Motivation wasn’t high in Georgetown. We felt like zombies after a late nap at the Super Ocho. The thought of hitting the trail early to tackle more riding above treeline didn’t sound too appealing. Sleeping in did. Summit County and Argentine had hammered us.
After stuffing ourselves silly with pizza, things started to look better. A call to Eszter’s parents meant the idea to take a Nero (near zero day) leaving town and hitting the high stuff early the following day, would mean we would probably miss them in Winter Park.
So we motivated to set an early alarm.
Our bicycle ride was in progress by 6am. Alpine start by CDTbike standards.
It was immediately clear that we had far more available resources for today’s ride. Legs, mind, energy, motivation. Funny what a good, low-stress night and lots of food will do for you!
The warmup was on bikepaths paralleling I-70, a few miles of which are actually CDT. An hour in, we reached the Herman Gulch trailhead, already brimming with day hikers.
It was funny to be surrounded by people. This was the most crowded trail we had been on yet. Most people thought we were just day riding (out and back), of course, and crazy for taking a bike on a difficult trail they never see bikes on. We leap-frogged with a guy who covers wildfires for CBS. I hiked with him for a while, chatting about various fire seasons past. He tried to convince us to ride extra distance to Herman Lake, saying it was beautiful, and it seems nearly all the hikers were heading there.
We stayed on the CDT, continuing to climb to 13,000+ feet. It was nice to be out of the trees, since the trees were full of wet roots. Ez observed that it was nice to see me struggle on the roots. It is very true — I can’t ride wet roots. They terrify me once I start to slip enough! Many sections were so slippery they were hard to walk.
Overall, I just loved the climb. Based on Eszter’s and Dan’s descriptions, both of which were based on day riding it and/or riding in the other direction, I expected more hiking than riding.
But the trail was beautifully made, and just rideable in bursts and with copious rests to allow the heartrate to simmer down from anaerobic levels. The views pulled us up the mountain like a magnet, begging us to reach the divide to open up the other 180 degrees of the world below us.
There’s the other side of the divide! Oh, and some climb-a-bike through the chunk.
The rocks gave way to alpine tundra.
Alpine tundra replete with sinuous trail. Pure dream riding.
Contour baby!
It’s a shame thru-hikers seem to skip this stretch, though I am sure the following miles we had to skip for Wilderness detour are equally as spectacular.
I loved and cherished every minute we had up there, reveling in the happy dissonance between never wanting to leave while hoping we would reach the pass and get back into the trees before the storms gained any more momentum.
It’s one of few ways that time can stand still, moments can linger. That internal conflict between wanting an experience to never end, while on other levels hoping that it does, and soon!
Even moments stretched in time do eventually end. We reached Jones Pass and stared at the huge cornice that Eszter had correctly predicted. Continuing on the CDT would have been easy. Exiting it proved more difficult. People were skiing and sledding on the snowfield, it was so big! We walked over to the edge just to look and confirm it was anything but safe.
So we followed the CDT for some bonus miles, taking it to where the snow was the most narrow. We handed bikes down the 6 or 8 foot wall, then walked down the psuedo-trail (beat in from others avoiding the snow) back to the road.
Smooth dirt and much blissful coasting took us to the ‘big bend’ on US40. Our legs took us up the shouldered road and through some drizzle to Berthoud Pass.
The sign, which I wrote about in my previous entry, was a big milestone for us to hit. It was ~downhill to the condo in Winter Park and our next layover. Winter Park feels like a halfway point, riding-wise, for us. And to reach my CDT bikepacking photo was pretty dang cool.
We found thru-hiker Memento at the pass, weighing his options of hitching or continuing with more high terrain. “I’m sick of getting hailed on,” he said. We gave him Fritos and a dehydrated meal as encouragement, but didn’t know if he continued on or not.
We turned onto dirt when we could, following it to the resort. Crepes and milkshakes for lunch, we continued down towards the condo.
Eszter’s plans of doing some climbing in the resort and more singletrack were stymied by construction, but she did find our way to some good trail that avoided part of the ‘hill of doom’ climb back to the condo.
We spent the weekend hanging out with Eszter’s parents, which worked out well being the weekend. It was great to see them.
We’ll spend a few days here resting, working and planning the route ahead. We are so lucky to have a ‘home base’ here to get organized and ready for the rest of the trail. I am not sure where next we will send the computers, so there are many miles of CDTbike to get planned out. The next section to Steamboat looks very tasty indeed, and quite unknown. Then it’s onto Wyoming and even more unknown. Can’t wait!
What a dream trip…….