Penticton Day 2 – Chute Lake: Nailed it!

Day 2 is a wrap with time to spare and everyone now focusing on Day 3. There are some discrepancies around what time each ride starts on Day 3. I’ll get to that, but first the Day 2 recap:

There was climbing and paved roads, climbing and gravel roads, and then more climbing. And the views from the Naramata bench were enough to distract us from all of that blood, sweat and tears (I had a tear or two trickle down my cheek during the gravel road section) that we were about to experience up to Chute Lake. Everyone made it to the gravel road that leads to Chute Lake, and that is wicked cool. At that point, half the group headed back to Penticton and the rest attempted to climb the next 8km on gravel road to Chute Lake. At least three people (Mark refuses to give me more details) turned back during the climb and Frank, Thomas, Harley, Derek, Ryan and Marci made it for coffee at the Chute Lake “resort”. The 8km section was much like Apex, but on hard packed sand. It sucked going up and unnerving coming down. It turns out Chute Lake Resort isn’t so much a resort as a very large old cabin with lots of “character” and they did open up just for us and let us warm up inside.

Day 3: There are two start times for Day 3. If you are going on the Ironman/Apex ride (180-190km) you are beginning your ride at 7 a.m. If you want to meet before the start time and have breakfast at Denny’s so be it. In the past we’ve shown up around 6-6:15 a.m. for eggs and stuff.

If you want to ride the Ironman/Apex ride and add the Anarchist climb when you get to Osoyoos, then we are beginning the ride at 6 a.m. This early start time sounds like garbage, but the ride is 240ish km and we need to leave enough time to get back without having to worry about sunlight, which I don’t think is going to be a problem. Another thing to consider: I only added the Anarchist ride to this day purely for bragging rights. Jared Green attempted it last year and failed to make it back before having Marilyn bail him out with her car. If I- I mean“we”- get back in one piece, Jared has nothing on me- I mean “us”, which is awesome. I’ll be at Denny’s around 5-5:15 a.m. getting my eggs in. If the timing works out, we should all see each other in Osoyoos or on the way to Keromeos.

Any questions? Leave them in the comments section and I’ll get to them early this evening.