Originally Posted by
Welshboy
You're supposed to dismount for the footbridge but I can't ever recall seeing a pedestrian on it and it's an easy inner ring climb. Tested it yesterday and it adds about 90 seconds. Oddly enough, my return journey is unaffected as the early evening rush hour has passed and traffic lights work in my favour.
Right by the dam and bridge I just posted about, there is a fish hatchery. The bridge has nice bike trail underpasses, on both sides, arranged in a way to encourage people to use the west side. I have always avoided it because I could power up the east side of the bridge anyhow, but I sometimes took it to get a little more distance when I wanted. Now it's just full avoid. The hatchery recently put in a fish ladder, and used the same path as the bike underpass for some way. I'm not sure what their plan is, the reservoir has been devoid of salmon for decades. It's not stocked for reasons I thought had to do with keeping fish diseases from spreading, and only has a few catfish and wily old trout. The next dam up is a much bigger obstacle so they are only getting a few miles out of it. But they rearranged the southern underpass to make room for the ladder. It's a lot worse for bikes now. It has ADA compliant flat spots every few dozen feet, a few places it got very steep, and the bends are tighter to make room for the ladder, which blocks the view and presents something to crash into once you have bounced down all the ADA flat spots.