We woke up this morning with the sun in our face. You would think by now we'd learn which direction to park the car, but we were so ready to get out of the truck last night that we paid no attention.We made breakfast and Andrew worked up the bikes to make sure they were in good shape. He took off the two larger chain rings on the Ellsworth that were bent so that I would not have issues with slipping. He rigged the crank and it was ready to go. I would have to be in granny gear all day..but something told me I would have been in that any ways. We packed up the car and headed towards the trail. You're supposed to ride about 5 miles of gravel before you get to the trail head, but I had no idea what I was in for, so Andrew drove me up the majority of it and dropped me off. We drove back to a parking lot and rode up the gravel road..show off. I entertained myself for about an hour while he did this. Once he met up with me, we both got on the bikes and started up.
The road was blocked to cars not far up the road. About 100 yards past that sign, we found out why. There was still a large sheet of snow on the road and the genius that tried to pass it most recently, ended up like this...
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| Whoops! |
We passed several pretty glacier lakes on the way to the beginning of the trail.
Once we got to the trail head, we stopped for a pee break and I took a deep breath before I attempted the rest of this climb which was guaranteed to keep my heart pumping - fast. But, I pushed those thoughts out of my head and continue moving my legs. Parts of this trail were so steep that I could not gain enough momentum in granny gear to make it up, so I hike a lot. The trail head also started at 9,000+ feet. Add another 1,500 feet of gain in the climb and you've got yourself a pretty decent hill and enough altitude to make my heart ump out of my chest.
Here's a picture of Andrew part way up the trail surrounded by wildflowers.
Finally, we made it to the top! Yay! I caught my breath and we took a few minutes to take photos of the bikes. As you can see in the background, dark clouds were moving in and the wind was picking up.
We started feeling light sprinkles falling from the sky, so we kicked it in high gear, trying to outrun the storm. Not exactly the kind of pressure I wanted to shoulder at the moment.
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| Gorgeous views at the top |
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| Wildflowers |
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| Beautiful |
All the views were distracting me as well. I'm so busy admiring all the sights around me that I stopped paying attention to where I am going and what I am doing. Then, when I realized I could fall 200+ feet down the mountain, I would snap back to pretty quickly. It's so dang hard though! Andrew would fly down the mountain super fast...way ahead of me to get video on the GoPro, then he'd start coming back up the trail to make sure I had not died or rolled off the cliff. I was just easing down the mountain - holding the brakes the entire time. I'm not adrenaline junkie by any means...if you all have not figured that out yet. As I told Andrew several times, I kind of like this life and want to be around for a long time - fully intact, so if I slowly creep down the mountain, avoiding life threatening jumps, rocks, cliffs, etc. then I will do so. Thank you very much.
OK - moving on...
I made it down the mountain in one piece, but I got off the bike going down just as much as I did climbing up, but for different reasons. We didn't get caught in the storm, which I was happy about. It was an awesome trail and I would have done it again, even with all the scary moments. I just think too much when I am on the bike. Andrew loved it and I tried to get him to do it again without me so he could bomb it all full speed.
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| Bottom of the trail |
Once we got back to the truck, we loaded up and started to look for a different camping spot. We came across this great place, right off the main dirt road that was fully covered and had a large area for us to spread out. We had only really set up a full camp once before, near Lyons, CO. We decided it would be nice to set up again and have a relaxing afternoon. We stopped by a creek to fill up the solar shower container so we could rinse off later. We pulled out the EZ Up, Andrew went hunting for fire wood and I worked on washing clothes and setting up the tarp for the shower. Andrew went in to town to grab some beer and run a few errands.
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| Our camp - notice the tarp to the right of the picture. This is where our cold shower took place. |
We weren't able to get the water in the solar shower very warm because the sun was setting quickly. It was luke warm so Andrew and I decided to boil some water to warm it up a bit. He had to run back down to the creek on his bike in order to accomplish this task because we were so low on water. I made dinner while we was away and after we were finished eating, we hoisted up the water container and stripped down again. I had almost every side closed off, but there was once opening and the wind coming through was cold! We were able to rinse off though and freshen up. Mission accomplished.
We sat around the fire for a while, spent time admiring the beautiful night sky and then headed off to bed.
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