bike ride- 18 miles of saddle soreness!

OK, now that the Tokyo trip blogs are done, i can try to catch up to the present!   Let's jump to last Saturday...   Perhaps my most ambitious biking trip to date!

Basically after my last group biking trip to Tai Mei Tuk,  I wanted to go further into the Pat Sin Leng Country Park (八仙嶺郊野公園) - past Plover Dam, all the way through the park and then back to the KCR line at Fanling...  it would look something like this:

Routemap is here: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2050078

Wow, I'm glad I didn't make that routemap before I tried it... cause if I knew it was 18 miles, I may not have had the guts to do it....   

Well since you're reading this, I made it in one piece...   Here's another route map, with mile markers and labels:

Note the aptly named 'Incline of Death' that happens at about the 5-3/4 mile mark...

Right after you get past the Plover Dam,  the road goes up a hill... then that hill gets steeper and steeper.  I shifted down to the lowest gear and tried to keep going but after a few minutes I ultimately wussed out and had to stop and walk the last 50m or so...

when I got to the top I realized how bad it was - a 1:10 grade hill = 10%,  and if it really was ONLY 400m, that still means a verticle change of 40m (= about a 10 story building).

How bad is a 10% grade? I found this definition of hill steepness from this website: