We are camping at 8000′ somewhere in the Zuni Mountains, on an improvised shortcut that turned out brilliantly and gave us the best riding of the day.
Today wasn’t a good day for singletrack hunting, but it might have been a good day for future CDT bikers and the route, in general.
It was hard to leave the bliss of Pie Town, but storms were coming and we had terrain to explore.
A lazy start from the Toaster House meant the wind was already starting just a few miles out of town. The direction? Out of the South. Perfect.
The 31 miles on the Pie Town were a breeze. This section was one of my least favorite when pulling a Bob Trailer — sandy, wind, traffic (!). It was refreshing to come back and see it in a different light.
Along the way we caught Professor and Sunset. They had left after breakfast the day before! It took us 1.5 hours to cover what they had been hiking for nearly the last 24 hours. Wow. They were both ready to get off the big wide county road.
They got to turn off and go explore Sand Canyon and such (in Wilderness), our plan was to hit the Malpais and the Chain of Craters byway.
Right as we turned onto the backcountry byway, a guy in a BLM truck pulled up. It was a total chance encounter.
He was just the guy to talk to about the upcoming sections of CDT. He had worked the trail crew to actually build new tread, just recently, on a lot of it. So he knew which sections existed and which were still just cairned. He informed us that part of the western side went into a Wilderness Study Area, and they don’t even use wheelbarrows when building trail, so no bike.
We were a bit disappointed — I thought we were good to go on all of this, though I knew that there wasn’t likely to be too much actual built trail.
We figured out a couple sections we could ride, using the maps the BLM guy (Tim) pulled out. He lamented that none of the CDT hikers go this way, and the trail doesn’t get enough traffic, such that it disappears in places.
About 10 mintues later he chased us down in the truck and said, “I’m sorry, I gave you some bad info. Bikes aren’t allowed on any trails.”
I thought to myself, “You’re not making any friends here!”
Sure enough, he handed me a very old looking pamphelt that said bikes were only allowed on designated roads. Bummer.
When we got to the first singletrack not in Wilderness it looked beautiful, and oh-so-tempting. We read everything on the board and it said nothing about no bikes. If we hadn’t run into him, we would have ridden it with a clean mind.
It was a little frustrating, especially seeing all the ranching going on, and that you can drive cars in the WSA, but can’t ride bikes on trails. But so it goes.
We may have been skunked out of singletrack, but I was able to make the point that if the BLM wants more traffic on these pieces of trail, they could open them to bikes. I would love to include the pieces outside the WSA as a part of a CDT-bike route. I think he agreed with my point and said he’d follow up on it and get in touch. So hopefully something good will come out of it. It’s one thing to call or write in about bike access, another when someone actually meets you and sees you on the ground, hopefully understanding the point that we really aren’t out here to ride huge well beaten in roads when we don’t have to.
Another silver lining was that he gave us a map of the whole area that showed us that “Big Tubes area” was a short detour off the main dirt road. We decided to check it out.
It was super cool. A chunky and more interesting road let to a trailhead where we ditched the bikes to go for a hike over lava rock.
Wow. We ate a snack on the bridge, then continued into the next cave opening.
This one we could climb down into the entrance of, and it had several windows shining light into it. The air was cool and musky coming out of it, and we could see large areas of green moss.
The world is a pretty incredible place. To think of how these were formed is just incredible.
We’ll have plenty of singletrack to ride further on, but not so many lava tubes to explore. Very cool.
After watering up at the NPS visitor center we decided to gamble on a small forest road shortcut. We found a beautiful canyon with a rarely used 2-track complete with bear tracks. Almost singletrack.
We’ll drop into Grants tomorrow for a computer layover. Can’t wait for the next sections of trail including Mt. Taylor!
Ice caves are cold because cold air sinks in winter into the cave and there’s nothing to warm the air, no mixing. Don’t miss the great arch right across the road from the end of the Malpias.