Day 4: Osoyoos-Grand Forks

From one extreme to another, that's all I can say about the weather so far on this trip.  Once again the weather was the popular topic of discussion (and sorrow) today, but for the totally opposite reason as the previous days.  Today it rained, and rained, and rained...pretty much the whole 124km!!

Overall today was another pretty tough day.  We began the day about 800 meters from Anarchist Summit and so without any warmup, we began the 30km climb right off the bat.  It was about 4km's into the ride that is began to spit...by the time we reached the top of the summit our visibility was down to about 30 meters as we were socked right into the rain and clouds.  from the top on Anarchist Summit it was a long and cold(!) descent into Midway for lunch, where we all stood around the lunch table changing out of our wet gear and into dryer warmer clothes.  I think everyone faired a bit better after lunch as we were all in cold weather gear and knew what to expect.  Some riders got caught in a torrential downpour where drivers later said that their windshield wipers couldn't keep up with the rain.

After summiting our second climb of the day we had another 20km descent and I think everyone was just praying to make it to Grand Forks safely.  In one particularly sketchy section I was passed by a logging truck that happened to hit a swell in the road right as he passed me and it was as if I was hit with three 5 gallon pails of water as each of his axels screamed past me...over all it was a day to remember (usually I am a fair weather rider).

I did not take much video today as it was difficult and dangerous to navigate the camera and stay on the road in this kind of weather, but here are a couple shots from the day.

Paul and Bill at the top of Anarchist:

Pulling into our hotel like a bunch of drowned rats:

Tomorrow is one of our biggest climbs, Paulson Summit, I hated this climb last year and I'm sure tomorrow isn't going to be any better :)