Today we were up early and met at 5:15am with our luggage as we will be shuttled for an early morning breakfast at Lake MacDonald Lodge....and then we climb the Going to the Sun Road up to Logan Pass, an epic and storied climb! I am the first one on the road which starts out as gravel due to some road works in the Park....but within a mile or so, it becomes pavement and will remain so for the rest of the day. The wider tires on my ebike make this section less daunting than it would have been a normal road bike!
My strategy with the ebike is to ride it without power and shift through the gears as needed. When I get to the lowest gear and I start to pedal squares, then I add the lowest power assist level....and then when that isn't enough help, I add one more level of assist, and so forth potentially up to the 5th level of assist. It turns out most of the time, when I needed assist, I could stay in the lowest level but today's climb found me with the second level of assist in play quite a bit.....but no higher level of assist was needed. There are 5 battery levels indicated, I presume they are 100-80% (5 lights showing); 80-60% (4 lights showing); 60-40% (3 lights showing); 40-20% (2 lights showing); and 20-0% (1 light showing). Actually when the power gets too low, it shuts down the power assist level and flashes red lights (at least this is what I was told as I never got to that lower level of battery assist but I think Kety did at least one time).
My power management strategy worked great as I just went from 4 lights to 3 lights as I reached the top of Logan Pass....so I probably still had about 60% battery left for a long downhill run where little to no battery was needed and I ended up I would guess with over 50% battery left at the end of today's ride.
The scenery and experience was amazing. Definitely better to do on a bike than a car. We had a fair amount of traffic but they all seemed pretty polite to me and I never felt any concern about sharing the road with them. You had to be at the Pass by 11 am per Park Rules and all but two of us accomplished that (they got our Van to shuttle bump them up to the Pass for the last 2 or 3 miles, so they were close to making it anyway!). All in all this was a great day of riding and experiencing!!
On the descent...
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