Beeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaar!

Ok ok, so yes, after hoping to see one for ages, and thinking I had probably missed the chance now that I'm only a couple of days ride from New Mexico (and grizzly country is a long way behind), I at last saw a bear. But I will get to that.

Out of Sargents we set off hoping to put a long day in, to get us a little closer to Del Norte so we could make it in two days rather than three, myself still with my terminally injured pannier rack.

Well the day to me just felt tough for some reason. Even though Marshall pass the day before had been a really long climb, the views had been so spectacular it didn't seem to count. Anyway the last part of the day was spent climbing Cochetopa pass, back up to over ten thousand feet again. Conversely and almost stupidly this was the easiest part of the day. Apart from the steep finish to the climb, at times I found myself going faster than at almost any other point that day, I cannot for the life of me explain why. Well not unless they put some kind of amphetamine in the energy sweets I had at the bottom.

Just before the top in an alley of the golden aspens that have come to represent Colorado for me, despite the little squeaky mouse that lives inside the bottom bracket of my bike (every time I turn the pedals he gives off a little squeak of indignation until I feed him some oil) we managed to creep up on a coyote stood with his back to us. When we got to within about twenty metres his ears swiveled around and I could see the look on his face wondering how we had managed to get so close without his noticing. Of course at that point he bolted off down the hill into the aspens. He had his revenge howling like a banshee in the middle of the night though!

By the top of the pass Maarten and I agreed that the long day plans were done for, as the next campsite was more than twenty miles away, and called it a day at fifty miles or so. We decided that we would try for the sixty miles plus to del Norte the next day.

So we pulled into Ludders Creek campsite. However we saw that all the pitches were full. We soon found out why. A group of friends have been meeting there every third weekend in September for the last 26 years. Anyway the 'sideways' crew invited us to their party and told us to put up our tents wherever we could find space.

We had a great night. They warned us that they were bunch of hippies, but what they were was Damn hospitable. They were a great group who knew how to have fun, and for two hungry bikers, the food they gave us, oh man! Green chili stew, pork ribs, pasta salad, some kind of potato and sausage casserole, elk brisket in gravy, peach pie, chocolate brownie....the list goes on. Maarten and I took a bag of chips (crisps) and a packet of wiggly worm candy (sweets) as our contribution. Ah well we didn't exactly have much else. But the food was so good and sure as hell beat freeze dried spaghetti with meat sauce or whatever I was supposed to be having. Sideways crew we salute you!

The next day (after a very generous breakfast being thrown into the bargain) we said our farewells and set off down the pass so that we could start climbing another, Carnero pass. Well what a pretty day it was with some lovely country, and interesting rock formations throughout the journey. The pass was one of the tougher climbs as well, and it felt good to conquer it and get to the top. Then it happened!

Coming down the other side Maarten pointed to the side of the trail. Slowing right down to a stop I saw a young baby black bear cub, undoubtedly one of this year's new borns snuffling around. We slowly started to back up being probably no more than twenty metres away again. The cub came out onto the side of the trail, covered in his dense furry fluff, looked at us and actually started to walk towards us, which freaked me out a bit as we had no idea where mum was. Maarten afterwards suggested that with my now supreme beard he probably mistook me for mum. Anyway he must have caught our scent because after a few yards he turned around and lolloped off with his furry self into the woods.

I can't tell you how excited and happy I was at this point, literally bouncing around and grinning from ear to ear. It was the realisation of a dream for the trip but also one from being a kid and idolising David Attenborough and watching wildlife on one religiously. We were still a little nervous of mum charging out of the bushes though, so decided to talk loudly for a few minutes to encourage her and cub to move away if they were just in the trees.

I wish I had got a photo now, but at the time, and with no idea where mother was, I had gone to reach for the camera, but had managed to tell myself that the correct thing to do was not to do anything threatening, back up slowly, and to have the bear spray handy if anything at all. Anyway he looked like some of these dudes, particularly the brown ones!

Well the rest of the day was pretty cool too but nothing could really match that, unless Maarten got mauled by a cougar or something (kidding Maarten!). After passing some incredible rock pillars and buttresses we arrived at the nowhereville of La Garita. The one stop shop, restaurant and gas station was shut. So we sat outside and ate bagels with chocolate spread (actually pretty good trail food, thanks to Colin for the tip) and some dried fruit from the lovely sideways people. We noticed the Wi-Fi for the shop was on though, so I checked my emails. The rack company are not sending my replacement until today, having not managed it on Saturday. This has kind of bummed me out. Having made it to del Norte first impressions of the town are not great, I think I would rather be back in the 'armpit of Wyoming'. And it looks like I'm going to have to spend a day and a half here at least.

The duct tape and zip ties combination on my rack has actually been amazing. I think I may have improved the design by adding a little bit of flex. However I don't trust it over a 150 miles into some isolated spots of New Mexico to the next post office on route where they could send the rack. Still despite all that I saw a bear!!!!

Photos: it's gross but we found the body of a huge squished snake out on the trail. I also had to slam on the brakes outside del Norte when a little baby rattler was lying on the two track trail right in front of me. We also found the mother load when it comes to my obsession with used ammunition lying around. And we saw a sign for the route, but it's a bit of a con as its a detour round the airport (a strip of grass with a few huts) in del Norte, that seems to take forever. Maybe a divide rider got their head chopped off by a plane or something though!

Duct tape is king, all hail duct tape!

I have no idea where to start this post, seems like a lot has happened in the last four days, in fact I can't quite believe it's only four days since I was in fairplay.

Anyway first things first. I made the seventy miles to salida in one day. In fact I fairly cruised it and got into town for about three pm. What I do remember about the day though is that county road 53 is a son of a gun of a road when it comes to wash board. I realise I have talked about this before but this time I thought to include some photos of what I'm talking about. You can maybe see why bouncing along on wavy road is no fun with frozen hands...And it's generally speaking no fun on your backside at any time. A bit like getting a rythmical ass kicking, literally.

Anyway washboard aside it was a fairly cool day. It looked a lot like cow boy country again till I got closer to salida. At the top of a little sharp short hill I met Frank McMurry. A seventy five year old cattle rancher with a business card simply saying eat beef. Anyway we got chatting and he said he was out checking some of his cattle. He said he had a state lease on what to my ears sounded a ridiculous amount of land, it may as well have been three billion acres, but essentially every cow I had seen in the last 40 miles had been one of his. It also turns out his daughter was north American mountain bike champion and now a photographer. I saw some of her work in Fritz bar in salida, some cool pics of cool cruiser bikes.

The best bit of that whole day though was coming into salida. I dropped three thousand feet in about six miles or something crazy. Man that was a rush, I was absolutely whizzing along and the views of the valley and the monster fourteen thousand feet mountains that surround salida were just incredible. This was still not enough adrenalin for the slr camera I'm also carrying around though. When I hit a cattle grid my front handle bar bag flew open, and the camera also flew...right over my head. Heart in mouth moment. Somehow amazingly it all still works apart from the auto focus which for some shots I need to do manually. But that's just the lens so thumbs up for Canon camera body engineers!

And so I made salida, which is simply a cool dude of a town. The historic downtown is just lovely and full of cafes, bars, sports shops, restaurants etc. And the whole place is just set up for mountain biking, rafting, and snow sports. I could so live there, although finding any kind of job would be a problem.

Anyway I decided immediately to take a rest day. And that rest day turned into about ten beers plus and I don't know how many random conversations. I guess the bars just drew me in, and in this country staying out of a conversation is harder than getting into one, something brits could learn from. Not everyone is a mass murderer waiting to get us, I promise.

Also Maarten who I had left in Silverthorne as he went to see a friend in boulder managed to catch up which was cool. He was pretty keen to have a rest day though and I had no objections to hanging in salida for another day. Of course it being a rest day and all I couldn't resist the lure of the amazing single track trails they have there I had found out about in one of the bars. So after going to local bike shop and picking up a trail map I climbed up into the hills above the town and the big white S which sits on the hillside overlooking the whole place.

Well the single track was just great. A real blast, with plenty of technical and some damn rocky sections. It was also damn scary at first. Because everything curves around steep mountain country, you feel your always within about a foot of going off a cliff edge. Not exactly like riding Welsh trails!

But eventually after a big breakfast burrito this morning we left town and began the climb of about four thousand feet up to Marshall pass. And once again it proved no problem, but it sure was pretty. Well I say no problem, but in a comedy moment when the grade became pretty steep I changed down to the granny ring and my chain jammed. This combined with me being unable to clip out of the pedal led to perhaps the most laughable and slow motion bike crash in history. Basically I just slowly came to a stop, wobbled for a few seconds then fell over to my right into the dirt while wailing. Doh! I don't think Maarten could quite understand what was going on when he turned around haha! Luckily the truck with ten hot girls in didn't decide to show up at that moment.

So we stormed to the top of the pass, with Colorado continuing its stunning aspen fall foilage party trick and began down a few thousand feet to sargent.

After fifteen minutes an ominous rubbing sound came from my bike. On first inspection I thought the wheel had buckled as it was rubbing the pannier rack. However I soon realised that the rack had completely snapped on one side. Uh oh!

Anyway within ten minutes I managed to jury rig it with zip ties and duct tape. Honestly I think they may be the two most amazing inventions of all time, screw the i-phone five. And somehow it managed to hold together all the way down to the trading post at sargents.

Eventually after some cajoling I managed to get the owner to let me use his phone. Well the bike shop in salida only had old man mountain front racks so I rang the company directly. Now while it's disappointing it broke, this route does put all your kit under some major strain. Anyway on the plus side I got through to Johnny who is at the las Vegas trade show and what customer service. He is going to ship me an upgraded rack to the post office at the next town I hit, Del Norte. The question is can duct tape remain king that far? By hook or crook I will get there though!

Photos: I walked past the two barber shops which were virtually next door and they had me in stitches with their ten dollar cuts and ten dollar cuts fixed signs. I couldn't figure out if it was a scam or one dissing the other.

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.