San Juan 2016 Tour Day 3

The greenery, the waterfalls, the snow....if you have followed this blog enough, you know that I am love my native state of Arizona; yet, every year when I go to Colorado, my mind is blown away. If you live here in CO, I assume you have the same moment when you venture out here into the wild. Waking up to it will never get old.

Tent-less Scott

We started pedaling over to some "singletrack" that Scott found on the map that would lead us off Bear Pass Road.

The singletrack looked promising!

A *little* HAB? Yes please!

We passed a weather station on the top of a saddle and continued on riding 50% of the time, pushing the bike the other 50%.

Lunch time!

 

And another false summit. I thought this was going to be the top but we still need about 1500 feet elevation to climb.

We stumbled on this old, mining cabin as we neared Ptarmigan Lake. The next section turned from 50/50 to 100% hike-a-bike. This lasted a good hour or so of HAB. But hey, if you are going to push your bike, this is the area that you want to be pushing it. We said that numerous times. It is a "pick your poison" route with both clockwise and counter clockwise having its advantages/disadvantages. It would be interesting for people that have ridden from Telluride to Imogene to chime in about its difficulty and HAB scale.

Time to ride!

Ptarmigan Lake

The route had two options to get to the pass: head down to the cabin (shown above at right) or swing around to the left (shown above at left, peak in background). Guess which one we decided?

The snow level looked easier if we went higher, so we chose to "ride" to the left of the lake.

Get it!

Not a bad, late afternoon view of Telluride from above the pass, no jeeps.

Last section of HAB!

We stopped for a late lunch at this shelter. We also watched some skiers head down one of the east facing sides. It was incredible to see them skin up the mountain only to launch off and down in less than a few seconds. Mountain bikers do a similar feat, although we can tend to take a little longer on the way up...or at least we did today.

Would I recommend this route for anyone else? If you do not like HAB, stay away from this part of the route.

Now the fun part, we bombed down to Imogene Pass....

....passing the flowers...

....and mines.

Bear Pass

...stopping to take a shower...

before eating at the Brown Dog! Beeeeeer and pizzaaaaaaaaaaa!

After loading up on food and supplies (my fuel was gone) we rolled out on the Galloping Goose to get out of town. Telluride was very, very busy because Pearl Jam was coming to town the next day. 

We set up the tents that night (trying to escape the mosquitos) and took another bath in a nearby creek.

Superstitions Backpacking

Grand Canyon Backpacking

Jeff, Nancy and I had a great time backpacking in May. We opted for the east side of Grand Canyon, camping at Hance Rapids and hiking to Horseshoe Mesa for the second night....if I were to do it again, I would add more miles.

Incredible trip....made me realize I need to get up to the Grand Canyon more.

San Juan 2016 Tour Day 2

 We woke up after the first night with a stunning view. The traditional, bikepacking breakfast for me has always been oatmeal, coffee (Starbucks via)  and some fruit. It's fast, yet healthy.

Tearing down camp was a little slower because Lee was not feeling well the night before. His nausea and dizziness could easily be attributed to the elevation. On previous trips, he had always been living in Leadville; now he resides in Tucson most of the year at 2500 feet above sea level.

I took the opportunity to take some pictures of the camp while camp was broken down. We had a great start to this trip once we got on the trail and this first night's camping spot was stunning.

We started to roll at about 8 a.m heading toward the Colorado Trail. Lee was still not feeling well so the planned pace was going to be slow.

This allowed for many stops along the way.

And, of course, a some hike-a-bike

...and more hike-a-bike.

We stopped for lunch in a beautiful bed of wildflowers, eating some bars and fruit. Lee had scouted out on Topofusion an unknown route down Bear Canyon. It was barely a trail on maps, making a possible adventure in the works. The trail connects into Colorado Trail just east of Twin Sisters.

We actually saw Cat on the trail. After a brief chat about Bear Canyon, one of her friends confirmed what we had assumed: adventure. She gave us some beta saying that it started near where we were talking. We found the trail and started taking it despite the GPS saying that the trail was higher. We even saw two runners that were exploring the area for the same trail. Unfortunately, the trail quickly disappeared. Upon further bushwacking, Scott decided to go higher in elevation without his bike while Lee and I stayed with the bikes. He did find the trail but not before we opted to just take the Colorado Trail. Later on in the evening, we did see a cairn where the trail hit the Million Dollar Highway.

We continued down the Colorado Trail and on toward Silverton for food....hamburgers and french fries. Lee and Scott decided to nap while I went down to take a dip in the river. Ahhhhhh.

We met up for the final push up the Million Dollar Highway toward Bear Pass Road that would take us toward Telluride. The paved road had a good number of cars. If you are planning to do this route, I would recommend that you add a day in just climb the roads/trails outside of Silverton that would connect with Red Pass.

As we got closer, we realized that there was a pilot car that was about 1-mile long. When we go there, the pilot car had stopped, but the CDOT had placed and automatic stoplight in said location. We asked for a ride from a random truck; it turned out to be some construction workers doing some stuff in Durango. They were super nice and gave us a ride to Bear Pass Road.

We rode up about 3 miles and set up camp in a valley with two beautiful waterfalls in the distance. The resupply in Silverton made for great dinner options...plenty of sanwiches, chips, bars, etc.