My First Hopper – Sort of…

Posted April 26th, 2010 by KellBell

This past Saturday was the 2010 version of the Ft Ross Grasshopper. Now…I have been to and witnessed the madness that is the Grasshopper before, but I had never ridden in one…til now. I don’t know what the Ft. Ross Hopper was like before (the routes are all new for this year), but I can say that it was one heck of a ride! The route was laid out to be 57 miles with Ft. Ross, Bay Hill, and Joy Rd. being the premier climbs for the day. What I did in the end is a bit different, but we’ll get to that later.

The 100+ participants for this year’s Ft. Ross adventure all converged on Occidental. There were a lot of familiar faces in the crowd, though some were more famous than others. That’s the thing with the Hoppers – you never know who’s going to show up! All I know is that as we started to line up for the “start” Levi and his crew came rolling in and right to the front. Like I said…some faces were more famous than others. At pretty much 10 am we were off, and quickly at that. The first part of the ride took us down Bohemian Highway (or BoHo to us locals) and the pace was furious! We were up around 30+ miles per hour down the slight descent that had a couple of curvy spots until we made our first left onto Moscow Rd. From that point, I did all I could to stay attached to the back of the main group but a 25+ mph pace is a bit out of my comfort zone over a long period of time. I held on until we were about 3/4 of the way down Moscow and once Dave and I made the turn onto 116 Shannon and Renee had said that they also had enough and we were off the back and doing our own little ride.

The climb up and along Ft. Ross was tough, but not as bad as I had pictured in my head. It wasn’t easy by any means, but it was totally doable for me which was a relief. The views were beautiful and the road was pretty empty for the most part. After refueling at the intersection of Ft Ross and Meyers Grade we started our adventure down Meyers Grade. After you roll along Meyers for a bit you hit a really long descent which can be fun if you know what you are doing. The road is smoother and wider, and there aren’t many sharp curves so you can pretty much open it up … at least to a realm where you’re comfortable. All I know is that I topped out at 48.5 MPH at some point and time down that hill which is the fastest I have ever gone…but man was it fun! After we re-grouped we made our way down Hwy 1 where after surviving that gnarly wind we stopped at the gas station in Jenner to reload our water bottles. This is where things kind of went awry for me.

Dave had a last minute request on Friday to do something for work over the weekend. I will spare you the details but let’s just say in the end he was told he was off the hook for Saturday. Well, unfortunately, that didn’t hold up. It wasn’t just because they called him although there was another plan in place, it was also because he chose to let the calls interfere when they weren’t supposed to. But again…no need to dig into that or dwell on it because what’s done is done and what happened was not fun. Needing to get back home sooner instead of later Dave felt that we needed to abandon the Hopper route. We said goodbye to Renee and Shannon and after much indecision on what way we should actually go, Dave selected Willowcreek. While Willowcreek to Occidental was the shorter way to go, it was NOT the fastest route. Let me put it this way…Willowcreek is mostly gravel or dirt and is NOT meant for a road bike…oh…and it is mostly up hill. Six miles of unpaved craziness uphill did not go well for his hope of cutting the ride short. Let’s just say that neither of us had a good ending to that ride.

When all was said and done, my abbreviated Ft. Ross Grasshopper was 47 miles with 4700′ of climbing. Yes…it was basically 1000′ of climbing per mile…OUCH! The part of the Hopper that I did do was totally awesome and a lot of fun and I can’t wait to tackle the King Ridge version in June. And really, in a better frame of mind, Willowcreek would be an amazing ride. It is tough on a road bike, but it was also absolutely beautiful!