Today we rode from informal campground 8km before the top of Canero Pass, Colorado, US to a cabin at the base of the climb to Indiana Pass, Colorado, US. Sunny weather with little clouds. Road conditions included paved roads, gravel roads, and jeep tracks. Highlights of the day include climbing Canero Pass, the jeep tracks after La Garita, and the cabin were we will stay for the night.
Riding statistics: on Thursday September 1, 2022, the 32nd day on the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route route, it took 11:17h (06:27h moving time), between 07:23 and 18:40, to cover 95 km (59 miles), including 991 m (3251 ft) elevation gain, with an average speed of 15 km/h (9 mph). During today's ride the average temperature was 27 °C (84 °F) with a minimum of 3 °C (36 °F) and a maximum of 49 °C (128 °F).
Totals: So far, it took 9 days, 7 hours, 59 minutes and 13 seconds of cycling time to cover 3296 km (2048 miles), including 38502 m (126325 ft) elevation gain, with an average speed of 14.9 km/h (9.3 mph).
Leaving the campground before Canero Pass
Since we may make it a longer day again, we decided to set the alarm clocks at 6am. I did not sleep wel although it was a very quiet and peaceful camping spot. Not sure why I did not sleep well. I got awake multiple times during the night. And, from 4am it got colder. So, the morning at 6am it was still pretty cold. There has been a light rain during the night, so our tents where wet from rain and damp. No problem, we will have to let them dry later today. We got all our stuf, put it on the bike, and we continued with the climb to Carneo Pass. It was another 8km to the top. The man at the camping spot was already awake as well and wished us a good ride. He also said there might be a good chance that we would see bears near the top of the pass. Unfortunately we did not see any. The climb was OK, and the downhill was through a beautiful scenery. Meadows, forests, canyons, etc. At a certain point, after many kilometers, the gravel road changed into a paved road. We had to follow that road for a few kilometers before we had a turn onto a gravel road.
La Garita and the jeep tracks thereafter
At that particular turnoff we could cycle a bit off route to get to La Garita. A small settlement, but it had a convenience store annex restaurant. We decided to visit and have brunch over there. I ordered a sandwich with eggs and bacon, combined with an orange juice. It was a good sandwich. We also bought another gallon of water because it was again a warm sunny day and we don;t want to filter if we can get bottled water. In this area there are still many cows and the water does not tasted nice anymore after treating it with iodine tablets. We prefer to carry a bit more. (For your information, we will have cows until the border, so there will be times that we have not chosen, but as long as we have a choice …). We continued our ride on the gravel road towards Del Norte. We were making good progress when I all of a sudden checked my bike computer and saw we missed a turn. 1.5km back we should have taken a side road. So we turned around. We took the side road, and although it quickly became clear this would take much longer it was a great ride. We had to climb a bit and take another turn of. Suddenly we were on a jeep track. A very winding road and sometimes with very deep tracks. So deep, that it were more-or-less two deep tracks next to each other. But it was flowy and winding, downhill for the most part. So each of us got on one of the tracks and we flew through the scenery, it was an incredible ride. Without the gear it would even have been more fun. This ride took about 6km. Eventually we ended at the Del Norte airport. There were signs we had to ride around the airport to get into town.
Del Norte
We entered town from the north side and I checked where to find a bike store. One was closed and their other shop was in Amarosa, 45km south-east. But I found another and we decided to go first to the bike shop. I decided that I wanted my back tire to be replaced (just to be sure because New Mexico has rough roads and we still have some distance to cover). Once we were at the correct location, according to Google maps, we could not found the bike shop. So we asked around. Unfortunately this shop was closed as well, about a month ago. The information on the Internet was not updated yet. Grrrr. Now it has become a lot more difficult to get a new tire. There will not be any real bike stores anymore. As an alternative I wanted to order the tire online, but it would take several days to have it delivered (probably next Tuesday/Wednesday at soonest. At that moment we would have done a major part of the climbing and rough roads (and there would only be some hundreds of miles left). Maybe I still do it, just in case. Not sure yet, will decide tomorrow, if we have any Internet. We had the idea to continue riding to an informal campground at the base of the climb to Indiana Pass. When checking it a bit better, it was already halfway the climb to Indiana Pass. Indiana Pass is a 17km climb, where we need to gain 1000+m of elevation. A hard climb. We also saw an option for a cabin really at the base of the climb. We called the owner to check for availability and pricing. $30 for the both of us. He gave us directions and we could put the money on the table when we left. Sounds good, now we only needed to bike 16km to the cabin.
Our cabin for the night
The cabin would be 400 meters after the pavement ended. We had to look around, and a nice neighbor explained it was the next driveway. We cycled on a bit more and took the next driveway. Immediately when entering the property there was all kinds of art, made from recycled stuff. When continuing towards the cabins (there were two), it got more crazy. The place seemed to be made from recycled materials. The person who created this (someone named Kevin Off), must be an absolute creative person. Unbelievable how this place looks like. The cabin was full with all kinds of sporting equipment (skiing, sledging, climbing, hiking), guns, games, a football table, heads and skulls of animals, and a thousand more things. Everything in and around the cabin was made by the man himself. We both decided for a place in the cabin to sleep. We ate something, let our tents dry out, pitched out gear and went to bed.
Gallery
