map looked flattish, but the reality was rolling, with the up hills harder than I had expected. The two-track was closed to vehicles, so we had a ‎good quiet trail to bike on in the rain.

We left the two-track and the wigwam river valley to start following rabbit creek on a 1 mile single track trail.‎ The single track wasn't too hard except for a few creek crossings. The real challenge came when we reached the "wall". The only connection between the rabbit creek single-track and the logging road that we would take over Galton Pass (6319 ft) was a very steep 0.25 mile hiking trail. This section was easily the hardest obstacle of the whole trip.

After the "wall" we still had a lot of climbing, but compared to steady down pour during the morning and especially compared to the impossible "wall", the logging road climb to Galton pass was easy, steady work. When we reached "Linda's Nose" I knew we were close to the pass, and Laura and I stopped at the next flat spot to put on our warm clothes for the descent.‎ I was a little worried about the descent because we had heard how big and steep it was, and I was worried about getting cold since we were pretty soaked from riding in the rain. My worries were unfounded. The flat spot Laura and I had stopped on turned out to be the pass, and we started our descent after eating the last of our food and putting on all of our warm gear. The descent was great! My bike was awesome, and my warm clothes kept me from getting chilled.

Sooner than expected, we were back in civilization on highway 93 heading to the Canada-USA border crossing.