The Traveling Marshal: Mount Baldy

The Tour of California's second mountain top finish this year. A few days ago I was sadly not able to make it to the top of the Sierra Road finish. So on stage 7 we learned that our 2 drops for the day would be the start in Claremont and then a sprint in the town of Glendora. I was once again disappointed to learn that we would not be up in the mountains at all for this stage. Luckily we made a deal for 2 people in my van to hop into one of the other team vans. Unfortunately they only had room for 2 people and a couple of my teammates were unable to come along. We needed to to decide which 2 it would be and my comment was I don't care who goes as long as one of them is me! One of them was me and we jumped into team 8's van and raced off down the road.

Now I have become used to the way our driver Lee has driven so far this tour. Lee drives fast enough to get us to our drops on time but not recklessly. Team 8 not so much! We had a limited amount of time to get up the mountain as to stay ahead of the peloton and make it up mount baldy. I'm not sure how fast we were going but we were definitely breaking some laws. Tires were squealing and bodies were flying. We would fly through intersections and everybody in the van would bounce up and hit the ceiling if your were not prepared. The ride to the top might have been to much for my motion sick teammate who jumped in the van with me. He wasn't looking so good when we got there, but he managed to hold it together.

A little about the climb - it is actually 2 climbs in one. You start of with the Glendora Mountain Road climb which is 6.6mi long with and average grade of about 5.4%. This is followed by about 14 miles of rolling to slightly uphill terrain. It is then topped of with 4.3 miles with an average grade of 9.8! for you and me that's about 25 miles of climbing!!

As we drove those last few miles the mountain was packed with crazies ready for a show. i wish I could have gotten more photos but when your sitting in a packed van it's next to impossible. we drove to just past the 1k. We all hopped out and began the hike to the top. I can tell you that the last section just before the switch back is insanely steep. I took a picture back down the road but it doesn't do it justice. I hiked up to about 200m to go before I was roped into marshaling all the crazy cycling fans at the top. Because of this I didn't get to take too many photos.

The trip down the mountain was just as crazy as going up. now we needed to contend with hundreds of cyclist as well as spectators trying to get off the mountain. I can see why some of my team didn't want to go to the top. Once were done in Glendora it was only 2:30pm. they got back to the hotel by 3pm. Since I went to the top I didn't get to the hotel until 6pm. But I was here to see the tour and on stage 7 I saw it.

Here are a couple of terrible photos and one video from stage 7.