Getting High | 
story and photos by Mike McQuaide
Pedaling up McNeil Canyon, a hella steep hill over near Chelan, I’ve got that tune from “The Sound of Music” stuck in my head. But my version goes like this:
The hills are alive,
with the sound of …Huh! … Huh! …
Huh! … Huh! … Huh! …
The Huh’s are my breathing. Heavy, heavy breathing. Like an asthmatic grizzly in heat, I sound. Like an emphysemic cat choking on a softball-sized hairball. Like Roger Bannister had he been whacked in the gut with a two-by-four immediately after breaking the four-minute-mile barrier. It’s blisteringly hot this afternoon too. The Eastern Washington sun bores deep into my skull, turning my mind to mush while frying my brain up into a grey-and-white-matter omelet.
At least I’ve only got … checking my handlebar-mounted fancy-pants GPS altimeter-inclinometer-odometer thingee … four (!?!) more miles to go to McNeil Pass Summit. Ugh. I’ve only just begun this beast. Just back there, the sign at the bottom read “hill: 12% grade 5 miles”—I figured it was an exaggeration. Wrong. (And as I find out when I near the top, it’s actually an underestimation.) Oh well, all in a day’s work for Bike Book Author Boy.
Last Spring I signed to do a road-biking guidebook for The Mountaineers Books, a kind of bicycle version of their Classic Hikes series. So I’ve been traveling all over Washington in search of the best road rides. And along the way, I’ve been tilting at the state’s best—that is, most challenging—climbs.
The truth is, despite my distress, discomfort, and all-around bitching and moaning, I love the hills. It’s pretty simple: the most challenging riding leads to the most beautiful views and thus the most worthwhile experience. The rollicking descents are a nice payoff too. Not that I’m especially good at climbing hills. They always hurt, and forever remind me that I should lose about eight pounds (actually, prolly 12), but I love them and seek them out nonetheless.
Here in McNeil Canyon the road ahead of me goes up, up, and more up, rounding a bend through the baked, scrubby landscape before disappearing somewhere up there into the ether. On a climb like this where each painstaking pedal stroke feels like pedaling through a vat of glue, my mind can’t focus on much. Maybe my breathing, my pedaling. Maybe the gravelly bits in the chip seal scrolling beneath my shadow. My shadow.… Shadow … remaining Shadows.… ‘Shadows grow so long before my eyes’.… –Frampton Comes Alive. When I was 15, I loved that record. ‘Member I borrowed it from Sharon Latanzio. Not ‘cause I liked it but because she liked it. And I liked her, so I figured, if I borrow and pretend to like it, she’ll like me. Didn’t work. Oh well.…
Since my mind can’t focus when I climb, I let it roam. Free-associating wherever it wants.
… Dead rattlesnake there in the road—yikes! Or bull snake, one of the two. A quick handlebar maneuver and … I’m past it. ‘Member I was hiking near Leavenworth when I heard a spine-tingling rattle just as I was about to step on a slithering, ready-to-strike rattlesnake. Scary. Like the time I startled a bear near Diablo Lake and it tried to escape by climbing up a tree. It couldn’t keep its grip on the trunk, though, and kept sliding down like something Boo Boo would do in a Yogi Bear cartoon. Then it approached me, swinging its head menacingly from side to side, preparing to charge. Came to within ten feet when for whatever reason it high-tailed away from me. One of the happiest moments of my life.…
My GPS states that my elevation is now 2,037 feet and that I’ve ridden 2.6 miles of this 5-mile monster. The climb started at about 900 feet, the top is 3,100, so I’m more than halfway. All I’ve got to do is put out the same effort one more time and I’ll be at the top.
…There was that bobcat a few months ago. Not scary, just cool. Mountain biking that no man’s land between Chuckanut and Blanchard mountains, we came across a strange four-legged creature in the middle of a dirt road just kind of standing there looking at us. Funny, the way your mind works. It just has to define what it’s seeing even when it has no idea what it is. Labradoodle, that’s what my mind came up with. Then the Labradoodle scurries into the brush and I realize it’s a bobcat. Wonder if I’m the only person who’s ever confused a bobcat with a Labradoodle? Fun word, Labradoodle.…
GPS says I have about a mile to McNeil Pass. So I time-trial it, shift into a harder gear, and stand and stomp on the pedals as hard as I can for 10 pedal strokes. Then I sit, and in an easier gear spin a quicker cadence hoping to maintain whatever momentum I’ve built. It’s deathly hard, especially since my GPS seems to take pleasure in informing me that this homestretch grade has increased from 12 to 15 percent.
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