Shelter from the Storm

It's been an interesting few days since my last post from Silverthorne. On leaving there I followed a bike path all the way to the up-market ski town of Breckenridge. These Colorado folks don't know how lucky they are. Super smooth bike path wandering in and out of golden aspens, along lake shores, and the feet of majestic mountains. But then compared to Wyoming where I'm not sure I saw anyone on a bike (but then most the time I virtually saw no people in Wyoming) there are people out pedaling away in droves here.

When I reached Breckenridge they were in the middle of an Oktoberfest. Even though it's September I know. The main street was shut off with hundreds of stalls selling beer and food. Well it would have been rude not to have one little beer right?

However I sure didn't over do it, I knew that I still had the mighty Boreas pass to contend with, the second highest on the whole route at eleven and a half thousand feet. And I wasn't sure I trusted the reports that it is a pretty easy pass to get over.

However as it turned out I needn't have worried. It was pretty easy not to mention stunning. I was averaging around seven to eight mph going up there without really pushing, probably a couple of mph faster than I have been going up any of the other passes.

The only issue was the highway like volumes of jeeps and pick up trucks trundling along up there to view the beautiful autumnal foilage and vistas.

Well I reached the pass, and set off for the campsite a few hundred feet below, still riding in a t-shirt in the glorious sunshine, but things were about to change!

When I woke up this morning there was a light pitter pattering on my tent. Snow! As it was light I decided to wait half an hour to see if it would ease up at all. Instead after twenty minutes it turned to thick clumps coming down and I decided to bail and get off down the trail to lower elevation.

Well I stayed calm and packed everything up, donning all the waterproof winter gear, and left the tent till last so I had some shelter to work from. When I came to take it down it weighed a ton from the snow, so I went to wipe it all off with my winter waterproof endura bike gloves. Big mistake! They just were not waterproof at all. I don't know when they stopped being but it cost me. After climbing back up to the trail the six miles down the hill to como became agony. It was essentially just like having my hands in icy water the whole time. It got to the point where I couldn't change gear, couldn't brake properly, and was struggling to hold the bike true. Washboard was a painful nuisance.

Anyway I stumbled into the b&b at como, an old rail way house, and the English owner opened the door for me. Thank God. A couple of cups of coffee from my saviour Dave and I was able to face the trail again. However there was a strange point when I warmed up my hands in the bathroom sink. Most of me was probably a little too warm with all the gear, and with the change in temp on my hands the pain became fairly intense which I was expecting. However I wasn't expecting to go all dizzy and nearly pass out which would have been embarrassing. Thankfully I managed to hold it together and with the coffee I was soon fine and had a nice chat about the rail road history of como.

Anyway Dave warned me there was very little in Hartsel where I was supposed to be aiming for. So I made a decision to detour into fairplay, get a motel, sort myself out, fix the bike brakes, and get some damn better gloves.

So that's where I am now. Pretty much recovered, with some ski gloves, and hopefully ready to push a big day tomorrow so I still reach salida as planned. Let's hope the snow holds off a little longer as I head south!

Photos: I took some shots after como, and you can see the snow line up above which I had been camping in.