Wyoming

Its all down hill from today. Just a small hill or two. Thats what I told the guys this morning. While it isn't wrong it certainly didn't feel like that cause of the wind in the afternoon the first half of the day was a fantastic ride along the North Sand Hills Park. Beautiful mountains, plains, and gentle downhill grade all morning. There was a small hill of about 200 ft that the guys gave me grief about and a 400 ft climb over a pass but that was it. The rest was a nice gentle downhill or flat the entire day. 

We made it to the border and Wyoming greeted us with a horizon of dark clouds and thunder. We played dodge the rainstorm before pushing uphill over the pass into a 10 mph headwind. Going uphill into a wind sucks. Seriously sucks. Going downhill into a wind isn't much better. Our nice 6% grade downhill on the other side of the pass only had me going 20 mph instead of the usual 35.

We eventually reached the town of encampment which is where I had switched from bicycling back to hiking on the CDT. This time there was a woodcutting festival and rodeo going on. We had made it for the tail end of the woodcutting events but the rodeo had just started. The local talent tried hard but I think the entire time I was at the rodeo there was only two successful events both by semi-pro contestants. 

We left the rodeo before it finished cause we didn't want to be on the road when it let out. Unfortunately we failed and were on the road battling crosswinds with no shoulder while drunk assholes in their trucks came flying by without giving us room. We made it to the town of Saratoga which I had stayed at on the CDT and has a fantastic public hot springs available. We stayed at a wonderful warm showers host which put us up for the night and got us all cleaned up. 

Where am I?

Turns out its not all downhill after all. I still have this thing call the Continental Divide to climb over like 8 more times. That's alright. The reason I chose the Transam is because it follows the Divide for as long as it does. It's giving me a chance to reminisce and visit the best hiking trip I've done so far. This morning was a long trek up the divide to willow creek pass. Even though we had to climb like 2000 ft the first 1200 ft or so was over 20 miles on a quiet back country highway. The scenery was fantastic the road was in good condition for Colorado and the traffic was basically non existent. 

The only problem was I couldn't figure out where I was on the divide. Unlike Hoosier pass I know I had hiked over this one. For the entire 8 miles of climbing up to the pass I kept looking at it trying to figure out when I had gone over it. Nothing looked familiar. It wasn't until I got within a mile of the pass that I finally figured out where I was. This was the pass with a hut on the mountain and 3 routes down it. I had gone down the Ley alternate which had me walk a steep ridge down to a road, the CDT went along a knifes edge ridge down to the pass, and the new CDT had you go north along another ridge before dropping down to the pass. I couldn't recognize it from the direction I was heading since the mountain blocked everything behind, including the hut, and the snow made the ridge and road I walked down unrecognizable. 

When we set out we thought the hard part of the day was going to be getting over the pass cause after that it was all downhill. Well it was all downhill a very slow gentle downhill. However the wind, oh man the wind, that was not downhill. That was a constant 20 mph crosswind with 35+ gusts. The wind seriously kicked our asses. Keith kept getting blown over. Whenever a truck would pass us the brief break we'd get from the wind by being in its slipstream would almost knock us over since we were leaning over so much. The traffic wasn't bad and we setup a draft train which basically took over our entire lane since we weren't drafting behind the leader but were on their shoulder. We had to give a couple feet of space since the gusts caused us to shift back and forth so much. That downhill section was exhausting. We were all wiped out by the time we hit town.

The only good thing about the wind is kept the mosquitos away. We had heard that this section and the town we were heading to had some horrible mosquitos. I don't know about the road section since any mosquitos had to have been blown to Nebraska but when we stopped at town and a store on the way we were swarmed. 

Its all downhill from here

So we got an "early" start by riding at 6:30. I was ok with that time cause it was cold out. The ride started out great we had a new section of road with a nice wide shoulder and it was downhill the entire day. We made fantastic time and had covered 40 miles by 10:30. The Transam had us take a 5 mile detour around a lake since the road we were following had fairly heavy traffic and the shoulder poofed. It was a great detour with nice views and a great spot for a picnic. Unfortunately we only had snacks since the store we had planned on getting lunch for was closed for renovations. 

We cruised another 20 miles to the next town and grabbed a late lunch there. Coming out of the town was another 5 miles of shitty hell with no shoulders and asshole drivers. Thankfully this time it was only light traffic and then we had a shoulder again but I wasn't pleased and Jim had a close encounter with an idiot similar to mine close to Hoosier. 

After another 10 miles or so we entered a really cool canyon. I instantly recognized it from the cross country train trip I did in 2002. Of course there was no shoulder but the traffic didn't bother us since they seemed happy to take the time to admire the scenery and we kept pulling over to take pictures. When we came out of the canyon we were at our destination of Hot Sulfur Springs. A cute tourist town with free camping next to the river and hot springs which we could soak in for a fee. Nobody ended up soaking cause there was only 2 hours left and it was seriously hot out.

Breckenridge to Silverthorne

After finishing the hike up mount Baldy I went and grabbed my bike from the hostel and rode down to Silverthorne where Jim's friend's condo was. While I woulda enjoyed a third night at the Fireside Inn Jim and Keith wanted to get up and going early in the morning since we had a long ride tomorrow with hot springs available at the end. 

The ride from Breckeridge to Silverthorne was one of the top 3 of the trip so far. The entire section was slightly downhill, with a tailwind, along a bike path next to either a river or a lake. It was peaceful easy riding. I stopped off in Frisco to buy one of those goofy cyclist hats since I had apparently gotten sunburn on my head since I got my haircut in pueblo. I think it was from the hiking not the cycling but either way I got one of those stupid hats. 

When I got to Silverthorne I grabbed dinner with MeHap who had hiked the CDT with me and drove up from Denver. It was a great time but remanising made both of us want to get out and hike. MeHap was even talking about quitting his job and coming out to join me... Unfortunatly there is still way to much snow on the PCT to start so I gotta keep riding. If the rest of the trip is like today I think I'll enjoy it if its like Hoosier pass I'm quitting.

Breckenridge zero

So I have a rule for all my trips, never quit on a bad day. Yesterday was a bad day. Today after spending a night in what I considered the best run hostel on the entire CDT, The Fireside Inn in Breckenridge, I needed a day off. Keith, Jim and Bobby rode on to stay at a house of another one of Jim's friends while I stayed in the hostel. I had always planned to take a day or two off here. There was a section of the CDT that I took a shortcut passed by walking the bike path. I wanted to hike that section cause the rest of this part of the CDT was gorgeous and I had heard good things about it. However, that didn't work out. That section of the trail was still snowbound and the portions that weren't had overflowing creeks.

So instead of hiking along the CDT I went up to Breckenridge resort to hike around up there. There is a gondola that takes you from the center of town up to the resort and after riding it up I swore off gondolas forever. It was a windy day and the gondola kept stopping with my rocking and swaying all over the place due to the wind and start/stop motions. Unfortunately the trail I had planned on taking back down the hill was closed so after hiking around for an hour or two to let my stomach settle I got back on the gondola and went back to town.

I ended up taking a second zero and for the first half of the day Keith and Jim called up and suggested we do a nice little 5 mile round trip hike up a forest service road. The hike was really nice there were streams, waterfalls and at the end there was an abandoned mine. When we were exploring the mine a couple of state park employees mentioned there were a few more a couple miles up the mountain. We decided to go check them out since Keith was collecting rocks for his sister.

After getting up to the mines we took a break and admired the views and played a game of throwing rocks to see who had the best aim, I lost. Keith wanted to go up to treeline which we all agreed to but I said I didn't want to go any higher than that since I hadn't brought a jacket and knew it was windy I'd get cold if we went above that.

Of course we didn't stop there and went up to the false summit. It was another great set of views and even though it was cold once we crested the ridge we were able to hide out from the wind and take a nap in the grass.

High points and low points

We got up to frost covering our tents. Our plan was for everyone to ride out together to go over the pass. While the climb wasn't that bad the traffic was supposed to be the worst of the trip