Now why I put this up as the title is because I am trying to make you aware of the climb we were about to face, although not my longest climb it will be the most altitude gained over the shortest distance which means steep, very steep. We tried to be up early to miss the heat, it was overcast and looked like rain, which is not really a bad thing when climbing unless it does rain and that puts a dampener on things.
The first 10km were easy going and passed quickly, easy rolling hills, at the 24km mark the hill started and well besides 1km of downhill at the end and maybe 500m half way it was all up and some of it very steep, I mean first gear crawling, now sometimes when I’m going up I really ask myself why, we were in the clouds so it was not as though the view was incredible, the road twisted and turned as it held it’s embrace with the mountain, yes I am also putting this climb into the mountain bracket, it was big and beautiful. Well by the end anyway.
The cloud cover lasted for some time but in the end we climbed out the top, you could see across the top of the clouds to the hills in the distance it was a sit to behold, considering we had had to use our lights on the first part of the climb because the cloud cover was pretty thick, not pea soup thick more like weak tea thick, you could see the next corner and that was about it.
We stopped for breakfast just after we broke through the cloud layer and into open sky, it did look as though the clouds were attempting to cover the whole mountain range but had been stopped in their tracks due to the sheer size of the hills. After the breakfast stop we carried on up the hill climbing and more climbing it was a beautiful climb the hills the minority tribes people it was fantastic but it was a long climb. I shot ahead of Kat and Mike and then had a good break waiting for them to catch up, I took photos of the Minority people working on the side of the road. Who would not enjoy looking out over cloud covered mountains, the sun starting to pierce through in places sending shafts of light streaming down.
We finally crawled to the top after 4 and a bit hours of riding, we were all staved and headed straight for food, it must have been a sight 3 hot sweaty people waiting food before we had even sat down, the food was pretty good this could have been to do with being starving and having a hard ride. After some food we all felt a lot better and headed off to find a hotel for a couple of days, the local minority people crowded around us when we pulled up, they were a real funny bunch and I joked around with them while I watched the bikes and Mike and Kat looked for a room for us all.
Once we had our room and were settled in we finally could relax and unwind, the view from our hotel looked out onto the mountains across the valley, the only problem with this time of year is the clouds cover everything and we could not see Fanispan which is Vietnams highest peak at 3100m which would have been nice. The weather was cooler up here which was really nice after the last few days heat.
I was lead to believe that it was Kat and Mikes 6th wedding anniversary so later we headed out to celebrate it with dinner and drinks, I was willing to let them head off by themselves if they wanted to but ended up going out with them, it was a nice evening with very good food, Sapa was looking good on the food side of things.
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