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.