Andy G from Palomar

Wow! What a great day!

Our plan was to MTB up the Nate Harrison Grade to the Palomar KOM, watch the ToC go by, then ride back down and see the racers again at Cole Grade. Some (most...) said it couldn't be done, that the pro peloton would get down the mountain faster than a bunch of middle aged, overweight wannabe mountain bikers...

Our original plan was to park on the Nate, but hwy 76 was going to be closed all day east of Cole Grade so we switched to plan B and parked at the roadside just west of Cole Grade. There were a few others there, mostly road riders heading for South Grade but it wasn't nearly as busy as we expected.

At 8:45am we (me, Tim Duncan and FOS Scott Klotzback & Rob Moffit) began the long haul up the Nate; we were loaded down with heavy backpacks and it took us a full half hour longer than usual to make the ascent. The weather was perfect, cloudy and cool; we had the whole mountain to ourselves, we were very surprised to see no other riders on the hill. At 4500ft we hit the snowline and the road turned from hardpack dirt into gloopy slop, very difficult to ride through! This only lasted for a mile or so and we re-grouped at the ranger station before heading on down to Mothers Kitchen. There was quite a lot snow left over from last weekend and the temperature was definitely on the cool side!

At Mothers we saw a lot of familiar faces but only one other recognizable Swami; where was everybody? We hung out at Mothers for an hour or so, warming up with food and coffee before staking our claim to a spot right at the South/East grade intersection, with a great sightline down the hill.

At 2:15 the first rider came up the hill, quickly followed by Levi and the chase group. Team Astana was leading the main peloton a couple minutes back, with other onesy-twosy groups after. At this point we packed up our stuff and started the long ride down the mountain. The mud which had been a drag on the ascent became... entertaining on the way back down. I was on Scott's wheel and must have eaten about a pound of mud thrown off his back wheel, together with the mess getting thrown up from my own front tire! Once we got below the snowline the trail got much better and we got up to full speed, passing several cars and dirtbikes on the way down.

We got back to rte 76 three minutes before the ToC :-) So we got to watch them go by all over again! Tim & Scott had cameras with them; we'll get Scott's pix later, Tim's are already up on Flickr.

Here's the link to the pictures:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/26579979@N08/sets/72157614232316897/

So how did Party Swamis go at the other KOM's?

Andy