I signed up to do Lost & Found this year for the first time and, well, we all know what happened. There was less climbing today than Lassen but, maybe because of the heat, maybe because it rained the night before and made the trails tacky, it felt like just as much climbing. The first stretch of dirt was really nicely maintained, smooth, fire road. Then we turned to really start heading up and the road got really chunky - lots of rocks everywhere. A lot of the trails/roads were like this and for some reason it didn't feel gnarly or sketchy. It was weirdly fun. I was glad that I brought an extra tire and replaced the one that got punctured yesterday. Given how chunky it was, I wouldn't have wanted to trust the tire to hold together with sealant and bacon strips. The first climb was long and nasty, especially given how chunky the trail was, how hot it was and how little wind there was. Almost every climb felt that way. Towards the latter half of the ride, I got a pretty bad headache that made all the bump and rattling hurt my head even more. There were some quality, fun, descents though. On that first climb, Emily and Nathan saw a cub and a mama bear cross not that far in front of them. I missed it. :( We only had two incidents, unfortunately both involving Nathan. On one of the early climbs, he got a rear puncture that Catherine helped fix. And later on on one of the chunky descents, he crashed on an off-camber bit. He got a couple of scratches but was otherwise okay. Because of the remoteness of the ride, Catherine brought a water filter so we could refill water from the streams. Unfortunately, there were no streams, they all seemed to have dried up. We were lucky enough to find some man-made ponds to fill water from. I don't know what we would've done without it. Plumas ended up being super pretty and fun to ride through. Would totally do it again.