Day 46 – A Dreamy Colorado day on the CDT

Ummm, yeah, today was a good day.  It didn’t seem like it was going to go that way at first.

We woke up along Clear Creek, with a nice warm up on roads.  We stopped at Vicksburg to check out the ghost mining town.  There you can ‘push the button’ and hear a bunch of history.  It was pretty cool to see and imagine the old main street back in its heyday.

At the sheep gulch trailhead we rejoined the CDT, coming out of the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness.  Right off the bat, it did not look good.  Super steep and a stone staircase.

Oh boy.  Just 2500 feet or so to gain in 3 or 4 miles.

I was wondering what I had gotten us into.  I had never heard of anyone riding it, only vague warnings from Lee Blackwell that it wouldn’t be very rideable.

It probably didn’t make sense to climb the trail, and I knew it.  The Colorado Trail goes over the same ridge, but crosses it about 2500 feet lower.

But we’ve already ridden that.  Multiple times.  And this is CDT.

But still, it didn’t look good.  Rumors of the trail being rebuilt were untrue.  New trail in the area, sure, but not on the big climb.

So we pushed.  And pushed and pushed.  Maybe a mile up I began to resign myself to not even trying to ride any of the trail.  My standards for trying to ride up stuff are pretty low, and lower than perhaps anyone else I have ever ridden with.  The fact that I wasn’t seeing anything worth trying… was not a good sign.

Then a few exposed dirt patches presented themselves.  I rode up to one switchback, then proceeded to continue hiking after that.

The big transition happened around treeline.  Suddenly I was riding more than walking.  The music in my ears was making me float up the trail. 

Well, float between long pauses to catch the breath, jam a few “Happy Colas” down, and then ready myself for the next stretch.

In the end, it was the kind of climb I live for.  I almost didn’t want it to end.

The tundra was so soft and the trail so rock free.  The challenge was the steepness and the lack of air, of course.  I needed a gear lower than 20×36, though it was just cutting it.  The lack of a nose on my saddle was most appreciated, too.  Great for continuous super steep grinding.

At the top, I pulled out the carrot cake,  It was a literal carrot for us to make the pass.

The weather was beautiful.  No clouds building.  How lucky are we?

Well, the descent was still an obstacle to go.  We kept expectations low.

There was really no need — even if we had had outlandish expectations, they would have been exceeded.

Fun rolling through the tundra, rollicking trail in meadows, playful tech and roots in the trees.  And almost entirely rideable.

Wow.  So glad we stuck with the CDT.

On the way down we ran into a group of kids from Witchita Falls, TX.  They were hauling 50-60 pound packs up to the lake below Hope Pass (where we had come from).  Progress was on the order of a few steps at a time, inbetween gasps of air, as we waited for them to pass by.

Whatever hardcore points we thought we had, we lost.  Those kids were impressive and doing something far harder than anything we’ve gotten our silly selves into.

Lunch was at Twin Lakes.  I love it when there’s a cafe right at lunch time.  A couple CDTers we ran into in NM were there, and a number of CT hikers too.

Rejoining the CT after the lake, we burped our way up to the Elbert Trailhead.  Great, great climb and one that seemed easy compared to Hope Pass.

We did not take Elbert.  It’s an alternate that many CDT hikers take.  I’ve already dragged my bike up there twice, and Ez has hiked it, so we took a pass.  Instead we rode blissful CT — perhaps my favorite sub-treeline section of the trail.

Our next WIlderness detour took us from Halfmoon Creek straight into Leadville. 

Good old junky Leadville.  Love this town.  Miss my friends Lee and Joan, with whom many of my Leadville memories are tied up.  Instead we ended up at the hostel, which is suprisingly full of all sorts of random people.  We haven’t been able to identify any CDTers yet, but supposedly there are one or two here.

I’ve been waiting since NM for a High Mountain Pies pizza…. and it did not disappoint.  Life is so good in Colorado on the trail!

Tomorrow we plan to leave late and ride to the base of the next treeline section, camp, then hit it before storms start.  The atmosphere sure didn’t do much today, but I’m not expecting that tomorrow….