Day 3: 50 miles, Cambridge, ID to Hell’s Canyon and back

It’s kind of amazing to learn in 28 years of Cycle Oregon, they’ve never had to reroute or cancel any part of the ride until this year and the fires.

We were stuck in Cambridge Idaho for another day and after a night of heavy rains I was hoping things would dry out.

The day’s route took us 25 miles out and 25 miles back to camp over a fairly large peak in the middle. This meant a couple hours of climbing 15 miles then a 10 mile screaming descent where we went 30–40mph the whole way down.

Lunch was at a reservoir formed by damming the Snake River and it meant a painfully slow and steep climb back over the pass we ripped down. It was a long, slow hour or so of climbing 7% grades back over the summit before rolling back into town.

We eventually made it back to camp where I crashed to sleep early, exhausted.