1 Come-along, heavy duty straps, and rope. These things will all be useful.
2 You can never have too much gas.
3 The Bully Fire. The closer we got, the more it looked like we might not even be able to reach our destination. http://cdfdata.fire.ca.gov/incidents/incidentsdetailsinfo?incident_id=1001
4 Tied the bike off with a rope safety line and tried to just use hand power on the straps to pull it up. Not so effective.
5 The committee discusses options. Note the poison oak right behind Nick. Note the poison oak everywhere else alongside the trail.
6 Setting up lines to start using the come-along.
7 Winching in anger.
8 Almost back on the trail.
9 Back up at trail level.
10 Wheels on the trail. And more poison oak.
11 Ready to ride.
12 Rode the rest of the trail with no problem. Waiting here for the other dudes to walk back to where they parked their bikes.
13 Nick left his bike and his pants here.
14 The last particularly tricky bit of the trail.
15 Everyone made it under their own power back to the forest road.
16 The advance base of operations.
17 Victory beers.
18 We'd add an asterisk to that sign.
19 After completing the rescue mission on Saturday, we go for a bit of a fun ride on Sunday. At the halfway point, how about a flat tire. Good thing this waited until after we'd recovered from the hard day out on the Trail of Doom.
20 Torn valve stem.
21 Done riding. Done with the second round of victory beers. Time to load up and go.
22 Not sure how this fate befell this specimen.
23 It ain't fancy, but it was pretty luxurious for camping.
24 Getting a little reserve gas and checking out the local situation.
25 Places like this close around 7 or 8 PM. Don't roll in late hoping for dinner.
26 And we still have to descend down into the central valley where it will be hotter.
27 Let us use lots of words to suggest that your campfire is a bad idea.
28 Looks like there's plenty of room in there to bolt on an A/C compressor.