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Day 3: Excursion to Section Point

July 12, 2006 on 2:32 am | In Bicycling | No Comments

I awoke this morning to yet another clear sky, but this one would prove to be more durable. Walking around in our puffy down jackets (it was now embarrassing to remember that I’d thought my down would be overkill in summer) we quickly got our stuff together for a 9 am departure for a loop excursion at high altitude, returning eventually to our present campsite where we would stay one more night. It was a big relief not to have to break camp.

Today’s ride would take us up to a portion of the Colorado Trail, a 500-mile-long singletrack trail running from Denver to Durango, and a series of exposed ridgelines with great views of the surrounding country. This would be the highest riding of our trip, at altitudes approaching 12,000 feet.

We began our ride with a steep 1-mile climb up the steep ridge nearby the lake (those “trails” going straight up the slope are not the path we took!). I noticed that I was starting to become acclimated, in that although the first 30 seconds of the climb made me instantly hammered and oxygen-starved, on continuing, the difficulty seemed to ease up and I could keep going albeit not at my usual pace. We topped out on an exposed rocky outcrop where we got our first big taste of high-altitude scenery. Sadly, my camera battery was starting to die at this point!

We merrily cruised downhill from the outcrop into rolling meadows, when Patrick broke his chain, the latest in a series of mechanical mishaps that afflicted him throughout the trip. It seemed as though his bike was no match for his muscles; he was the fastest rider in our group, when his bike was actually operational :). To our amazement Rachel went back down to camp to get Patrick a new chain. We stopped, instantly feeling cold from the breeze even in the bright sun. When Patrick said something to Scott about feeling bad that she’d have to do the killer climb all over again, Scott said: “Don’t feel bad. The longer and harder the climb, the bigger the smile on her face!” He seemed to be right. Rachel had a seemingly infinite capacity for tough riding and climbing at altitude. I never saw her look the least bit tired under any circumstances, and when she turned up with the chain she seemed as chipper as ever.

We rode up, up, and further up a dirt road towards the base of Hermosa Peak, a towering pile of scree. Eventually we hit a junction with the Colorado Trail, and took a series of singletrack pitches clinging to the edge of bare rock ridges climbing up to the beautiful grassy mound of Section Point (informally renamed Beach Peak by whoever erected the sign there). In the photo you can see a little pointy thing sticking up from the landscape; that is Lizard Head near the previous night’s campground, some 20 miles back.

We had ridden about 5 miles out from our camp. At this point, there was an option to continue another few miles to Blackhawk Pass, which meant immediately descending maybe 500′, then regaining that altitude on a tough technical climb and more, then the same in reverse just to come back to Section Point. I was still suffering from a mild but constant sinus infection that had plagued me through the trip so far, and decided not to push my luck: I hadn’t gotten sicker than I was when I started, and I could still ride. I wanted to stay at least at the level I was at. So I decided to turn around while the others pushed on. Scott rode back to the camp with me (he didn’t quite share Rachel’s endless enthusiasm for going uphill a lot).

Coming back down, we met the llama-renting family again. The llamas looked happy, the kids even less so than before. They had many miles left to trudge. As Scott remarked, “this is one of those experiences they’ll probably remember forever,” possibly not in a particularly nostalgic mode.

We took the Colorado Trail back down to camp rather than the dirt road we’d ascended. This was the most beautiful and scenic ride of the trip; we crossed over the ridgeline of Hermosa Peak and entered a section that was cut into a very steep, treeless hillside. To our left, the slope rose above us; to our right (south), a huge exposed space, dropping down who knows how far, opening up to a vast valley panorama. We followed this trail as it contoured along the vertical folds in the mountain side. In the places where it curved around a convex fold, it felt like we were hanging in midair. Riding this trail, focused on every detail of the narrow strip of dirt in front of me, felt close as I’ve come to the feeling of riding in the sky. It was magnificent. My battery was dead, but no photograph could have possibly conveyed the feeling.

No thunderstorms today.

When we made it back to camp, Scott rigged up a military-style sunshower. I didn’t wait for it to warm up, but took a delicious freezing-cold shower and then a nice long nap. The others straggled back in several groups over the next couple of hours; most did not make it to Blackhawk.

When the day was almost over and it was almost dark, a trio of mountain bikers straggled through our camp. They were looking for the next hut in a hut system they were following. Scott knew where it was (we had biked near it during our day) and gave them directions. They had no lights. We were all more than a little worried about them finding their way, and they had the same tough climb up the ridge ahead of them that we’d faced first thing in the morning. But they took off immediately, and didn’t seem to want to hang around. They had mentioned they’d started around 11 am from Molas Pass, which was a pretty late start considering the distance they’d had to travel. Scott worried for a while that he should have gotten them to stay and have a Clif Bar and reconsider whether they should be biking at all in the dark, lightless.

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