July 12 – By Mark
An early morning start after a rest day is not easy but it had to be
done nonetheless. The mountain bike I rented yesterday had to be
turned in by 9AM and I couldn’t leave Telluride, Colorado without one
more run on the Village trail, an incredible run down the mountain and
through the dark woods. I woke up at 6AM and headed out by myself as
soon as possible to the gondola. I got up to the mountain by 8AM and
went to work. Last night’s trail took a few of us deep into the
woods, across the whole face of the mountain, and through the secluded
neighborhoods on the other side. That ten mile trail took us over an
hour and left us coming back to camp last night around 9PM. The
village trail was shorter but gave a phenomenal ending to my stay at
Telluride.
Switching back over to my road bike was…interesting and made me wish
I had a set of suspension forks on it. Is that possible in any way?
Today’s climb to Lizard Head Pass was short but gave Dale and I an
incredible overlook of a lake with the mountains behind it.
After that, it was one of the easiest days of the whole trip; over 50 miles
of downhill to get out of the Rockies, the longest downhill of the
whole trip. Stopping for breaks wasn’t all that necessary and some
people went for 30+ miles on the bike at a time. After every curve
was more downhill after downhill. While it’s usually a given that
when you go downhill there’s an uphill eventually coming up, we had
put in the effort weeks before (as early as Kansas) to get up to the
elevation that warranted nearly a whole day of minimal effort.
Our day ended in Delores, which would be our last stop in Colorado.
We hung out in town for a while before going a few miles to our
campsite in the park. Dale’s routine of getting to the site early
didn’t pay off this time as someone ended up stealing our sign that
normally directs us to our day’s destination. With no way of knowing,
he missed the turn and added a few more miles to his odometer today.
Lucky for me, Ben King had a sharp eye and spotted the turn before we
past it.
Tonight was a cooking night for just about all of us and between that
and working on my bike I was busy til 10PM. I semi-washed my pots and
pans (you almost can wash just about any pots without soap) in the
park bathroom and then went to my tent in Ben City. I’ve got no MSR
Hubba Hubba but my Northface tadpole puts up a pretty good fight. The
sky was filled with stars and looked awesome but I couldn’t care
enough to stay up and contemplate the universe. I got into my
sleeping bag and called it night.
Read more of this blog post here: http://dalejohnson.wordpress.com/2010/07/15/july-12th-july-15th/
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