TD 2015 - Wyoming

Wyoming. The windy place, the place of the Great Basin, and here we are, crossing from Colorado to the little town of Savery who had a museum with a water supply for cyclists and then right into the Basin on our way to Wamsutter.  It would be about 80 miles to Wamsutter, starting with some of the biggest rollers I've seen .. steep climbs and crazy steep descents, and then Jeff and I were on a high plain riding along as the day grew warmer.

Jeff in front of the only store in Savery, and it's closed ( for a long time )

Billy and Liana !!

We ran into Billy Rice and Liana on their tandem doing a father daughter ride, chatted for a bit as well as with a lot of other southbound riders.  Being northbounders, we would see just about everyone doing TD.  That water bottle that I left in Clark the previous day was starting to become a problem and I found myself rationing my water more that I would have wished.  Finally we could see the water tower of Wamsutter showing after riding on a slight climb through a large oil field south of the town.

Wamsutter is a new addition to TD, put in this year to avoid some serious construction south of Rawlins and it worked well.  I got to the Subway and ordered a sandwich and drank about 5 large Cokes and promptly had a overload of sugar in my system and felt like hell.  Jeff on the other hand was feeling pretty good and he wanted to head out at sundown, but I wasn't ready and elected to get a hotel room and maybe leave early in the morning.  But when morning came I was still feeling bad so I ate again at a Mexican restaurant which was pretty good, got some pie to go and ate more and left at sundown.

On the Basin north of Wamsutter

Connector and a wild horse 

I rode into wind and thunderstorms all around me, and saw a nice group of wild horses as I rode north, kept going, the sun went down and rode into the night.  The rain finally caught up with me and I pulled over into the sage, setup my tent and slept soundly.  The next morning I packed up at sunrise and found the connector trail between the road we had been on and another road that would take me into the oil field and connect with a road going to Atlantic City.

A lot of empty out there in the Middle !

Easy Street 

Atlantic City Bar

Wasn't a bad day, I passed the markers for the Landers cutoff for the Oregon trail, and finally the Sweetwater River and was in Atlantic City, and to my surprise, the bar was open !  Normally closed on Mondays, they were getting ready for 4th of July so I got to eat, and then come back and eat again, and got pointed to a cabin owned by a cowboy named Mark.  It was a great deal, a beautiful little place he had build himself.

I woke up the next morning to a very low rear tire.  Pumped it up, turned it so the Stans would settle in that area, and hoped for the best.  It held !   Started riding towards Boulder and Pinedale and encountered the strongest winds of the trip.  A sign said 42 miles to Boulder and I thought I would never, never get there.  Met the last of the southbound TD riders and got to Pinedale, where I ate, shopped for bear spray and got a hotel room.

Empty Country

Cora, WY

In the morning out again in my routine, find breakfast, buy something at a convenience store and roll.  A little place called Cora with a kitty in the window of the Post Office, up into the forest along the Green River.  Climbing and riding and making pretty good progress until my GPS show the track going to the left where I thought it should be on the road in front of me.  Am sitting on the side of the road looking at where the GPS says to go and looking at the ACA map that shows something completely different, talking to the ATV guy who stopped and later to the Deputy Sheriff who stopped with both of them saying "there's nothing over there - you want to go where it shows on your map - that's Cripple Creek ranch - you want to go there"  So there I go, as friends in Tucson are watching my track get further and further from the course.  I commit to a steep downhill to get to Cripple Creek and once in the restaurant, eating and using the WiFi, I figure out that I completely missed one of the reroutes that Matthew had emailed us.  I had no clue it was there, thinking they were referring to something over in Idaho !  So, I am like 8 miles off route and at least 1000 feet down in a hole from where I should be.  But I am well fed and sleeping in a bunkhouse, so to bed and up in the morning and back up the hill.  The GPS was right after all and the alternate course was pretty passing along part of the CDT and then taking me back down Lava Mountain.

Pup at Cripple Creek making sure I am set in my bunkhouse 

I was supposed to take this trail

At the Lava Mountain store I met some road tourers on their way to Oregon.  They were headed up to Togwotee Pass.  I would get to the pass also, but had to use a forest road vs US 26.  I had a couple of burritos and several drinks and then got to my forest road and right at the top of the pass I come around a corner and there are the four road cyclists ( they seem pretty surprised that I caught up to them even using that forest road ).

Coming up to Togwotee Pass on Forest Road

Took a fast downhill and got to Togwotee Lodge and decided to stay there for the night, even though it was seriously overpriced.  The morning would find me entering Grand Teton National Park and riding along Jackson Lake.

Jackson Lake and the Tetons

I met more cyclists doing the TD route at Cotter Bay and then stopped at Headquarters for some lunch.  At this point I started going west on another forest road and someplace out there crossed into Idaho.  One of the fellows I met at Cotter said to checkout the Squirrel Lodge near Ashton and I did and it was a good stop.  Larry the owner fixed me up with supper and a cabin to stay in, and breakfast the next morning.

So Wyoming was done, and I'm in the Snake River valley of Idaho, with the Rail Trail to come next.

TD 2015 - Colorado

It felt good to get past Horca, where I quit last year. I rode about 6 miles up along the river and camped. Up early in the morning and rode to Platoro, got a great breakfast and then had some serious climbs to deal with.

Stunner Pass was the first one and it went pretty quickly. I then rode past Red Mountain and onto a higher alpine like plain and climbed over to Summitville, which is now a Superfund site, due to some mining company building a cyanide pit for gold refining and then running away when the whole thing started leaking and polluting the water supply. After Summitville there was a few miles of climbing left to get to Indiana Pass.  The day was getting late and a thunderstorm was starting to brew and I could see flashes of lightening as I get to an area with very few trees at 11,910 feet.  No sign was up there to take a picture in front of and I started down on a long rainy descent that essentially took me all the way to Del Norte, where I stayed in their hostel for the night.

Stunner Pass

Red Mountain

Alpine zone

Del Norte Cafe

Del Norte Hostel

The next day was going to be a hard one.  I wanted to get to Sargents about 111 miles and 7000 feet of climbing away.  Got another good breakfast, restocked at a gas station and started out with a sandy climb through a small pass and into a grassy desert like area.  Heard my only rattler of the trip out there and then started climbing toward Carnero Pass.  This turned out to be a pretty hot day and the climb later to Cochetopa Pass took a bit out of me, but I got it done.  On the way downhill, instead of going fast, I got hit with a headwind and that continued for next next couple of hours at least.  I ended up stopping at one of the Dome Reservoirs and rested and stuck my feet in the water.  It felt great and I continued on, but really didn't find a decent spot to camp, so kept riding and riding and finally I was at Doyleville where I stopped for all of 30 seconds before I was covered with mosquitos.  So that wasn't going to be a place to camp, and I headed east on US 50 to Sargents and got there about 10:30 or so.  Sargents is one of those places where cold settles in from higher elevations and it was the coldest night I encountered on the whole trip .. woke up the next morning with frost all over the bike, tent and the rest.

Ride the Divide Movie Scene ( north of Del Norte )

Carnero Pass ( no snow here )

As the Tomichi Trading post opened, Neil Beltchenko. showed up.  He finished in the top three this year, and he came in and quickly gathered up his supplies for the coming day ( as I was sitting drinking coffee ).  I was able to tell him and some of the other lead riders that the passes in Colorado were free of snow and they weren't going to have any problems ( lots of folks were worried about this ).  It was fun to see these guys, they are really strong, had been racing the same amount of time as me and had already covered almost 2000 miles ( compared to my 800 or so ).

Go Neil !

Marshall Pass - Yeah !

Absolute Bikes - A TD must stop !

Marshall pass was next and wasn't too bad.  I had some good energy still in my system, but stopped in Salida to check out the bike shop, get some more GU's and have my rear brake looked at.  Scott at Absolute Bikes took care of that in no time, but I stayed the night, got myself a pizza and to bed early.

Looks like an old gas station 

The next morning I got up early and rolled for Hartsel and at least Como.  The ride to Hartsel was pretty, a long climb out of Salida and then views of the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness, a group of 14000 ft mountains to the west.  I think that was one of the prettiest sections, with all of the snow on them and the morning sun illuminating their eastern slopes.  In Hartsel, I found a cafe and got some food and met one of the racers doing the TransAm race.  Lee is about my age, and was doing Astoria to Yorktown on a road bike, self supported just like TD.  I left the cafe, and headed along another dirt road to Como.  Near Como, I got a phone call from Susan who wondered why I hadn't moved for two or three hours, turns out the batteries in my Spot had died, so I put new batteries in and got that resolved and was back on the tracker,

Como is one of those old mining towns that just has a few people living there and the Como Depot which used to have a restaurant and a bed and breakfast is closed, so onward to Boreas Pass which I got on top of at sundown.  Had a chilly ride down into Breckenridge where I saw a fox as I was parking my bike in front of a Bubba Gump Shrimp restaurant.  I kept going, got onto the bike path and after a really circuitous route finally got to Frisco.  Think it was about 110 miles and 8000 feet of climbing for the day, so I felt pretty darn good about the day.

Boreas Pass

In the morning I texted Coach Jen and met her at a restaurant in Silverthorne for breakfast.  It was cool to see folks I know even if just for a little while and then I was off to Kremmling.  You don't get anyplace on Tour Divide without going over a pass and Ute Pass was next, followed by riding through more forest and along a big reservoir and then a just rained on dirt road.  In Kremmling I ran into Chris and Alex, a father son team who were doing the ride northbound also ( northbounders are rare - almost everyone goes south ).

The Protected Rock 

Colorado River

Next morning, I started for Steamboat Springs.  When I got to Radium I caught the tail end of a little cattle drive, with about 250 cows being moved across the only bridge over the Colorado River.  River rafters and me were all held up as about 7 cowboys tried to get these cows over the river, as they went into some brush and stirred up about a million mosquitos, with me riding in circles trying to keep moving so I didn't get eaten by the mosquitos and cow stuff all over the place.  The herd finally moved along and everyone could get where they needed to go and I started up one of the steeper climbs on the whole trip to get onto a ridgeline above Radium.  That took a while, then I had a bunch of rollers and more forest to ride through.  I got to go around a reservoir on some pretty fun singletrack, cross over a dam and after a few more hours I was in Steamboat.

7 Cowboys, 3 Dogs, 250 Cows, One Million Mosquitos and me

More Wildflower Beauty

Sheep

I thought about taking a day off, but was afraid of inactivity, so left in the morning for Brush Mountain, one of those Tour Divide magical spots.  I stopped at the Clark Store in Clark, got some food and a bottle of water and managed somehow to ride off with the bottle sitting on the sidewalk.

There were some beautiful displays of wildflowers on this part of the ride, along with a pretty hard climb on rocky forest roads, but later in the evening we were at Brush Mountain with Kirsten asking what I wanted to eat and bringing two cheeseburgers and some Cokes and I was all setup.  Kirsten has been supporting Tour Divide for several years and is just an amazing person.  Jeff and I shared a cabin, we got some breakfast the next morning  and had a pretty short ride to get to Wyoming.  Once you get to Brush Mountain, it is generally said that you have a pretty good chance of sticking with it to the end.  And it was cool to meet a lot of the southbound riders who were there.

Resting - Could have stayed here a couple of days 

TD 2015 - New Mexico

It was time to recover a bit from yesterday's hot and bonky ride from Antelope Wells to Silver City, but I got up and headed to a great breakfast at the Adobe Springs Cafe in Silver City, and then to Albertson's to stock up on some groceries to tide me over for the couple of days and nights getting through the Gila.  I discovered that Silver City only allows paper bags in their grocery stores and walked out to my bike with a big brown paper bag of stuff.  I went back in, found the recycled plastic bin and dug around in it for some bags that I could actually tie on my bike, and away I went, up to Pinos Altos and into the Gila.

Pinos Altos is just on the other side 

Was a hot day, and I got onto the CDT alternate trail that we have to take and rode for a while and then discovered that one of the oranges that I had tied in a bag had disappeared someplace on the trail.  Wasn't going back to find it, and continued on.  ( Travis and Norman found it coming up the trail behind me and said "it was delicious" )  When I got to the Sapillo campground, I decided that I needed more real food and so I took an off route detour and headed for the Spirit Canyon Cafe.  An excellent choice, I got some more good solid food in my system, got rehydrated and felt 100% better.  The rest of the day went pretty well, I passed the place where I slept last year and got several miles over that, and ended up late in the day at Rocky Canyon campground where I setup for the night.

Yes !

During the night I was treated to the sound of wolves howling.  I was the only person in the little campground and really got that wilderness experience, lying in my tent hearing these wolves ( not coyotes - I know what they sound like ! ).   Got up in the morning and heard the sound of Travis and Norman rolling down to the campground, we exchanged hello's and they went on up the road as I packed up.

It was 33 miles to the Beaverhead Work Center which has a great water supply, and that went pretty well.  I passed Norman on the way and he came into Beaverhead just as I was leaving.  Norman and I would ride together off and on all through the afternoon, and the two of us got to Horse Springs Church around 10 pm that night.  We would camp near the church, got resupplied with water there and would leave for Pie Town early on a chilly morning the next day.

Plains of San Augustine before Horse Springs Church

Pie Town is such an awesome place.  It represents the first place with real food that you get to after doing the Gila, and the Toaster House is this great little place to stay.  I got there for breakfast, and Norm and Travis showed up a bit later.  We met back at the Toaster House and decided that it was too early in the day to stop riding and maybe the big black clouds to the south of us wouldn't get us, so we headed North with a pretty nice little tailwind.

We had a pretty good ride up to Grants, passing El Malpais Monument, then crossed I-40 and hung around the Subway as they were closing and a big thunderstorm was moving in.  With lightening all around we made it to a hotel and crashed for the night, planning an early start the next morning.

El Malpais

Up early, a stop at Dennys and then off to Cuba.  It's about 125 miles with two possible stops for food and water being the laundromat outside Pueblo Pintado and a bar/convenience store closer to Cuba.  I ran into Travis at the laundromat, which is a combination of laundromat, post office, gas station and convenience store.  Had a couple of microwaved burritos and we sat in the shade and petted one of owner Dennis's dogs ( JR ).

Travis and JR

In Cuba, El Bruno's is still the place to go and the flan was outstanding !   The next morning the whole group of us were together for a bit, as Jeff had slowed up a bit, Travis and Norman and I were there and another rider joined in.  I elected for more breakfast and made a quick stop at McDonalds and then on to Abiquiu.  There is a nice paved climb out of Cuba on 126 and then you are into the Santa Fe forest, climbing up to about 10300 feet or so.  I met Tiana Tallant early on, she was in NM after starting back in May in Banff and she was really happy and all smiles and seemed in pretty awesome condition for someone who had done over 2000 miles by herself !  A few hours later, I rounded a corner and had my first (and only) bear encounter ... a black bear was walking towards me.  But the bear decided to leave the road after walking a few more steps towards me, leaving me a little rattled ( my bear spray being left behind in Tucson ).  Got to Abiquiu, and ended up with the same room I had last year, and a really good meal in the restaurant, where I had the waiter bring me two deserts.

Tiana

Just order both !

After Abiquiu, the next stop is El Rito, where Norm, Travis and I met again at the convenience store while waiting for El Farolito's to open up.  We sat in the shade and waited and were pretty hungry at opening, but the food was worth the wait.  Then off and into the mountains, and a rainstorm.  No dogs in Vallecitos this year, I sailed through at top speed and then got to the Summer Store in Canon Plaza where Joe had the place opened.  Norm and Travis stopped and we talked with Joe for a good half hour or more before leaving.  That night we made Hopwell Lake and found a little campsite.

Aspens and an old cabin, before Burned Mountain and Hopwell Lake

The next morning, Travis was sick, perhaps from dehydration or altitude or both, and he and Norman stayed behind to ride out toward Los Alamos and I went ahead towards the Brazos Ridge and Colorado.  Was fun to get near the top of Brazos Ridge and look at snowcapped peaks to the north that I knew were in Colorado.  There were beautiful flowers all in the valley below the ridge, and then soon I was crossing into Colorado, going down La Manga Pass and getting all you can eat catfish at the reopened restaurant in Horca.

Norman and Travis

Out in the distance, there is snow -- that's Colorado

Beautiful

I felt pretty darn good, having finished New Mexico a day ahead of where I was last year, and ready to get up the next morning and do the highest altitudes on the whole trip going over Indiana Pass,

TD 2015 - The Finish and the Start

I thought the Spray River trail was going to be paved. Yes, seriously, I am not sure why I thought that, but here I am at about 6 pm on a Sunday afternoon and I am climbing a little hill and having to shift into my lowest gears to get up the thing and I was thinking "I thought this was going to be flattish"  Now, after 30 some days of riding along the Divide, I really should know better. The journey that began so many days ago, way down at the New Mexico border with old Mexico was almost over and there were not going to be any give aways.

Rocky Section on Spray River West

And so, as I rode those last couple of miles, the purple line on my Garmin Etrex began to show the words "Start Point" and the little arrow that marked my current position grew ever closer and closer to that spot, until there was a little trailhead area with a parking lot ahead of me, and then suddenly, I was there, at the Spray River West Trail Head at the edge of Banff, and this ride that had taken me 37 days to complete would at last be over.

We Are There !

I stopped in front of the sign, and talked with a couple who hailed from Florida.  I think I said something like "I just finished" and the lady though I was talking about finishing a loop ride that connects some local trails, and I say something like, "No, I just got here from Mexico".  Part of me wanted to be quiet about it, and part of me wanted to shout it from the rooftops.  She took a photo of me, and then I rode a couple of hundred feet and was in front of the lobby of the Fairmont Hotel in Banff with the dirt and cow stuff on my bike, the grizzle on me and a bit of an unwashed and unkempt overall appearance.  I stopped there for a minute or two, posted a FB update and I started to realize that it really was done.

Paul, my son, had driven Kevin J and me over to Deming a few weeks before.  We stayed the night and then left for AW after some breakfast at a Denny's.  We got there about 20 minutes before the 8 am start, pulled the bikes out of the car and off the roof rack, checked some tire pressures and lined up for the 8am Grand Depart.  There were 7 of us, Norman and Travis, Gabe, Jeff, Erik, and Kevin and I.  A countdown was done and sharply at 8 am, our little group rolled out in a couple of small groups heading North on a 2740 something mile journey.

Jeff, Norman, Travis, me, Erik, Gabe, Kevin 

First Few Feet

Happy TD Riders

 Our little group headed up the highway towards Hachita.  Jeff and Kevin stopped for a bit and I moved on ahead and stayed up front until we got almost to I-10.  We were rolling pretty quickly on pavement, and then made short work of the gravel frontage road section and were at Separ at the Continental Divide Trading Post.  I spent an hour and a half last year recovering at this place and today, I felt good.  Went inside and got some liquids and some chips and waited until Travis came up and then we started up the dirt road towards Silver.

Jeff and I rode together for a while, but then I started feeling the effects of pushing way too hard earlier in the morning and I dropped back.  I rode pretty well until I got to pavement and then a major bonk was coming on, and I had gone hard enough that I couldn't eat anything.  So here I am, in a close parallel to where I was last year, out of "gas".  But I managed to get some nutrition in, and struggled into the Chevron station at the south edge of Silver City a bit after sundown.  I was shattered, to put it properly.  Went inside, got an Arizona iced tea, and back outside, sat on the concrete leaning up against the building, trying to recover.  A truck pulled up, with his lights on, idling, about 3 feet from my face, and I just sat there ( the guy finally turned the lights off ).  I went back in, got a Coke and started feeling human again.  Left the Chevron, headed into town looking for food.  I stopped at a burger place, got an order, and took it outside to the patio which had no one else on it.  Excellent call, because I took two bites of the burger and it all came right back up into the paper bag that it had been in.  So that was the end of that meal.  Put the whole thing in the trash and was happy that I didn't make a mess, and I rolled up the street to a small hotel and got a room for the night.  First day was about 125 miles of riding, but at least I was in Silver City and felt pretty good about that and I would just have to deal with not having any food in my system when tomorrow came.

Gear Shakeout

Time to get ready for the Divide. Time to see if all the stuff is still working. Time to get real.

Did a chilly ride up Mt Lemmon on Friday with the GABA folks. The temperature when I got out of the car was all of 62 but it was cloudy and it just felt cold ( that's ridiculous but true ! ) It did get much colder, down into the high 30's by the time we got to Loma Linda, I got my piece of pie and beat feet it back down the mountain.

Up on Saturday and loaded the bike. Didn't end up leaving until nearly 9 am. Rode about 3 miles and realized that I couldn't shift into my smallest rear ring. Figured that the straps on the front bag were restricting the action and redid it and that solved the problem.

I turned off Mission Road on Helmet Peak, thought I would take Santa Rita road towards Helvetica and then jump over to Box Canyon Road. A good idea in principal, but bad in practice as there was a "Dead End" sign after I had gone downhill a ways. I decided that didn't apply to me ( a mostly ok decision ) and went ahead, lifted the bike over a barbed wire fence, got on it and heard a bang as all of the air in the front tire came out at once.  Stans all over the place.  Found the hole, got the tire to reinflate ( sometimes tricky for tubeless ), wasted half of my CO2 by having the valve on the inflator adaptor in the wrong position when I screwed the cartridge in, then had the adaptor blow into the weeds when I unscrewed the cartridge that was not empty yet.  Had to search the weeds to find that sucker, but retrieved it, and got my tire pumped up. One short hike-a-bike and I was on Box Canyon Road.

Sunset

Stopped in Sonoita, got a prime rib and headed to Las Cienegas Conservation area ( along Cienega Creek ) and camped for the night.  Beautiful sunset and sunrise the next morning.

I looked for them - didn't see any

Into Whetstone, stopped at the gas station, had a Don Miguel burrito for breakfast, a quick stop at Fairbanks, and on to Tombstone for breakfast #2.

My Son had Tom Swift Books - this in Fairbanks Schoolhouse

Cruised Allen Street, talked to some folks from Indiana and then out of town and up Middlemarch Rd.  Hadn't gone over the Dragoons on Middlemarch before and it was fun, got to a place that you could accurately call the "middle" of Middlemarch.  Then took a fast steep downhill to Pearce, AZ.

Do You See the Sheep's Head ?

Top of Middlemarch Looking West

Middlemarch Rd going East

Have to go straight some other day

Outskirts of Pearce

Up Hwy 191 past Sunsites, smelled food and turned in a TJ's Bar and Grill and had a great grilled ham and cheese and fries ( it's all about the food ) and then on up 191 to Dragoon Road.

Rest was pretty uneventful, a ride down I-10 with trucks going by at 75 or 80+ mph as dusk grew and a hotel room in Benson with a ride back home this morning.  Think it's about 250 miles for the 3 days and 50 something for Lemmon, so pretty ok.

Rattlesnake Ranch - Dragoon Road ( see the DropBox ? )

End of Dragoon Road, just before I-10

Bike and gear seemed great.  Will fit new tires before I leave.  My new shoes are just fine, just wish the body was 30 years younger. Ready to do this thing.