Day 15 – Climb climb climb

A six thousand foot climb is not the friendliest of reintroductions to life on the trail. We knew it was going to be a tough transition… it was just a matter of how tough.

We were both about one day into stir crazy in the motel.  3 days was great, 4 was just a bit too much.  Yet I got lots done, both with work and route planning (new route out of Cuba?!), on the last day.

And so we finally peddled out of Grants.  Slowly but surely.

We met some mountain bikers shuttling part of the CDT.  A good sign, perhaps?  But they hadn’t ridden it before, so it was still unknown.  Based on the map, we expected the first 1000 feet up to the mesa on the flank of Mt. Taylor, to be mostly hike-a-bike.

It wasn’t.  It wasn’t easy, but we pedealed 90% of it.  Heavy loads helped in the traction and rock squashing department.

Once on the mesa it was beautiful, if rocky, singletrack, all the way to the Mumm’s water cache.  Bless their hearts, they are amazing trail angels.

We watered up and got to the meat of the climb — trail 77 to the top of Taylor.  I ate it up, loving every minute, turning into full on altitude fiend mode.

It was New Mexico’s version of a 14er.  Last 1500′ of gain was all out of the trees, tundra style.  To our lowland lungs, 10,500 felt like 12,000.  It was brilliant.

Only thing in the non-awesome column was that Eszter was struggling, and had been all morning.  She was still moving well, but feeling sluggish and feeling the pull of a heavy bike and pack.

“We’re not leaving here until this hummus is gone!”  That’s one way to lighten the load.

I think she got a mental boost when we passed a group of hikers carrying very little.  But it was still a big push, and I felt sorry she wasn’t able to enjoy it more. Luckily she’s tough–silly tough.

I sure was.  Somehow I was able to ride maybe 80% of it, stopping frequently to regain myself on the handlebars.  Waiting up meant I could rest and allocate more resources to climbing as much as possible.

Who would have thought!  On a loaded bike with 3 days of food.  Pinch me.

We attained the summit to much celebration, and wonderment at the world before us.  ABQ in the background, windfarms ahead, a giant mesa that contains the CDT.  And, oh, what a clear day.

We had totally lucked out on the weather.  It looked bad in the morning, but cleared as the day went on, despite decent chances of thunderstorms in the afternoon.

We’d waited just long enough, though perhaps a bit too long for Ez to fall out of tour mode, but perfect on the weather.

As we descended off the mountain we could see how muddy things had been over the weekend. 

We dropped and dropped and dropped, then follow the Ley map instructions to jump off the road down a drainage.  A short bit of psuedo trail led us to the most magical scene.  Leafed out aspens, green grass, dozens of dandelions, and a cool mountain spring, gushing out of a pipe.  American Canyon Spring.  Unreal the places you’ll see out here!

Eventually we rejoined the actual CDT (most hikers go over Taylor, so that’s what we did), where it meandered and through nuggets of tech at us at nice intervals.  Then it spat us out onto a rarely used road, traversing the big mesa we had seen from far above.

We found ourselves a cozy little spot to snooze in cattle country.  Can’t wait for the mix of trail and cairned routes, through mesa and slickrock country tomorrow!