gawk at Castle Creek. It had been tantalizingly close for hours, and only now did we decide to satisfy our
curiosity. What’s the point in biking if you can’t hop off whenever you want? A thin slice of forest is all that
separates the road from the plunge, and soon we are standing at the edge of a long, gravelly slope that slants
to a 200-foot canyon. At the very bottom, a tiny creek idles almost out of view far below, meandering between gigantic vertical scoria deposits, thick basalt columns a hundred feet high. Jacob picks up a pinecone
and tosses it in his hand, his gaze meeting mine. With a wry grin, he drops it onto the ground, and slowly
nudges it over the precipice with his foot. It skitters and bumps as it tumbles towards oblivion, and with a
final, graceful somersault it jumps off the edge. We watch in solemn silence, lock gazes once more, and scatter
off into the woods, hunting for as many pinecones as we can find. When we meet back up, we begin dropping
them on the count of three, narrating their descent with fast horse-race-announcer voices. Only when we run
out of pinecones do we head back to our bikes and hop on them, once more pedalling up the mountain. Marina is standing at a pulloff a mile up, picking someone’s discarded trail mix off the ground and popping it into
her mouth. We help her clean it up and then pull into the forest, find a few unassuming trees, hang the tarp,
unroll our bivies, blow up our air pads, bundle up in our warmest clothes and drift off.
I wake up to the silence of snowfall, and as is my usual job, set about lightly kicking Jacob and Marina’s
shared bivy sack. They sit up, rub the sleep from their eyes, and we all start making peanut butter and jelly
sandwiches. As we move around camp, the frozen morning decorates our bikes, our tarp, and our breakfast in
lightly spinning flakes, so soft and wet that every exhale melts the snow floating in front of our lips. We haphazardly pack everything away and haul ourselves up the slick black road, watching the snow lace the trees as
we ascend ever higher and ever colder. Flakes cover our bodies layer upon layer, and soon we’re wearing winter like a coat. The snow picks up as the air thins, and we slowly inch closer to the clouds. Up here, the whole
world is awash in white, dark green pines the only ones that stand out through the snow. When we reach the
tollbooth that marks seven miles and a thousand more feet to the caldera, we mumble the proper incantations and make our sacrifices of five dollars each to the great Park Service that we may encroach upon their
lands. “It’s a total whiteout up there,” says the ranger. “You won’t be seeing any