Mountain Biking Up Mount Washington

You Are Here:

Home >> Tribe of Pain

Today's Question
How do you make primitive snowshoes? answer

What should you do if you get lost driving in a snow storm? answer

Today's Question
What is the greenest ski and snowboard on the market? answer

Can I really damage a coral reef with sunscreen while snorkeling? answer

What kind of dog will make me look manlier? answer
Is there a sport that safely combines my twin passions for guns and kayaks? answer
How come most of the world's cultures enjoy eating goat, but Americans don't? answer

Online Favorites

Special Issues

Photo Galleries

Outside Magazine September 2004

Page:

Out There
Tribe of Pain
Bike racing's most hellish climb isn't L'Alpe d'Huez or Mont Ventoux; it's New Hampshire's Mount Washington

By Todd Balf


	Illustration by Tavis Coburn

FIVE A.M. on Mount Washington, near Gorham, New Hampshire. The sun has yet to rise, but hundreds of gear-stuffed cars with out-of-state license plates cram a makeshift parking lot at the foot of New England's highest peak. I am aware of a large mountain lurking out there somewhere, but it's the buzzing foreground that holds my attention: Clans of cyclists—fathers and sons, husbands and wives, club riders, elite pros—sit on stationary trainers, the robust hum of spinning wheels filling the air. For the 600 riders who are about to start "racing" at four miles per hour—the average pace of the Volkswagen Mt. Washington Auto Road Hillclimb—going nowhere in the dark is an appropriate prelude.

The Rockpile, as Mount Washington is unromantically nicknamed, towers 6,288 feet above sea level. We'll be climbing the uppermost 4,727 feet, over a mere 7.6 miles. (For perspective, one of the toughest races in the Rockies, the Mount Evans hill climb, near Denver, rises 7,000 feet over 28 miles.) With an average grade of 12 percent and sustained stretches of 18 percent (highway grades rarely exceed 7 percent), Mount Washington is steeper than L'Alpe d'Huez or any other climb in the Tour de France, Spain's Vuelta, or the Giro d'Italia. Mile for mile, it is arguably the toughest one-day bike race on the planet.

There are a whopping 72 turns on the Auto Road course, and the longest straightaway is only a few hundred yards—on dirt. Most hill climbs ease off at the top, allowing riders to drop into a more muscular gear and enjoy a burst of acceleration. Not on Washington. In the final 100 yards—a section alternately called the Corkscrew, the Ladder, and the Wall—the grade steepens to a horrifying 22 percent.

"The last pitch throws you over backward," cautions a post on the popular Racers Forum section of the race's official Web site, www.tinmtn.org. "Without very low gears it is a series of linked track stands and wheelies."

I have come to race for the first time with my friend and neighbor Neil Stanton, both of us being part of the amateur hill tribe who hurl themselves against this course for no greater glory than to see if it can be done. Heightening the mystique, the privately owned Auto Road is open to cyclists only twice a year: for a practice run in July and on race day, in mid-August.

These days, dozens of uphill bike races scattered across the U.S. cater to a burgeoning number of climbing fanatics, inspired in part by American superstars like Tyler Hamilton and Lance Armstrong, whose pain-seared faces and gutsy triumphs in the mountains have provided irresistible viewing. For cyclists who crave a heaping spoonful of this suffering, Mount Washington is Mecca.

Since its inauguration, in 1973, the Mount Washington event has drawn a core of top racers, but mostly this is a party for the people. They come by the hundreds from all over the U.S. They include Calvinistic northeasterners for whom painful penance never fails to seem enchanting. They are folks like Donna Smyers, 46, who did the annual footrace up Washington a month earlier. They are Alan Johnson and Michael Arciero, forty-something hardbodies who have coached cycling at the U.S. Military Academy, at West Point.

"This is fun for us," Arciero told me when I met him at the July 2003 practice day, attempting to explain why he drove ten hours, slept in a campsite, and arrived predawn with the intent of riding the course twice.

The tribe also draws a large number of zealous would-be exercise physiologists who offer an array of theories aimed at solving the only problem racers really care about: getting your (m)ass up this insanely steep incline. Floating around the Hillclimb Web site are Ph.D.-level insights on "overgearing" (training in big gears, bike racing's version of weight lifting); eight-month cardio workout regimens; and even deep-diving techniques to enhance lung capacity. Though the Hillclimb may be the most analyzed 6,288 feet in cycling history, one veteran Forum participant has the key: "Just fucking train."

By first light on race day, the sky is clear, and it's already pushing 80 degrees. By 6:30 I'm anxious about how my legs feel: For months I've lavished attention on them with fire-tower climbs, town-line sprints, and scenic day trips in the hills far from my home in Beverly, Massachusetts. Now I look, I knead, and then I try to put them away till later, like a freshly ironed shirt.

Soon enough, we assemble at the starting line. Promptly at 7:40, the start is signaled by a broadside from a Civil War–era cannon. By 7:42 the majority of the field understands Washington's harsh reputation: The pavement tilts up abruptly and the click-click-click of shifters shifting sounds like a plague of cicadas. We are, in the slowest possible sense of the word, under way.

Page:

Todd Balf, a dyed-in-the-wool New Englander, is a frequent contributor to Outside.

•	Subscribe to Outside and get a FREE Gift!

•	Give the gift of Outside Magazine!

•	Subscribe to Outside Online's free weekly e-mail newsletter featuring gear reviews, fitness advice, galleries, podcasts, and more.