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Yep, it's a genuine stockade! One of the several remnant Pony
Express rider cabins en route.
A couple of friends had done the Pony Express Trail ride in 1994 and I was very impressed by their fortitude and endurance. When the flyer for the 1995 ride landed in my mailbox, a little voice in me asked, "Wow -- could you do this ride, Glee?" After much deliberation, I came to the conclusion that a few interviews were in order before I could decide whether I was up to such a challenge.
First, I called my buddy, Pete Jeffalone, who had not only survived the ride but also, as I learned during my interrogation of him, had tacked it onto an ascent of Wheeler Peak in Great Basin National Park in celebration of his 56th birthday! Pete assured me that I had the stamina to tackle this ride, and that I could always sag if I wanted or needed to. As it turned out, Pete had sagged for the last 8 of the 85 miles but, from the customer's perspective, he still recommended the ride, esp. in light of our mutual interest in regional history.
Next I called Curtis Fong to get his summary of the ride, from the sag company's perspective. Curtis described the terrain, the meal stops, the overnight campsite, and the end-of-ride activities. I asked what sort of maps and handouts would be available for the ride, and he said he would only be supplying us the standard Pony Express Trail brochure.
Then I checked out every item in the UNR library on the Pony Express Trail, as well as several topo maps at various scales to give me a fair idea of the terrain in relief. I counted the number of weekends left before the date of the ride, and mentally calculated how many "training rides" I could get under my belt. Finally, I took the most important step -- I asked my significant other if he would be willing to come along for both my moral and physical support -- not as a rider, since he isn't into masochism(!), but as my personal shuttle driver. This would entail setting up our tent at the best campsite before the rest of the group's arrival, ensuring the readiness of my solar shower, and being ready to give massages and cart me off to the nearby Spencer Hot Springs, as necessary. I told him that this would be the biggest personal physical goal I had set for myself in many, many years. I also suggested that from Eureka, we could tack on some vacation time due north in the gorgeous Ruby Mountains. Since he is a geologist and a photographer, the opportunity to spend two days puttering around as a desert rat while I was doing my thing on my two-wheeled steed had a definite appeal to him, as did the Rubies. So, although it meant a slight postponement of some previous vacation plans, he agreed that I should go for it and he would gladly support my reaching for this goal.
The first weekend of August arrived and we checked into our motel in Austin (amongst Pete's words of wisdom had been to get a nice cushy night's sleep in a motel, instead of camping out the night before the first ride day). Our dinner in Austin was in a steamy little restaurant that was trying hard to be the quaintest in town, but its menu wasn't all that one would hope for. This was balanced out, however, by the three wild and crazy characters we met at a neighboring table. Brian, an attorney, Bruce, a consulting engineer, and Tom, an architect, all from Santa Rosa, turned out to be the only interesting new people in the entire group of riders (of course, I already knew Tim and Gretchen, so I could count on them when I wanted a familiar face to chat with). I must admit I've never met such a dull group of people as those who showed up for this ride -- I sincerely wished more Procrastinating Pedalers had signed up!! But those three went out of their way to keep my spirits up throughout the ride, often riding with me or stopping with me at rest breaks. As it turned out, they all knew a friend of my boyfriend's brother -- it's such an amazingly small world!
The ride itself was long, hot (but not intolerably so), dusty, scenic, and distinctly lacking in shady rest breaks. My recollections of the first day were of wild horses, lots of en masse stops for gate openings and closings (we were often crossing private property or leased BLM land), miles of 6-foot tall sagebrush that overhung the trail, a 6-foot length of barbed wire on the trail getting tangled up in my back wheel (yikes!), an unridable creek bed down which we had to walk and portage our bikes (yet the sag truck inexplicably was able to DRIVE through it!), the traverse of "the stinking swamp", my crash-and-burn attempt to cross one particular dry wash and the ramifications on my bike thereof, the historic buildings and stockades we stopped at, and the late lunch stop at the lovely (and shady -- yeah!) ranch house/oasis.
Although the Pony Express was only in existence for a short eighteen months (April 1860 to October 1861), it has intrigued history buffs such as myself for the past 135 years. The Pony Express ran from St. Joseph, Missouri to Placerville, California, a distance of 2,000 miles which was to be covered one way in 10 days. In Nevada, the line covered some 420 miles and there were 31 relay stations. For $120 a month, riders braved heat, cold, thirst, floods, and Indian attacks. With the completion of the Pacific Telegraph in October of 1861, the Pony Express formally went out of business.
The single file of 40 cyclists on the distant horizon tromping for half a mile, on foot, down a slight slope toward the grave marker of two Pony Express riders who had been killed by Indians was quite a sight to behold. Although we were a large group of riders pedaling en masse, when we were spread far enough apart to see only a few riders to the front and rear of us it wasn't hard to envision being astride a galloping 4-legged steed, moving messages quickly from point to point. There are now a few more fenceposts in central Nevada than there were 135 years ago, but it looks, for all intents and purposes, EXACTLY as it did when the Pony Express riders were covering (approximately) the same ground. Since special permission is granted ONLY to this group, led by Curtis Fong, to cross much of this land, it would be difficult to not feel as if you were reliving history at such a really raw level.
The second day included fewer gates, no swamps, no overhanging sagebrush, fewer historic buildings, one oiling of my chain, and lots of flat, very sandy dual track trail. Mostly our vista was nothing but the great stretches of valley bottom through which we were pedaling, and the Loneliest Road off in the distance for mile after mile. One thought that kept running through my mind was of the emigrants en route to California from points east. It is no wonder that turning back was rarely an option -- after making it all that way, it would have been difficult to justify and impractical to attempt the return to their places of origin, knowing the harshness of the terrain they had already ventured over.
The lack of shade really started to get to me and I decided that, since I had always needed longer rest breaks than those we were being allowed, I would sag with Gretchen for a while (which turned out to be only 5 miles) after the Roberts Creek Ranch stop. That was a long enough rejuvenation to reclaim my waning gusto in synch with a patch of clouds maneuvering their way between us and the beating sun. Back onto my panniered steed I jumped and headed up and over the last summit. This last spurt of energy was rewarded with a wonderful winding and rolling downhill all the way to the schoolbus that awaited us at the highway junction to transport us to the swimming pool in Eureka.
I'm glad Pete encouraged me to take on this personal challenge, and I am VERY proud of myself for accomplishing 80 (out of 85) miles of riding across the desert of central Nevada in the sweltering heat of August. (It reminded me of a flatter, but longer, and MUCH more scenic version of The Ride From Hal). I enjoyed the unique opportunity to retrace such an historical route in modern day fashion. Since my love of mountain biking is prompted by my enthusiasm for creek (and swamp!) crossings and fast downhills, my druthers would have been to get muddier (the only thing about the stinking swamp I didn't like was that awful stench!) and to have had a few more hills to climb to plunge back down. I would have preferred a wee bit more organization from the sag company, but since my expectation was to be able to fully empathize with the travel experiences of both the Pony Express riders and the western emigrants on the Overland Trail, I wouldn't have wanted much more pampering than I received (except for that lovely solar shower I got to take at the Hickison Petroglyphs campground -- and the lovely dip in the municipal pool in Eureka). In summary, I would recommend this ride to the adventuresome history buffs out there in Procrastinating Pedalerland.
Glee Willis