Gusty, Mean Winds Hit High Sierra Fall Century

September 10, 2005

By Bump Diamond
Man About Town

    So there was Dennis Phillips, cyclist extraordinaire, riding in a pack of Eastside Velo racers, when the peloton zoomed over Watterson Summit and began the long—and usually delicious—descent to Crowley Lake.
    But it wasn't so danged delicious this afternoon, no sir—on account of the westerly wind that peaked with gusts over 40 miles an hour shortly after 1 o'clock.
    Phillips and the others in the group actually pedaled their way down the grade , riding head-on against a wind that threatened to blow others in the 800-strong High Sierra Fall Century bike ride clean out of their saddles.
    "I swear, there were people pedaling uphill faster than we were going downhill," Phillips quipped, and he wasn't far off.
    Though temperatures improved dramatically from an overnight low of 30 degrees in Mammoth, the wind was unforgiving, particularly on the west side of the Glass Mountains. In the town of Mammoth, which is somewhat protected from some wind, the wind peaked at 1:36 p.m. at 38 miles an hour, according to Howard Sheckter's Web site.
    Cyclists using the Benton Crossing road pedaling west past Crowley Lake and Brown's Fish Camp hit westerly winds that chapped their lips, chafed their skin and drove some people really nuts.
    We ran across Lyin' Judy Bridger at the cattle guard that marks the entrance to the dirt road that leads to Wild Willy's hot spring, and she was laughing her head off.
    "Why, this wind is so strong," she said to me and my companion, "that it blew the road right back on itself by about a mile, so y'all are getting a break!"
    We asked her where her friend, Spiffy, was, and Judy shrugged. "Last I saw the dear dimwit, she was sailing off on the air, off toward Benton. Like Mary F. Poppins, if you know what I mean."
    We got back to Whitmore Ballfields in good order, but the Mammoth Rotary Club, which was supposed to host a barbecue and have a lot of beer, didn't show up. Crack reporters from the MammothBlog already are on the case, but at least one of them got blown over the Nevada line by the wind and we haven't seen him in about three hours or so.   

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