Epic Bike Ride Day 16 June 12
Thoughts from Kelly: Thankfully, I woke up feeling much better. I spent some time watching the birds, chipmunks, the sun come over the mountain, and enjoying the cool refreshing air while I tried to coax Mark out of his deep slumber. We eventually got going and climbed for what seemed forever. We met up with fellow riders Brian and Eric from Santa Fe and had lunch with them in Platoro. After our fantastic meal, I went to dip my feet in the river and enjoy the surroundings. Mark was getting some water for Brian and Eric and I heard Mark yelling something. It turns out our precious continental divide map blew out of the truck, got caught in a thermal cell and flew 100 ft in the air and 300 yards away. A lady who saw it tried to find it but couldn’t. Thinking it might have landed in the river, I drove down river to try to rescue it (it is water proof). In the meantime, Mark was taking pictures of Brians map so we could continue the ride. With no luck down river, I met back up with Mark who was talking to two older gentleman from Texas. We decided to give up on finding the map and were making preparations to head out again and the two gentlemen from Texas drove up and gave us a $40 donation! We also met fellow rider Mitch at this point, he saw our posts on the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route Facebook page and was excited to meet us. Again, we had some good ($40, and meeting Mitch and getting pictures of Brian and Eric’s map) with the bad (loosing the map). Luckily the maps for the entire ride are broken up into sections and we have the rest of the route covered. The rest of the day was quite difficult, we couldn’t find a place to camp and Mark rode longer than he wanted to. We eventually found a spot and set up camp in extreme wind and cold.
Thoughts from Mark: Today was a very hard day on the bike. I didn’t ride a ton of miles, but climbed over 4,000 feet and it seemed the climbing would never end. The roads were extremely rocky, and after a decent section of pavement yesterday, my body didn’t appreciate being back on the unpaved roads. There were times today where I questioned why we were even attempting this ride. Luckily, it was so beautiful that I just had to look around to take away (some) of those thoughts. The mountain views, the green meadows/valleys with incredible rivers/streams running through them, all added up to beautiful scenery that was slowly (very slowly on the bike) changing as the climbing continued. We eventually found a spot along the road to pull over and crash for the night. It was near sunset, and since we were over 11,000 feet of elevation, it became cold very quickly. The wind howled for most of the night, and we were scared our pop-up “changing room” was going to blow away. We saw a couple of deer about 100 yards away from us, and our camping spot had a small stream next to it, which provided a very soothing sound for the whole night.
Miles for the day: 31.28 Feet climbed today: 4,462
Total miles ridden: 696.19 Total feet climbed: 48,061