San Juan Day 1



Aaron started to talk to me about a loop in the San Juan National Forest in late June. Having been there several times in the past few years, he had cooked up a 200 mile loop that started from Durango. As the tentative date came closer, we finally finalized the plans and packed our bags for southern Colorado late July.

 

The drive up from Tucson to Durango took about 8 hours, after stopping half way in Flagstaff for the night.



 



The original plan to hang out with Krista that Friday night morphed into an early start to our trip. As soon as we got to Durango, we started to load up the bikes and ride toward Hermosa Creek Trail through town. We left a little after 3pm that Friday.

 

Flowly singletrack greeted us for the first few hours

We passed a few hikers that afternoon. Other than those hikers, we had the trail to ourselves. The common misconcpetion is that the trail can be crowded. If you time it right, this trail is too big to have hikers/bikers come later afternoon.

Left to ourselves, we crusied on......enjoying the first day of our 200-mile bikepacking loop.

I can't remember ever bikepacking next to a wooden bench. So when what seemed like the perfect camping spot appeared and the sun was starting to set, we stopped and camped for the night.