We knew by the length and the topography of the route that today was going to be one of the most challenging of our trek, and it proved to be both demanding and spectacularly beautiful.

We travelled 71 miles over three mountain passes, each between 5,000 and 6,000 feet. We are now on Adventure Cycling’s TransAmerica route and their topo map of today’s route showed three steep sided triangles side by side, which captured the realty well. We climbed steeply for about six miles to a pass, descended about six miles through switchbacks and long steep down slopes, and then repeated this twice before descending 26 miles out of the mountains in a river valley. Most of this descent was with a very stiff tailwind, next to a stream, so the day was filled with startling and varied beauty, from lush evergreen forests to snow capped mountains in the distance .

Chris had some mechanical issues with his bike at the end of the day, but we found a great bike store at the end of the day who was able to fix it.

We are approaching both the Idaho border and the 500 mile point in our Trek, and continue to be blessed with beautiful weather and generally favorable winds .