Beautiful day to a WET day!!

We awoke this morning to a bright and beautiful day in Breckenridge, CO.

Our goal for today was to make it to Salida, CO. We’ll see how that turns out!!

Our recovery day yesterday seemed to have done the trick as we were up early, feeling pretty spry, and looking forward to our first challenge of the day, the 2,300’ climb up and over Boreas pass. Starting in Breck at an altitude of about 9,300ish’, the climb would take us to the lung sucking elevation of 11,482’. One of the highest elevations (if not the highest) on the TD so far.

There would be no time to warm up our legs, as the road to Boreas Pass starts immediately in the heart of Breckenridge, and after a couple of miles turns from smooth pavement to dirt. Luckily, this was again a Magnesium Chloride treated road that was spectacularly smooth, with just a few areas of rocks in the first 5-6 miles.

The overall climb up Boreas was about 10 miles, and the distance ticked off, while not easily, very consistently, as the grade of the road never seemed to go over about 4-5%. Ray and I separated on the climb, each of us sticking with whatever pace was comfortable with us, knowing we would regroup at the top of the pass.

The views of Breckenridge and the surrounding areas were stunning, as the still snow lined mountains served as a perfect backdrop with their summits brightly illuminated by the rising sun.

With the exception of the last mile or so, the ten miles to the summit were smooth and incredibly enjoyable. The last mile, while not horrible, reminded us that at this altitude, roads can go from great to horrible. They don’t call these the Rocky Mountains for nothing!!

After about an hour and a half, we arrived at the summit. The vistas and the altitude were stunning! When considering how cracked we were the previous day, we felt incredible now, standing at the summit of Boreas Pass! We took the time to eat a snack (breakfast at this point), and take pictures, marveling at how good we were feeling and proud of getting the pass completed before 0800 in the day!

A rule of thumb in Colorado and New Mexico is: If the clouds start to build before 1000 AM, you can expect rain. And today, clouds were building fast!

After 20 minutes or so we were ready to start our descent and the 40 mile or so ride to Hartsel, CO and hopefully, our first meal of the day.

The descent was quite a bit rougher that the climb, as the dryer southern slopes of most of the TD seem to be. Quickly decending off of the 11,000+’ mountain and into the high grassy plains of central Colorado, we soon found ourselves on country roads lined with ranches and, as has been the case for the entire Divide, many, many cattle.

One thing that is striking in the hundreds of miles from the Canadian border to here is the amount of range land that is dedicated to cattle production. They dot the landscape everywhere!! Growing up in New Mexico and knowing what our state looks like, I don’t expect that to change much in the next 1000 miles or so.

At any rate, three hours or so later, and after about 10 miles of no-shoulder, fast traffic, put your life at risk pavement riding, we were rolling into Hartsel and looking for a place to eat. At the western edge of “town” we rode up to a small cafe that looked like it had been there since the early 1900’s! The establishment was staffed with what appeared to be local highschoolers or maybe college aged kids. They were having some interesting conversations as we sat on the “patio” and listened to them loudly talk from the kitchen area inside the cafe. We ordered our lunch, and were just finishing when two more riders pulled in. The riders were Nathaniel and Shawn. We had briefly met them earlier in the ride (I think). Nathaniel asked us if we were “The New Mexico Guys”. Apparently riding together for three weeks gives you a group moniker!

We spoke to them as we packed up our gear, and were fairly confident we would see them again down the road, perhaps in Salida.

With that we were on our way.

We rolled down a paved road for about 10 miles then took a turn-off that would again take us across vast plains of grass, in pinion and juniper studded rolling hills. We knew that there wasn’t much in the way of climbing for the rest of the day, until we got to a final pass we would climb before we dropped into Salida.

One strange thing on this stretch of road (for about 30 miles) is that the area is dotted for miles with RVs and campers, seemingly randomly placed on the landscape. I,m not sure if a rancher simply divided up his land and sold off small parcels, or what the situation is. It looks as though there is a homesteading process going on, wherein you must have a residence on a piece of land to secure it, so folks just drop a trailer there. In most cases, there is nothing else. No permanent structures, no cars, no barns, no fences,…nothing but an RV parked in the middle of nowhere! Hmm….

As we rolled across this landscape, we were acutely aware of the storms that had built up and were surrounding us. We were lucky enough to escape them for the most part, although there were several not-so-distant lightning strikes that startled us and got our attention. As we looked behind us from where we had just come, we could see our previous path was now being rained on. We commented that the guys at the resturant were going to have a fun ride in the rain and mud. Luckily, we had escaped the rain…or had we?

As we were riding I got a text from friends Michelle and Brian Jensen in Salida. Michelle was suggesting that we try to reserve a room immediately, as this was the 4th of July weekend and lodging in Salida might be an issue. After a bit discussion with Michelle, I called a motel she had suggested and arranged for rooms.

After about 2 hours, we were rapidly approaching the last climb of the day and making very good time. We were about 25 miles from Salida, 15 from the top of the descent into town, when we felt the first drops. We hesitated putting on our rain gear, as the skies were still not too dark, and the rain light. That changed rapidly!!

The rain quickly started to get heavy, so we made haste in stopping to don our rain gear and got back to riding. The roads instantly turned into a gooey mess! We were slipping and sliding, still making headway, but slowly!! After a mile or so we came upon two dirt touring motorcyclists who were completely stuck in the mud the road had turned into. They marveled at how we could continue riding (thanks to the massive tire clearance our Salsa Cutthroats have) while their motorcycle wheels simply would not turn due to the compacted mud. We learned later they had abandoned their bikes and started off to look for help to get out!!

So it was for the next ten miles or so that we would trudge our way up the final watershed divide towards Salida. At times the riding was not too bad, and at others we would find ourselves walking up steep and rocky grades, all the while in on-and-off pouring rain. Our timetable to Salida was getting wrecked!!

Finally we topped out. At the top of the pass it looked as though it had snowed, due to the large amount of hail now covering the ground. One result of hail, as anyone knows, is that the air temperature gets COLD as the hail starts to melt! Ray and I stopped at the top and began to put on more clothing for our fast descent into Salida. We could only just control our bikes as we began the incredibly cold drop down the mountain. After about 15-20 minutes, we had descended enough that the air temperatures were starting to get comfortable. Finally we rolled into Salida.

Our first order of business was to make our way to our motel. Along the way, we had a stroke of luck. A car wash!! Ray and I had gotten into the habit of using self service car washes to spray our bikes clean after very muddy days, making sure to stay away from anything with bearings. We rolled into the car wash bay, and in few minutes, our bikes, packs, and gear started to appear from under the layers of mud! We had our bikes back!

We finally rolled out of the car wash, onto the main drag, and into a parking lot where we could pull up an address on a phone so we could navigate to our motel. Luckily it was only .7 miles away. We were warm, dry, and sporting clean bikes as we headed out of the parking lot towards our motel.

We had only gone about 200 yards when we felt the first drops. Within 30 seconds it was a deluge!! It was as if the entire sky had opened up!! We were soon in the worst rain of the trip, and I would say one of the heaviest rains I have ever experienced. As we tried to cross the road and take a left turn to our motel, a very slow moving truck impeded our path. That truck then slowed down so much that the light we would have made if it had not been there turned red. We sat in the pouring rain, behind the truck, for what seemed like 10 minutes (probably only a minute or two in reality). The damage was done. We were as wet as if we had jumped into a swimming pool.

As we pulled our bikes to the side of the motel and under a small overhang, a vehicle pulled up to us. It was Brian and Michelle! They made sure the first thing they did after saying “Hi”, was to take a picture of us looking like dazed and drowned rats!

We quickly checked into our rooms, and after a quick shower, took Brian and Michelle up on an offer of a ride to dinner and a beer!

The rest of the evening was relaxing and enjoyable as we chatted with our friends and relived the events of the day.

Just another interesting day on the Tour Divide!!

We’re South bound and down!

Shane and Ray