Thanks to John G for loaning me his sweet dual suspension carbon MTB. What an epic: over 8 miles straight up at 9.8%, with very few places where the gradients dropped. Thank goodness for a dinner plate SRAM rear cassette and 1x setup. Just grind, grind, grind. Mostly a graded path (fire road) up, but "technical" locally near the top. Incredible day looking back to the LA basin. Could see from Baldy to San Gorgonio to San Jacinto to Catalina and everything in between. Always fun to see the 60" and 100" telescopes at the top. Atomic Cafe was not open, alas. Was not expecting snowy, icy roads on the descent on the backside, but actually cold in places in the shade. Glad I had the Hawaiian shirt for insulation. A very sketchy mile long single-track patch that we had to walk for long sections due to washouts and being down to gravelly bedrock, rather than the promised smooth soil. Such are the ravages of heavy rains and COVID over-use. Last miles on the old railbed were great fun. Parker had a leak near the base, so he had to put in a new tube and got a pickup partway home on the roads in Pasadena by the long-suffering Donna, so we didn't completely go down Lake Ave on the alluvial fan surface. That was just fine by me, as I was pretty cooked at the end. Superb end to the trip with that little lagniappe.