Touching the frozen sky

Last time I wrote I was waiting for a new rack in del Norte. Well it became pretty obvious that it wasn't going to come first thing next day, and that I was going to have a day to kill. However as I looked out beyond the town to the pass I was supposed to be climbing I could see dark storm clouds gathering, so maybe it wasn't such a bad day to hang around town even if I wasn't convinced about del Norte. To make things better we also checked out of 'the worst motel on the divide' into the historic Windsor hotel. The place is so out of sync with the rest of the town, but the woman cut us a great deal, was a little superstar, and we had a little slice of old school American luxury. So all in all it wasn't a bad day and even better Monday night was pizza delivery truck night in del Norte, and this combined with Monday night football. The green bay packers were robbed!

The next day I still wasn't sure where my rack was at, or however long it would be. Maybe not even that day. So I said to Maarten he may as well get going and I would catch him up if I could. Well a couple of hours later my new upgraded rack (thanks old man mountain) appeared. It was eleven, and I spent the next fifty minutes rushing to fit it and buying groceries, and somehow was ready to set off up the pass by ten to twelve.

Why the big rush? Well I was about to tackle Indiana pass, the biggest, highest and longest pass on the divide at just a smidgen below twelve thousand feet. The map said 'make sure to get an early start out of del Norte for this 24 mile climb', hah!

So I set off knowing that I had to keep going and to keep pushing the forty miles to the campground if I wanted to make it in daylight. Well the first twelve miles may have technically been climbing, but were just easy pavement in reality. But then the real twelve mile climb to the pass began. It was hard work and pretty steep in places. More than anything it was just relentless, somewhere in between three to four hours pedal churning from start to finish. Of course as you go up four thousand feet you start to notice the air get a little thinner. However the result of this trip is that's not such a big problem for me now.

No one told the weather I was to have an easy ride up there though. I'm now racing south to make some of the warmer, lower areas, of New Mexico so I'm not caught out by snow on the passes. Well two miles from the top of Indiana that Colorado snow started coming down. I had to stop and throw on all the snow gear, and for previous readers the now invaluable ski gloves got to prove their worth.

Geared up I gritted my teeth and got to the top as the snow eased a little leaving the landscape slightly speckled with white. I gave a grim whoop of satisfaction to myself and no one else in particular. The sky decided to throw down a little hail on me for comedic effect.

And what reward for this achievement. Well the sign mentions the elevation but nothing else and just points you off to Summitville (a fairly ugly mine site you pass a few miles later which contaminates all the water sources nearby). So I went downhill only to find a muddy slippery track spraying my bike and myself with cold wet muck. So much muck that when I realised that the downhill was pretty sharp and short and that I would be spending the next fifteen miles climbing back up and down to just below the height I was on the pass, the front derailuer became so jam packed with mud that it stopped it from changing gears. Not helpful for all this climbing just after the 'highest' point on the divide. Still nothing I couldn't sort with a good old fashioned high tech stick.

That was one exhausting, cold, muddy afternoon. Five miles after leaving the pass the sky thought maybe I had not understood it's earlier joke and bucketed hail down all over the place, pinging it off my face and helmet. The sky let out one solitary thunderous boom of laughter at its own joke. I told it to shut up. It did!

Eventually I reached a blissful point in realising I was on a four mile, genuine downhill, stretch to the campsite. I made it at half six with perhaps half an hour or so of daylight to spare. I was so tired and cold that when I put my tent up I simply ate a bagel and went to bed. My day was done.

I woke to a very frosty morning, and the realisation the valley I was in was covered with gorgeous autumnal aspens. Very pretty, but icy. As I was packing up and trying to dry my stuff (because of the cold your breath just condenses on things in your tent, my leaking camelbak that night didn't help either though) another divide rider came in. Ben had come over the pass behind me, and decided to just camp in the trees when the failing light and cold had got too much.

As we were heading in the same direction we rode on together (I never seem to be riding on my own for long), and up over stunner pass with the usual Colorado sunshine restored into platoro. I walked into the cafe and was immediately asked 'are you the Englishman'? Maarten had stayed the night before and left a couple of hours earlier, and apparently melted his cycling shorts above the fire which made me laugh, although I guess not him.

So me and Ben stuffed some food into our faces and set off down the valley for twenty miles and then up the highway and over La manga pass. A paved ten thousand foot pass, no problem! Funny how some things can change your perspective!

We camped just off the highway and away from a dirt track right on the border of New Mexico, and that would be the next day and the start of the final state in my journey down the continental divide.

Photos: you can see how the other side of my rack failed as well as I took it off in del Norte, probably because of all the extra flex my diy on the other side had added. However no diy will save the truck we found that had gone over the edge on stunner pass!