Arkansaw High Country Race Day 2 / Pilot Rock to Waveland Campground / 102 miles

 


I woke, packed my gear before dawn and forced myself to eat my last Oark burger in the pre-dawn damp cool of around 50 degrees. I started riding wearing the long-sleeved t-shirt I had slept in as well as a neck gaiter under my rain jacket, reasoning that I’d change out of them when I warmed up. The “when” turned out to be a scant ten minutes later. A few hundred meters of climbing had me starting to sweat and I had to stop, strip off that shirt, and stow it, and put on my still-damp shirt from the day before. This was a foolish camping blunder that I didn’t make again the rest of the race. I am firmly convinced that for bikepacking or backpacking you need to have dry clothes that you only put on when you are off the bike and in a dry place. Those clothes must stay packed away in a dry bag while you are riding and generating sweat. While it’s no fun to put on smelly still-damp socks, bibs, and shirts in the cool of the morning to start riding, it’s the only way to avoid winding up with two sets of stinky, wet clothes.

About thirty miles of mostly downhill riding brought me to the big town of Russellville on the Arkansas River, where I stopped at a Waffle House and ingloriously stuffed myself. I sat on a stool at the bar and marveled at the speed, efficiency and easy camaraderie of the cooks and the waitresses. Nothing but the credit card swipe is electronic in there, and the workers shout and confirm orders in a coded shorthand that makes sense only to them. I then went to the gas station next door to load up on water and snacks before passing through Dardanelle, eventually shifting to coarse gravel roads that started to tip up towards Mount Magazine, the tallest mountain in Arkansas and the highest point in the U.S. between the Alleghenies and the Rockies. Although it’s no picnic, the longish ride up Mt. Magazine is made much more doable by the fact that it is paved and uniformly, not too steeply sloped. The fact that riding over Mt. Magazine is just part of a relatively easy day on the bike testifies to just how hard the whole High Country course is. 

High Country race norms require selfies at key points along the course, which I hope explains the repeated inclusions of photos of me doing my best to look thrilled in my orange helmet.

I had to divert from the course at the top of the mountain and go to the lodge’s restaurant to get food to fuel me through the rest of the day and the next morning. The only food option was the buffet and I loaded up two plastic containers with fried chicken, hamburger patties, onion rings, mashed potatoes, green beans, and sliced cucumbers. The two boxes barely fit into my musette. I mounted up and zoomed down the mountain to the beautiful Corps of Engineers Waveland campground at Blue Mountain Lake.

When I checked in at the gate, I met a park ranger and gravel cyclist named Wade who had been following the race online[1]. We chatted about the course and the local roads for a while before I saddled up again and went to find my campsite. I had unwittingly registered for a RV campsite with electricity and a covered picnic table, and I looked odd there between the campers with nothing but my bicycle. After partially unloading the gear I would need for the night, I rode over to the large camp bathroom, showered with the aid of hand soap out of the dispenser, drip dried and put my clean clothes on. Back at my campsite I fished my spork out of my gear and slowly ate one of my now-cold Mt. Magazine lodge meals as afternoon phased to evening. I had little appetite despite the massive calories I had burned over the first two days but managed to empty the plastic box as darkness fell. I supplemented the “real” food I bought along the way with gels, Clif bars, and cashews as well as a high-calorie powder called Spiz mixed into my water bottles.

Day two had gone according to plan. I had managed to score critically important food and make good time, but I was starting to feel the fatigue from two days of steady riding and I knew that the next day promised to be brutally hard with no support possible until I got to Rich Mountain 100 miles distant.  


[1] Since our spot tracker icons show up on the Trackleaders website, people who are interested in the race can vicariously follow our progress online, a process known as dot-watching.


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