Las Vegas – Pahrump – Furnace Creek – Aberdeen – Bishop – June Lake – Tenaya Lake – Yosemite Valley: 623 km

Our breaks never turn out to be rest days really. After two nights in Vegas, we’re leaving only half refreshed. We’re riding into our most ridiculous plan yet; Death Valley. The hottest place on earth, in summer, it’s August. Before we do, we head into Pahrump. A small village surrounded by farmland. We stay with Arika from Warm Showers who feeds us chicken soup. I play chess with her nephew, win a game, lose a game.

Anyone we’ve spoken to about our plan to cycle Death Valley have looked at us like mad men, before telling us we’re mad men. I’m a little nervous. Are we underestimating the heat? We do our research. We see how hard and how long the climbs are, where we can fill up on water. In the end what we mostly need is other people. Whenever we actually do encounter a problem, find ourselves out of water or having a mechanical that we can’t fix on the side of the road, we’ve always been supported by the cars driving by. Relying on that, we should be fine.

We’re closing in on the valley over long straight roads. The temperature is slowly rising as we get closer and lower. Most of Death Valley is underneath sea-level. After the National Park sign and the caution signs, warning us that heat kills, we get on to the descent that takes us into the actual heat. With every meter downhill it seems like we’re gaining heat. I look on my phone; 46 degrees Celsius. I can feel the hot air on my fingers, as if they’re being blow dried. I take my glasses off at some point and immediately feel the scorching hot air drying out my eyeballs. We don’t really sweat because the fluid instantaneously evaporates from our skin. It’s pretty warm.

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We stay on a road crossing aptly named Furnace Creek. There’s a big bungalow complex there with a campground. We’re the only one’s tenting. We’re not the only ones in the pool however. The complete hotel just floats in the water, looking to cool down. It’s pretty much the only comfortable plays for miles around.

We get in early, because our alarms are set for 4 in the morning. Our plan is to beat the worst heat and start cycling before sunrise. But we don’t really get any sleep whatsoever. It doesn’t cool down at night in Death Valley. It just stays incredibly, amazingly hot. I feel drops of sweat rolling down my back all night long. They form little piles of sweat in the crevices of my inflatable mattress that I lay on but naked. Maybe we should have gotten an airconditioned room as I try hard to fall asleep. But when you want to sleep badly, you never actually do.  

Broken we wake up to the sounds of the alarms on our phones. Already? Let’s go! There’s a long climb waiting for us. We’ll take it as it comes, and see if we’ll manage. We ride 40 kilometres through a deserted desert. The tourists in their climate controlled cars are not up yet. It’s spectacularly warm and beautiful, as the sun rises over the hills behind us. We get to a gas station and look at our route again. There’s no water between here and our next camp spot. There is a huge climb in-between however. With the speed we empty our bottles, we decide it’s pretty much undoable. We hitchhike. After an hour or so, we get a ride. We put our bikes on the back of Venessa’s van, and as we make distance comfortably Marijn and I decide one night in Death Valley was enough. Venessa takes us all the way out of there and drops us off at the foothills of Sierra Nevada. We get out of the car and the temperature has fallen to an acceptable level. We ride on and spend the night on a campsite in Aberdeen. The desert has made way for forest and green grass. It might rain tonight, and we’d be happy if it did.

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We sleep next to a couple of lakes as we make our way to Yosemite. Yes, also in California the parks are in close succession. The days in-between are unremarkable but nice. We do our little routine, we drink our sodas, find camp spots in parks, eat our pasta and drink our beers. We relax.

And then Yosemite. The insanely steep and way too long Tioga pass takes us there. I’ve been dreading the climb all day, now we’re on it I don’t have enough eyes to take in the beauty. The road is edged out of the side of a mountain, on it it’s hard to realise where you ride, but once you look back it seems surreal. The first night we camp illegally next to Tenaya Lake. It’s one of our most pretty camp spots, if not the prettiest one. The water is a perfect clear blue and mirrors the mountains on the other side of the water. We’re surrounded by grey rocks and deep green pines. The air feels incredibly clean. Both sunset and sunrise are spectacular as the colours in the sky changes and the water reflects them back. The next day we descent into the actual Yosemite Valley. It’s up there as one of the most spectacular rides this trip. As we get further down the mountains seem to grow. They stand sharp and proud, overlooking the valley below. We know their names from the movies and the articles; El Capitan, Half Dome, Mount Hoffman. The road winds and twists between the forest and the walls of grey. We set up camp and swim in a river underneath a waterfall. At sunset the grey of the mountains around us turn orange with the last rays of sunshine. Once completely black, we see campfires on the mountains in the distance. It’s a hiker’s paradise and we can only imagine the camps next to the cliffs out there. It’s a good place to fall asleep.