Hermosa Creek

Yesterday’s ride was the famous Hermosa Creek ride, just north of Durango. Howie and I had also done this one when we were here about 5 years ago. The trick to this ride is it’s a shuttle, that is you drop one car at the bottom and drive up to the top. We had talked to another guy here at the RV park, Scott, that was interested in doing this with us and had already talked to a guy, Phil, at one of the bike shops in town about doing it as well. We met Phil at the shuttle drop point and head up the mountain. Phil is just a young pup, 22, originally from New Hampshire but has lived here for 4 years and talks like he’s a surfer dude from southern California. He also rides a single speed. We were not worried about him slowing us down. The ride starts in a large meadow at about 8850 feet. The first five miles is a pretty fast ride along the creek on a very old double track road bed. Basically the only thing to slow you down are some very large mud puddles that don’t slow everybody down, you can tell by looking at jerseys at the end who slows and who doesn’t. At about the 5 mile point we cross the creek on a nice bridge.

The track narrows a bit for another couple miles then turns to true bench cut single track running above the creek basically for the rest of the 20 miles. This was the first time on any sort of “exposed” single track for Scott and had him a little wigged out at first but with a little encouragement and some time getting used to it, he was doing really well by the end. We were down as far as 7500 feet before the last climb out up to about 8000 where the trail ended and we cruised down the dirt then paved road to the shuttle vehicle three and half hours later. Even with the shuttle we still did about 1500 feet of climbing. Conveniently enough there was a pizza shop right there that actually cooked your pizza before giving it to ya, so Pooh, princess and I chowed down on some while we waited for the truck to return, probably took them an hour. It was at least as great as Howie and I remembered and actually a fair piece easier, I know in my case its because im in much better shape now than 5 years ago. Looks like we may be hooking up with Phil for a big shuttle ride on Friday.

Princess and Pooh had picked up some innertubes the day before and wanted to go float the river, so papa bear took them down into town and dropped them off, the plan being we would pick them up on our way to go into town for dinner a few hours later. We found a parking spot a block or so from the street our Mexican place was on and walked to the street. We were only a couple blocks from one end of town so the odds were that the place was to our right, more into town so we headed that way. After 6 or 8 blocks we pretty much ran outta the retail district, asked a local and he said, yea, its at the other end of town, we should have gone left. No worries, it was a beautiful evening so we headed back and sure enough, there was Gazpacho’s. Really good food.

Today is a day off, more river floating and since we had time in the morning, Pooh made us all really good French toast.

Colorado Trail starting at Junction Creek

Well today’s ride was again on part of the Colorado Trail, this time we started at one of its end points, Junction Creek on the edge of Durango. The ride as written in the book takes you out the trail about 7 miles then does a loop with Dry Fork trail and Hoffheins trail for a total of about 16 miles and maybe 2200 feet of climbing. The first few miles are along junction creek heading up at a reasonable grade. It’s a well worn, popular trail near the beginning with lots of hikers, dogs, etc. We crossed the creek on an actual bridge no less, then started working our way out of the creek drainage on some nice long switchback trails. It was easier climbing as the trail started at “only” 7000 feet and worked our way up to 8000 at the end of the switch backs. The law of averages started catching up to us as we had very few mechanical issues on the trip till now. I broke a spoke, no big deal, and about 100 yards later Pooh broke his chain, another quick fix and we were back climbing. There was a nice view at Gudy’s Rest.

The ride directions have an elevation profile that showed things flatting out a bit for the next couple miles. What it failed to show was that it was really a series of rather steep climbs with flat sections in between them. But the flats were nice, great trail through pine forest. We arrived at the junction with Dry Fork at the same time a couple did, they had climbed up Dry Fork and were going the way we came. After a chat with them we decided that 16 miles was just not enough pain so we headed out to do an out n back on more of the Colorado Trail. It was a pretty tough granny gear climb for the next couple miles but we rode it all.

We ran into a big deadfall and decided to push on a bit further as the climb thus far really did not result in any good views. It quickly flattened out to the point where we were in the middle ring for a couple miles and not panting like an overheated dog.

There was a bit of steep pitch that we decided to head up and it resulted in a nice view, topping out at 9600 feet. The trail started down from there so we decided to head back.

Other than the flies that would congregate around anybody standing around for more than a few minutes, it was a great spot to eat our fluffer nutter sandwiches.

The return trip to Dry Fork was a blast and MUCH quicker than the ride up.

The ride down Dry Fork was almost as fun but we got into some scrub brush that limited sight lines as well threatened to grab your handlebars. We ran into a few people climbing, but not an issue. We hit Hoffheins trail and started climbing the 400 feet back up to the Colorado trail. We made the comment that it was all down hill from there, but darn it if we didn’t have to do a little more climbing right off the bat. Soon we did hit the down hill and down we went. I was riding a little over my head trying to keep up with Princess and Pooh Bear for video sake and took a little tumble but no major damage. We arrived down at the creek, crossed over the bridge, then back down the trail along the creek. We needed to control speed as the closer we got to the end of the trail as there were a bunch of hikers, kids, and dogs. We also passed a serious hiker again that we had seen as we were doing the out n back, he was just finishing up hiking the whole trail from Denver, 450 miles in 30 days, very impressive. Our total for the day was 23 miles and change and 3300 feet of climbing.

For those of you that are still here, a few notes from the rest of the story. Last night the campground must have been hosting some kind of Karaoke thing at their big tent about 50 yards away from us cause there we all kinds of bad singing wafting across to us all evening. We met a guy that also mountain bikes but is here with the family so he’s pretty limited in how much he can ride, about 2 hours (anymore than that and he said he would have to bunk with us for the night), but he was planning a big ride tomorrow, the same one we wanted to do Hermosa Creek, but it requires a shuttle vehicle. We were going to rent a car to do it but hopefully tonight we will be able to work things out with him that he would come with us and use his vehicle along with the Beast. After the ride, we got cleaned up and the boys headed into town, Howie had to hit the bike shop, post office, and grocery. While he was doing the post office run, princess and pooh bear spied a pizza place and thought they would grab a slice to tide them over till dinner. Well the place didn’t serve slices so they ordered a small pizza. Turns out this is one unique pizza parlor, they don’t actually cook it, they send it home with you pre-made for you to cook. I wish I could have seen pooh’s face when they handed him the saran covered uncooked pizza. They figured what the heck, they paid for it, lets bring it home and cook it up at the RV, and it was quite tasty. This may be too much info, but Princess also declared that he was named the third largest air polluter behind autos and fossil fuel powered electrical plants in Colorado, and was getting no resistance from the rest of us. It’s a gorgeous evening, no rain this afternoon at least here at the campground. Its still darn warm in the sun but in the shade it is very comfortable thanks to the lack of humidity at least compared to PA. Princeess talked to our new neighbor that pulled in and they made the comment that they though it was quite humid here, at least compared to Phoenix where they are from. Just goes to show, everything is relative.

The Return to Molas Pass

Well the trip from Taos up to Durango was pretty uneventful, pretty much all two lane roads with a few ups n downs over mountains but the weather played nice. As mentioned we didn’t have any plans to ride, just catch up on a little bike maintenance and princess and I did laundry. Pooh Bear flew in the night before, stayed at a hotel, and cruised around town on his bike and then met us out here at the campground once we got here. The campground is about 2 miles up 550 from Durango, beautiful red rock cliff on either side of us and the narrow gauge railroad that takes tourists up to Silverton passes just on the other side of the road.

The ride today was Howie and my return to the Colorado trail at Molas Pass, the crossing between Durango and Ouray. The ride starts at 10,900 feet so we were sucking wind right from the start. The first couple miles is a bit of grunt climb but with amazing views including a beautiful alpine lake and vistas as far as the eye can see.

Now at about 11,600 feet the trail stays within a couple contour lines, weaving around the ridges and across streams fed from the melting snow. The wildflowers were everywhere and what I think is called tobacco cabbage or something like that was so thick in places you were brushing it with both grips. For the most part the trail is really great single track although there were spots where it is getting rutted and you actually have a hard time peddling without catching on the sides of the rut. Most of the track was pretty smooth but there were plenty of rocks and quick ups to keep you on your toes.

There were also a number of very soft, muddy spots from the melting snow. Our plan was to head out 12 miles then head back. We got a little later start than we had hoped but were still on the trail by about 9am. This was a bit problematic as the afternoon thunderstorms started to build while we were still on our way out. We reached the 11 mile point and were faced with crossing a pretty good size patch of snow so we decided to turn around at that point. This is what it looked like back towards where we were heading

We really lucked out. The sky stayed pretty clear over our heads all the way back but I was able to see about where we needed to end up and made the comment that I was pretty darn sure the truck was getting rained on while we were still about 6 miles out. Sure enough the last mile or so had definitely gotten rain but had moved out by the time we got there so we never did get rained on other than a few sprinkles. 22 miles and about 3300 feet of climbing later we were back at Molas Pass.

As for the critter count, nothing too exciting, a mule deer on the drive up and some kind of western ground hog looking thing on the trail.

Injury report, princess got stuck in some mud and I was a little to close behind and ended up falling over into the mud when I couldn't get unclipped quite in time and skinned up my shin a little bit, but just a slight flesh wound.

A Dissapointing Day

Well we had a nice day in the woods, however the ride was disappointing. The guide book gave us high hopes and Rey at Gearing Up confirmed it was a very scenic ride. The ride as we were going to do it was an out and back to Goose Lake along Goose Creek. It started out OK although we were dogging a lot of horse poop. We were able to ride most of the trail all be it in the little chain ring with a few short hike-a-bike sections for the first couple of miles. Watching the GPS I was getting a little worried as we were not gaining that much altitude and I was figuring things had to get steeper later on in the ride. I was correct. Its always nice to ride in a stream valley/canyon, shady, cool, the sound of running water, but this one was pretty beat up by the horses, especially any of the softer areas and there were a fair number with all the rain the area has had lately. After about 2.5 of the 6 mile, 3000 foot climb, the hike-a-bike was more prevalent than actually riding. We got up well over the 11,000 foot mark and actually ran into a leftover snow drift and mosquitoes at the same time. At about 11,600 we finally hit Goose Lake. There were a lot of exposed tree roots on the way up and things were still really wet in there so three of had the idea that it was going to be really dangerous trying to descend back down the single track so we were considering going back down the road instead. I figured princess would balk at that idea but he ended up having some brake issues and came up with the road idea on his own.

The lake was really beautiful and seems to be a popular destination for the ATV’s as there were a bunch of them parked in the lot along with some jeeps. We ate our fluffer nutter sandwiches and howie took pictures. We then headed down the dirt road trying to not to get run over by the ATV’s flying around.

We needed to get back into town early enough to get Rich to the greyhound station so he could get back to Albuquerque for his flight tomorrow. I kid you not, the bus station is actually a pawn shop that doubles as the bus station, we should have gotten a picture of that sign. Well the “bus station” wasn’t actually open for Rich to get his will call ticket and the bus ended up about 50 minutes late but it all worked out and hopefully Rich will be back in the great commonwealth of PA tomorrow sometime.

Tomorrow is a day off from riding, well deserved and needed as we travel up to Durango CO.

South Boundary Trail

The ride today was the famous South Boundary Trail. It was on the same ridge more or less as the ride we tried to do yesterday so I was a little nervous about the navigation. It involves a shuttle, that is we paid the owner of one of the local bike shops, Gearing Up, to drive us around and up to the trailhead at about 9800 feet. Since he needs to open the shop at 9 or whenever he does, we had to meet him at the shop at 6:45am so he could get back in time. Princess was not particularly happy with that timing but managed to have his butt in the truck at the appointed time. Rey was great, really nice guy and gave us a number of tips about the trail as well as an overview of the whole bike scene in the area, the forest service issues etc. So about an hour after we dropped the truck at the end of the trail, we started out on trail 164. That was at an elevation of about 9800 feet and we still had almost 1000 feet to climb before we started across and down.

Not that there was no more climbing, but for the most part it was rolling between 10400 and 9500 for about 17 miles. It was a combination of extremely sweet single track and some jeep trail. The trails ranged from winding through alpine meadows with wild flowers to sweet bench cut trail through pine and aspen trees.

With the rain they have been getting in the area the trail is in mint condition, not a bit of dust anywhere and for the most part just a nice bit of tackiness to help keep the rubber side down. For the most part it was pretty well signed but the gps track I had downloaded did come in handy a couple times. I think we did a bit of bonus millage as we followed the 164 trail signs rather than at least one set of directions and the gps track but managed to get back around to where we were supposed to be. We ran into some cows a few times and saw a few mule deer that could hardly be bothered by us. After about 18 miles we started to head down and the trail got more technical, loose rocks , switchbacks, and steeper trails as we descended from the 9000 foot range back down to 7000 feet. 21.5 miles and 4.5 hours later the muscles in our faces were a little fatigued from grinning so much.

The Adventure

We broke camp and headed up to Taos, NM this morning, i was impressed we were able, with some prework the evening before to get pulled out within about an hour of getting up. The drive up was uneventful as howie managed to find a detour around Santa Fe rather than making me drive the rig through town.
the ride was to be the Elliot Barker Trail. We only had a map, no actual ride description, first mistake. Princess made the right decision and stayed back at the camper. First we stopped at a bike shop on the way to the trail head to reserve our shuttle for tomorrow to do the South Boundary Trail, really has nothing to do with the ride. So up we drove to the pass above Taos at about 9100 feet. There were no real trail markers at all, first bad sign. We took what had to be the correct trail and it went up over some humps that looked like they would be fun coming back. We pushed the bikes a bit but nothing too bad. Then a bit of a down hill where we ran into a couple hikers at a T intersection. From our map we needed to go right but the hikers said the trail that way just went up to the meadow and quit. Well from yesterday we learned our lesson about listing to hikers so we headed right. They were right in a sense that the trail did seem to disappear in the meadow but we found a gate and a sign post that sent us in the right direction. Another bit of uphill and a bit of pushing followed by another downhill. At this point we had about three miles under our belts. We came out to a power line cut and had a decision to make, go to the left on what appeared to be trail but cross the NO TRESSPASSING sign or go to the right on a bit wider trail. We decided not to be scoff laws, and figured this was a pretty well known trail that would not need to have trespassing as part of it. We were wrong. After heading down what was now a definite old road, the GPS confirmed that we were not heading where we should be. We consulted the map, figured where we must be and hatched a new plan. Right on cue we found the next old road we needed to take, fewwww, at least we confirmed where we were. Another left on a pretty good looking dirt road and we were golden, that is right up until we ran into a HUGE gate with no trespassing signs all over it. On to plan B. Rich spotted a singletrack just before the gate so we ended up heading up that. The sign post was missing its board directing us on our travels, but we felt better that at least there used to be a sign there. Im not sure how long we hiked up that thing but it was a while. We finally crested the mountain and found another trail sign that had a number 1 on it but not much useful information. We followed the single track across the ridge until it T'd into a double track, old road type thing. We chose to keep heading back towards where the truck was parked. More climbing on more old dirt roads, continuing to head towards the truck when faced with a direction choice. We ended up heading down on one of these and ended up spying a nice looking dirt road and headed for that. There was a house up there with a couple people out and Rich went to see about the best way to get back to the truck. My fears were confirmed, somehow we went over the ridge, missing the trail we where supposed to be on. The only real way back was to go all the way down through this development and take the road back up to the truck. Normally, not a big deal but there were storm clouds with lightning in the area and the road up was very twisty with no shoulder. The nice lady at the house we got directions at was heading out and offered to lead us down through the maze of roads to the main highway. At the bottom she then offered to take us back up to the truck, the SUV even had a bike rack on it. We graciously took her up on her most generous offer.
Sorry no pictures today

Winsor Trail - day three

Princess is not a morning person. For all you that know him, you probably have at least an inkling of that but until you are there when he wakes up, you really can’t understand. He looks like somebody that had way too much to drink and way too little sleep the night before, but he may have had at most two beers and by the time he got up, at least 7 hours of sleep. Luckily his disposition isn’t as bad as he looks and eventually he comes around.

On to the important part, the ride. Today was the Winsor trail, it’s actually the main trail in a network of single track just outside Santa Fe. The plan as written is to do an out and back, climbing from about 7200 to 10300 feet in about 10 miles, sound familiar? The big difference between today and yesterday is singletrack, the whole climb was singletrack, WOOHOO!

The grade was also a little more consistent so we were able to ride almost all of it, with the only extended hike-a-bike near the top, maybe a quarter mile at most. We did spend a good deal of time in granny or near granny though. The track was for the part in really good shape, a mix of dirt and decomposed granite, it reminded me of the trails in Tahoe. The other interesting part of the first 5 miles were the stream crossings, according to princess, 16 of them. The first one I dismounted and took the log “bridge” not wanting to wash the lube off my chain that early. After hitting the next one within a few minutes I quickly realized we just needed to ride them, so we all had wet shoes and socks, but no big deal at all. Princess had the first mechanical of the trip, a cut in his tire that was too big for the Stan’s sealant to heal. Luckily he has good friends that let him have their tube since he didn’t have one with him. The trails are not dusty at all so we have not had any issues with lack of lube on the chains which can be a problem out west. The climb ended up taking about 3.5 hours and the fluffer nutter sandwiches tasted like prime rib at that point. We checked out a really nice vista point, again showing where we had been and where we were going back to, along way below us.

So down we went, video camera on, me trying to keep up with princess and Rich. It was a LOT of fun. The trail just begged to be ridden hard and fast so you had to temper that with your desire not to get hurt too badly. We hit the road crossing and almost ran into a VERY large bull dozer grading the road, luckily we heard it before we saw it and didn’t drop on to the road right in front of it. We waited for Howie to catch up and then down some more. Princess didn’t trust his will not to get hurt so he let Rich go first to try and keep himself from doing anything too stupid, musta worked as he ended the ride pretty much unscathed, and there was plenty of potential for disaster.

We went “off book” about half way down, taking a detour that Mike Mucker had told us about. Howie and I looked at the map at the top of the climb and determined that there would not be much climbing on the detour. The altitude must have gotten to us or the map was not real accurate because we ended up with a healthy little climb and we took Mucker’s name in vain more than once. But the downhill payoff back to the main trail made it all worth while and we forgave Mike. Of course, not learning our lesson, we started out on another detour of Mike’s, this time we were all pretty much just down to our water bottles, killing off the 100 oz of water we had in our packs. After we started up another climb that wasn’t supposed to be there we ran into a couple hikers that assured us that we could not get back to Winsor trail the way we were going. The trail up ahead looked a bit ugly and steep and again, we were close to being outta water so we actually did the smart thing and head back down what we came up back to the main trail. Those last 4 miles or so were a blast and went way too quickly. Total millage was about 24 and I would estimate about 3500 feet of climbing. All agreed, a great great ride.

First Couple Days

Well we made it out to New Mexico, took two days of 14.5 hours of driving but got here late Sunday nite. Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois were as boring as I remember. There are actually a few hills in Missouri along I-44 going towards Tulsa, that was a bit of surprise. There is also almost nothing between Oklahoma City and Amarillo TX. We passed by the restaurant with the worlds largest rocking chair and also went by the largest cross in the western hemisphere. Oh boy. We pulled into the campground outside of Santa Fe Monday morning and got things set up a bit then headed down to Albuquerque to pick up Rich at his friends place that he spent the weekend at. We head out of town just a bit to what is said is Albuquerque's premier ride, Otero Canyon. It was a nice ride, only about a thousand feet of climbing so it didn't totally kill us lowlanders, I think it started around 7200 feet above sea level. It was all pretty much in the scrubby woods without many scenic vistas but the downhill (you actually do it twice) was in pretty good shape and fun. Total of about 15 miles. We lucked out and missed the rain that was pretty much all over Albuquerque. A quick stop at the grocery store and back the hour to the campground. We pretty much picked up where we left off, some really great burgers and howie's cheesie potatoes.

Day two was more normal, we got up around 6:30 and started getting things together, cereal for breakfast and once we pried Princess outta bed we were headed to the trailhead by about 9am. This ride is supposed to be one of the primo ride in the Santa Fe area, Glorietta Baldy, so named for where it starts and Mt Baldy where it tops out. We actually parked and started from this massive Baptist retreat "city" for lack of a better work. A couple miles down the paved road and we started up the dirt road, and up and up and up. The total climb was about 11 miles, from 7200 to 10200 feet with a few ups and downs in there so we musta climbed at least 3500 feet. The last mile or so had at least the three of us, kevin, rich, and princess walking our bikes. Howie was out in front far enough that Im not sure how much he walked but was very impressive on how much he did ride. I don't think the climb would have been as bad had we been more acclimated to the altitude, but basically it sucked. We finally reached the summit after about 2.5 hours of climbing.

You can see the retreat center down below us in the center of the picture

This was our first view of single track, FINALLY. The track was a bit on the loose side and had some challenging switchbacks to start. It degraded into an old almost fall line hiking trail that was really loose with babyhead size rocks. It alternated between what I would call decent sustainable trail and this loose mess for the next mile or so. There were some nice sections and the last half mile or so was really fun, some mini slickrock riding at points. We had a little bit of navigating to get around some barbed wire fence at the bottom but made it out to the road that would take us back to the truck. There was a bit of debate on whether the heinous climb was worth 5 miles of that type of single track and the majority seemed to feel probably not. But it was still a good ride.