The trip was organized by Western Spirit, a bike expedition company about which I have only great things to say. On this trip, we stayed in local inns and lodges rather than camping.

The trip started out in the town of Creel, a full days’ drive south of the border starting from El Paso, Texas. Creel lies at an elevation of almost 8,000 feet, and it snowed heavily on the morning our trip started! The storm cleared out fast, but temperatures stayed near the freezing point that day and it was very blustery. The landscape around Creel is dry but forested; lots of medium-size pine trees, a mixture of pinon and a local type of ponderosa. There are lots of odd-looking eroded rock towers and hoodoos everywhere you look. This shot is from El Valle De Monjes (”Valley of The Monks”):

The next day we rode down into the true Copper Canyon system on a dirt road. Riding on dirt roads is normally not very interesting, but the scenery and the length of the descent made this one a blast. Our first views from the top looked like this:

Along the way we encountered some burros…

…more great scenery…

…and spooky silver mines:

You may note the locals’ attempt to prevent Darwin-Award-type scenarios: the spray painted legends “NO ENTRE ES PELIGROSO” and a game attempt at translation: “TIS MINE IS VERY DAGEROUS DON’T…”. Believe it or not, the day before we arrived in the canyon, an American tourist went into that very mine and fell through some rotten floorboards into a mine shaft. He had to be rescued, but luckily survived with only a few scratches and a story that he might or might not want to share. (His traveling companions told me about the episode at our hotel.) You can see one of my fellow riders in the mine in the above photo; I was yelling at him to get out of there.

At the bottom of the canyon we reached the remote but lively town of Batopilas. At 1,500 feet, the weather was balmy and fragrant; orange trees and flowers were growing everywhere. It had a beautiful town plaza with a finely decorated gazebo:

We stayed in Batopilas for 3 nights, traveling around the canyon. Then we rode back up out of it (or as far out of it as we could manage in 5 hours — the van was traveling behind us and scooping us up at whatever point they encountered us on the way up and out). I didn’t make it to the top, but I did manage to climb for 4 1/2 hours straight, probably going up about 4,500-5,000 feet in the process, which was a big achievement for me.

Back at the top, we stayed at a rustic lodge in the tiny hamlet of Cusarare, populated mostly by the local Tarahumara tribe. The Tarahumara (or Raramuri, to use their name for themselves) are known for their long-distance running skills. They also are very artistic. Some of their signature crafts involve baskets woven out of pine needles (these are remarkably sturdy!). Here is a photo of the inside of the Cusarare Mission, built in the 1700s and recently restored and repainted:

There are lots more photos and stories to tell, but this is about as much as I have time for right now, so I thought I’d get it out there to share. I’ll tell myself a fib right now that I’ll get around to blogging some more about it later…

No, dear reader, I am not in fact coordinated enough to play Zelda or Wii Sports while pedaling furiously. (OK… make that semi-furiously.) What I am able to do is surf the web using the Wii’s built-in web browser, pointing and clicking the Wii Remote in one hand while maintaining pace and position on the bike. And this, from my point of view, is one very good reason to get hold of one of these gadgets. Now I can read a wide variety of stuff while doing my workout, and exercise free choice over it. That’s progress!

There are plenty of other reasons to check out the Wii. The remote (which has 6 degrees of free motion as well as buttons and internal accelerometers) is a really interesting input device, and it can interface via Bluetooth with a PC or Mac, and folks are coming out with some great homebrew hardware and software to provide connectivity for developers. Combine the remote with Flex, WiiFlash and Papervision3D, and suddenly you’re looking at an impressive 3D visualization platform. Hmmm…

Now Vegas is a weird and interesting place, and, of course, how could one contemplate visiting Las Vegas without a little… mountain biking? I took a bunch of pictures capturing various Vegas scenes of this and that, as well as part of our bike day trip with my buddy Jeff Vroom who works at Adobe (thanks to Chad and Escape Adventures for a great ride).

I stayed in the Venetian, an aggressive faux-Italian sprawl. Its architecture carefully funnels conference-goers through its small intestine, where clever organs named “the slot machine” and “the blackjack table” absorb their nutrients and cash into the hotel’s bloodstream. I saw a sign that said “When it’s no longer a game… PLAY RESPONSIBLY.” I ask this: in a bar, if you saw a sign that said, “When you’re blind drunk… DRINK RESPONSIBLY,” what would you think?

Anyway, apart from meeting lots of great people and giving my presentation, I found out a lot about Adobe’s new Apollo platform, which I think is going to enable people to build some really great new kinds of applications. Apollo directly integrates the Flash, Flex, DHTML and PDF platforms to an extent never before seen, and supports applications that can be installed by the user directly on the desktop with access to the file system, network, etc.. The apps appear as native application executables and are not Adobe-branded in any way. There is integration at the programmatic level (ActionScript and JavaScript can call each other’s code and see each other’s objects) and at the display level (HTML can appear as a display object in Flash with alpha, scaling, rotation, etc., while Flash can of course appear as an element in an HTML page). Furthermore, the HTML piece is a 100% fully functional browser based on WebKit, which also more or less powers Safari.

From a topographic point of view, this trail follows the valley of Hermosa Creek all the way to its junction with the Animas River that flows into Durango. This Google Maps satellite view shows the meandering Creek; the trail, if one could see it, would run to the NE side of the creek, contouring in and out of the many side valleys. It’s total length is some 18 miles.

At its start, the trail runs right along the bank of the creek, bombing downhill right along with the bubbling molecules of water. (My bombing was temporarily called to a halt by a bunch of cows, who eventually dispersed with some coaxing from Rachel.) As one continues, however, the creek drops lower and lower in the valley, but the trail stays at approximately the same elevation though trending downhill. Thus, you start at the bottom of a narrow, shallow valley right next to the creek which is still small, and finish approximately halfway up a deep valley with the same creek about 500 feet below you, now a substantial river roaring along. The bombing gives way to gradual up and down sections, with the down outnumbering the up, but not by much. The ups get steeper and longer as the trail continues. There is lots of exposure to the right on the drop to the creek to hone your concentration on the trail, and one absolute killer climb about 2/3 of the way through. A really, really great ride to end our trip!

At the terminus of the trail, we rode down the asphalt Forest Service Road to the bottom of the valley (this road is visible in the Google Maps image above as a winding fragment near the bottom where Hermosa Creek approaches the highway). As we flew down this road, the temperature climbed steadily. In 10 minutes we’d gone from cool mountain breezes to a sweltering 90 degrees. After riding another 3-4 miles on the flats, we reached Trimble Hot Springs, the official end of the bicycling part of our journey. The hot springs consisted of two pools; one large cool pool with no shade, and a shaded pool containing very hot water. Neither seemed very appealing, but the showers in the changing room were impossible to beat after 5 days on the trail. As a bonus nature experience, a brown bear was hanging out on the hillside above the parking lot, lounging around. The other bear I’ve seen (also in Colorado) was eating garbage in a suburban subdivision. I guess bears and people go together, these days.

We shuttled back to Durango where we said our goodbyes and split up. It was a really successful trip from my point of view: great riding, great scenery, great people, great food and great organization. I recommend the route and the company without reservations, provided you don’t expect to ride the way you would at sea level!

We rode down the muddy singletrack at the head of the canyon containing Relay Creek. At first an up-and-down track through soggy meadows, it hardened up and became a super-fast bombing run gradually descending about 2000′ over some 10 miles. The scenery to our right was amazing. Eventually our red-hot descending singletrack merged with a dirt road, which continued going downwards with some gentle climbs mixed in. Climbing seemed easy now, with the added oxygen. We kept on going, maybe another 6 miles or so, to our lunch spot, after which another bombing descent down the road took us to the uphill “back side” of Durango Mountain Resort, a ski area formerly known by the less PC-ish name of Purgatory, which boasts a great MTB loop that formed the basis of the 1990 World Championship MTB Course. We rode maybe 1/3 of this loop, mostly in a downhill direction. It was lots of fun, and pretty challenging terrain, although (apart from the length of the descents) nothing you wouldn’t see in a nasty technical section of Lynn Woods. At the bottom of this run, approaching the ski lodge headquarters, the very last descending pitch terminated in a series of whoop-de-doo bumps. These proved to be Frank 2’s (the doctor’s) undoing for the day: he took them at speed, and flew off his bike while doing the last one. No one really saw exactly what happened, but having ridden the same bumps myself, it was a fair guess that he didn’t unweight on the ramp up to the bump and got his rear wheel kicked up in the air. He got scraped up really badly, but mercifully he wasn’t hurt any worse than that. Nonetheless he was pretty shaken up and didn’t ride the rest of the day.

While Frank 2 was cleaning up, we lazed around at the resort, looking at civilization (or something purporting to resemble it) for the first time in several days. There being no skiing in July, and few bikers besides us, most people seemed to be there to shop, eat, or just take the ski left up to the top for something to do. It was sort of mall-like and weird. Many tourists seemed to be a) obese and b) from Texas.

We took the ski lift up to the top of the mountain with our bikes, and rode (mostly) down the back side of the resort again through a series of gorgeous rocky singletracks carving through the hills. One more screaming multi-mile dirt road descent later, we were at our final campground of the trip: beautiful Hermosa Park, on a small rocky mini-plateau rising above a meadow through which flowed the calm, meandering headwaters of Hermosa Creek. I bathed in it, which was a glorious experience. Nearby, a smaller tributary creek joined it. Looking at the map later, I saw that this was in fact Relay Creek: we had ridden its entire length, from beginning to end.

We were all a little conscious, I think, that this was our last night together. We sat around the campfire for a long time. I coaxed Scott into telling some stories about his fascinating experiences as a caver working on a series of expeditions to the Huautla Cave system in Oaxaca, one of the deepest cave systems in the world. Listening to these tales, our mountain biking tour suddenly seemed like a little trip down the block to the supermarket.

Read the next entry

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.

Read the next entry

After a very hearty breakfast, and futile attempts to dry our wet gear from last night, we packed up our tents and gear and prepared to leave. The hail from last night was still lying on the ground, a reminder of what we might expect at any time from the fickle mountain skies.

We set off down the East Fork Trail which began in a soggy meadow right outside the campground, and smiles began to break out. After a messy, muddy climb up a rise, the trail topped out on a grassy hill and began to descend in a series of sunny open alpine meadows alternating with rocky, rooty alcoves of cool spruce and fir. The East Fork of the Dolores River roared unseen, far below us on our right; further right across the valley was a steep rock wall with forest above and below. The trail swooped up, down, and around, with tricky biker-unfriendly water bars to spice up our ride. I did a graceful, super-low-speed endo after jumping a water bar only to trap my wheel behind a small rock 2 feet beyond it; fortunately I caught the bike before it could start tumbling down towards the river! It was a little object lesson in the ways of my rental bike, which was 1.5″ shorter than my usual machine: the front wheel was closer to my body, and I was going to have to take account of an increased propensity for nose wheelies and endos by sitting further back.

I felt energetic at first but after a lot of East Fork swooping, I did begin to tire and start to walk some of the steeper climbs; the altitude was getting to me again. We arrived at the midpoint of our ride soon after that, a trail intersection in an open glade with a small creek running through it. We were all grinning, because this was the kind of riding and scenery we had come for, and the weather was cooperating.

The remainder of that ride was a steep fire-road climb of some 5 miles. Even though it was a lot steeper than the initial day on the Galloping Goose, the knowledge that it was shorter, my increasing adaptation to the altitude and the fine weather all contributed to making it a pleasant leg of the trip. As we ascended towards Bolam Pass at 11,000 feet, the scenery slowly morphed around us. Open spaces with brilliant wildflowers became more frequent. The air, cool to start with, became cooler. After about 90 minutes or so, we reached the pass and coasted down another 1/2 mile or so to our beautiful campsite beneath the pines. The truck was there, and the rain canopy had been erected just in time as the skies suddenly cut loose with more hail and rain and the temperatures plummeted from the 70s to the 40s. I picked a campsite, and started to set up my tent.

And that was when I discovered that I had left my dry bag full of all my gear back at Lizard Head Pass.

Mortified, I told Rachel and Scott. They weren’t angry, but obviously they weren’t terribly happy either — Lizard Head was a long, long way away by road. Biking back there to get it was out of the question; the dry bag was enormous. I checked every dry bag, but there was no question. I clearly remembered leaving my dry bag at my tent site at last night’s camping spot. Fortunately I had a day pack with a complete change of clothing, down jacket, and fleece hat, so I didn’t have to freeze in my biking clothes, and there was a spare sleeping pad and bag on hand. Worst come to worst, I’d do the rest of the trip with only two sets of clothes.

Scott already had an unpleasant driving errand on his hands: after several reversals of fortune, “Frank 2″ had finally arrived in the Durango area with his baggage (it had been mistakenly put in some sort of broom closet in the Durango airport and then reported as missing) and was being shuttled to the nearby town of Rico, so Scott needed to pick him up first, bring him back to Bolam Pass. He offered that if the weather was still OK at that point, he would go to pick up my bag at Lizard Head. I don’t think I need to say that I was unbelievably grateful to him for rescuing me after my total bozo forgetfulness.

“Frank 2″ arrived, and turned out to be a young emergency room doctor from Vancouver. (For the rest of the ride, people enjoyed pestering him with questions beginning with, “You know on ER when…”) We didn’t ride for the rest of the day due to bad weather; in some of the non-rainy periods we went down to the nearby lake and washed the mud of the previous day and a half out of our sorry-ass drive trains, which perked up and decided they might shift properly again someday.

While Scott was off retrieving my gear, a man and two boys came through our campsite with a train of 3 llamas and an Airedale. He allowed as how he’d rented the llamas. Each llama was carrying the volume of, say, 3 enormous backpacks. They were traveling to Durango via the Colorado Trail. The kids, carrying little or nothing, looked cranky and exhausted. The llamas looked like they were having a Sunday walk in the park. They all walked down to the lake to camp there.

That night there was a piercingly loud animal fight somewhere nearby. I was convinced that it was a death battle between a pack of coyotes and the Airedale. I could clearly hear a “woof” sound in counterpoint to the weird squealing and yelping of coyotes. This went on for almost 30 minutes. It took me a long time to get to sleep afterwards.

Read the next entry

This morning broke with a crystal-clear blue sky: my prayers for good weather had been finally answered, or so I thought. I dropped off the rental car in Durango and rode to the rendezvous in back of Mountain Bike Specialists on Main Street to meet the Western Spirit truck, the guides, and the other folks with whom I’d be riding the next 5 days. Our guides were Rachel, Scott and Jason; Rachel and Scott were a married couple looking to be in their 40s and were veteran guides for Western Spirit, while Jason was in his 20s and guiding the route for the first time.

My extremely agreeable companions on this trip appeared to be:

• Patrick, 22, from northwest Connecticut.
• Chris, 30ish, from Austin, Texas.
• Frank, 50+, from the Santa Fe area.
• Jeff, 50+, also from Santa Fe, and a friend of Frank’s.

Notably absent was a man named Frank that we temporarily called “Frank 2″, who had missed a plane connection or something in Calgary and was unable to make it to the rendezvous (he eventually hooked up with us on Tuesday evening out in the mountains).

We got our stuff together quickly, throwing our gear into dry bags, and most of us piled into a shuttle van that was to take us to Telluride, with Scott and Jason driving the Western Spirit truck behind us with all the bikes and gear loaded. This 4WD truck, our support vehicle for the entire trip, was quite a sight with its custom steel rack and bikes sticking out all over. It was very thoughtfully designed with lots of clever compartments for everything necessary.

As we snaked up the claustrophobic Dolores Valley to Telluride, the sky got gloomier. As we climbed up and over Lizard Head Pass, the vista of the Ilium Valley opened up, and coming down from the pass we could see a tiny trail below etched into the side of a steep slope. This was part of the Galloping Goose trail that we’d be spending the day climbing. The trail was exciting to see, but it was worrisome to also note the dark, black clouds blowing in from the west.

We arrived in Telluride at the same time as a full-bore mountain thunderstorm. The famous view from Telluride was rapidly appearing and disappearing as moving rain clouds blanked out entire quadrants of the landscape, and thunder reverberated deafeningly off the valley walls. We huddled in the van and talked while the guides pulled stuff off the support truck. Everyone was thinking pretty much the same thing, and some were saying it out loud: “Are we going to ride in this? That’s INSANE!” But it wasn’t insane. It was what we had to do. Scott arrived in our truck after a few minutes and said, politely but firmly, “Well, guys, it’s time to rally. This is just the nature of the beast.” And so we pulled on our rain gear and got going, with no small amount of trepidation. The storm did in fact begin to lift at that exact moment, but this was only the first of several successive waves of bad weather to hit us that day.

In fact, we got a few minutes to bounce around Telluride before leaving. It has an awesome view of towering 14ers surrounding it and many beautiful vintage Old West buildings, but the feeling is that a tidal wave of movie-star money has wiped out the authentic atmosphere that once existed here. It seems like a place to see, to be seen, and to buy ultra-expensive unnecessary gear.

Then our ride began with a gondola ride up and over the mountain to Telluride Mountain Village, a sort of residential outpost of Telluride. From there, a dizzying descent on muddy singletrack winding through the woods. It was fast, furious, and the grip of our tires was none too sure. We dove downwards for about 30 minutes until we reached a paved road. A mile down that road we found the support truck awaiting us with sandwich fixings under a rain awning, which was more than welcome because it began to pour again at that very moment.

After lunch, we began the day’s real work: a 20-mile climb at 3% grade, punctuated by shorter but much steeper climbs. This was the Galloping Goose, a converted rail trail that starts near Telluride and grinds its way back up to the same Lizard Head Pass that we’d driven through earlier, hugging a steep slope for the first half and then winding around an alpine lake as it draws closer to the pass. “Grind” was indeed the operative word: there was no letup in the uphill, except for the occasional punishing segments where a former trestle across a side creek had washed out and the trail descended and then ascended a gully much more steeply than usual. It was hard enough for me to keep plugging away on the railroad-grade segments at this altitude; when we hit the first killer steep pitch, I knew instantly that I’d have to walk my bike up or completely lose my rhythm. After a very tough post-lunch start, I was finally hitting my aerobic groove on the steady climbs and I didn’t want to blow that groove just to temporarily play hero (or martyr) by hitting the steep stuff hard. It was difficult to resign myself to this because the climbs looked so short and doable. However, the altitude multiplied the effort unbelievably.

Chris, one of my companions, was probably experiencing the same phenomenon, but reaching a different conclusion about it. He was a strong muscular guy and had been well out in front pretty much the whole day, riding very strongly on the main incline. He hit the steep pitches just as hard, but apparently they were hitting him back. He told me he experienced something like an anxiety attack at the bottom of one of these pitches: hyperventilation, a sense of panic. At the next rest stop, Chris abruptly disappeared from the group, leaving along with the truck: apparently he suddenly told the guides that this trip wasn’t for him. We were all very surprised, but I think I have an idea what he was experiencing. High altitude totally changes the reality of what one can expect from one’s body, and I think he may have had trouble changing his expectations of himself… and, consequently, had trouble getting enough oxygen to meet those goals. Also he’d had some chain trouble earlier and things weren’t going smoothly for his bike in some fashion. In any case, we never saw him again: now we were four, not counting the guides.

We climbed and climbed. We passed by the Ophir Needles near the little town of Ames, where the first AC electric generator went into commercial service, in defiance of Thomas Edison’s prediction that DC would carry the day. We went past mountains towering over the brilliant teal-colored Trout Lake, as dark clouds moved in yet again and thunder started crashing. On the final 5 miles from Trout Lake up to Lizard Head Pass, I was a good 2-3 minutes behind the rest of the group. Approaching Lizard Head Pass, the inevitable wave of bad weather hit, but this time (thanks to our altitude at the pass) this meant hail mixed with freezing cold rain. I rode the last few minutes of the climb with hailstones stuck in my right ear, drenched in cold water, shivering despite the full-length rain gear. Everyone else was waiting in relative comfort under the shelter of a roadside National Forest map sign with a little roof: their lead had enabled them to just miss the hail while I got slammed!

We looked at the map; Rachel indicated that our camp was located approximately at the location of the letter “Y” in “YOU ARE HERE”. We rode down the asphalt in the hail and rain to “The Y” and pitched camp in our hail-littered campground. The bad weather cleared, but the temperatures remained near freezing. After a delicious blackened salmon dinner, we all crashed in our soggy tents.

Read the next entry

I awoke to a cold, rainy and nasty morning. There is no question of riding in the rain around here, since the trails turn into a sea of mud, so I headed off to Mesa Verde National Park about 40 miles west of Durango, where the famous Anasazi cliff dwellings are. I was hoping the rain would keep away the crowds despite its being peak season, and indeed it did; although I didn’t have the place to myself, it wasn’t jammed either.

These structures really should be seen by everyone who gets the chance. They were built during the same period as Gothic cathedrals in Europe, and I think that in a way they’re our national equivalent: an indigenous architectural heritage that belongs to this country in an organic sense, in a way that, say, the Old North Church does not. I signed up for a tour of Balcony House, which requires a 35-foot ladder climb to enter, figuring that this would deter some tourists and further thin the crowd. Apparently the Park Service figures the same, because this is the only tour in which one gets to actually enter a dwelling instead of just standing outside it.

During the tour, a man asked the guide, “Did the people who live here practice human sacrifice?” The guide gave a very detailed answer which could be roughly summarized as, “No”. After a brief pause, he then asked, “Did they ever engage in cannibalism?”

Mesa Verde as a place has the odd feeling of a deserted city, where the “dwellings” seem much like large apartment buildings and the canyon walls are like city streets. There are many dwellings scattered throughout the area; look across any canyon, and on the opposite wall you’re likely to spot yet another deserted house. Balcony House itself appears to have been a small complex that was converted into a two-family of sorts by adding a party wall some time after the building of the original structure.

After my visit, I headed down to the valley town of Mancos for some grub, having seen a promising-looking sign for a bakery there. I drove down the main drag, past the extremely fragrant Western Excelsior Factory (they make aspen wood shavings as packing material), at which point I saw a sign for the Mancos Renaissance Faire. I blew right past the sign, lunch on my mind. On arrival at the bakery, though, my plans changed: I wanted basic, hearty diner-type fare, and they offered overpriced “Pasta Primavera” and such. Nix on the bakery. No, ersatz or not, the Faire started to seem like the best lunch option. There would be food stalls with reasonable prices and stuff I could see before eating it.

And so, I headed to the Mancos Renaissance Faire. I believe the pictures speak for themselves. While hardly the epicenter of Renaissance culture, Mancos, CO certainly made a strong showing in this genre. They really put their back into it. By the way, they have an official web site. I wound up eating a “Navajo Taco”, which was basically fry bread with beans, tomatoes and cheese on top. It wasn’t bad and the price was right. While I ate, I chatted with Tim, a friendly Mancos resident who had just retired from working for the Park Service at Mesa Verde. He told me that Mancos was becoming popular as a bedroom community for folks working in Durango who couldn’t afford to live there.

On my way back to Durango, the weather suddenly cleared up, so I decided to take immediate advantage and go for a ride in nearby La Plata Canyon. Turning north off US 160, I drove into a valley that penetrates right into the middle of the La Platas. The road turned to dirt, after which 16 miles remained to its terminus at Kennebec Pass. I drove in about 8 miles, then attempted to ride up the remaining 8 miles and back. I was climbing pretty well for an hour or so, passing the ghost town of Parrot City. After that, the road turned to a 4WD track and got steeper. I kept going for another hour, getting more and more fatigued. Eventually I had to call it a day, when a descending ATVer told me I had another mile and a half of tough climbing left. Later, I found out that I had made it up to over 11,000 feet, which was a lot higher than I had been expecting; Kennebec Pass itself is at nearly 13,000. No wonder I was beat! In any case, I flew right back down the 6-odd miles to my car in about 15 minutes.

On my way back, I passed the sinister-looking gate of the Sword of Truth Church Ranch. A bit of research took me to an article in the Durango Herald on attitudes towards gun ownership in Southwest Colorado; the founder of the church, Ron Trujillo, is one of the interviewees. Quote: “The Lord wants us to have weapons. But he would want us to be Christ-like in using them.” This article is an interesting read and gives one the idea that there may be some differences between Southwest Colorado and Massachusetts on certain issues.

I finished the day with a big sushi dinner with Ryan and Marcy at one of Durango’s two sushi restaurants. I have to say, it was surprisingly good.

Read the next entry

(Photos of this part of the trip can be viewed here.)

Yesterday was a long travel day with my stepdaughter Sarah (who was travelling to Boulder to visit my sister-in-law). On the long Boston-to-Denver leg, the infant and toddler in front of us had worked in regular shifts, allowing one to rest while the other screamed at earsplitting levels. The culmination of this in-flight extravaganza occured just after we landed, when a young boy vomited in the aisle right next to us. The Denver-to-Durango leg was shorter but violently bumpy, as we dodged thunderstorms. Occasionally a snowy, rocky landscape would be visible through the clouds below, reminding me that there was something nasty to crash into.

Given all that, the experience on emerging from the tiny Durango/La Plata County airport was one of sudden tranquillity. The sky was clearing as the sun set over the La Plata Mountains, squatting peacefully on the skyline. The air smelled of fresh ozone and aromatic desert. It was quiet. There was little visible other than the landscape. My cousin Ryan picked me up in his truck and we went to his house about 10 miles northwest of Durango, where I’ve been staying the last few nights.

This morning, Ryan drove me into town where I picked up my rental car and then (more importantly) my rental mountain bike, a Trek Fuel EX8. The folks at the bicycle store suggested that I start off by riding the Horse Gulch trail system, a beautiful network of singletrack which starts literally 3 blocks from the center of town, running up and over a nearby ridgeline about 1000′ above Durango. I rode the Telegraph Trail, which is one part of this system.

I rode for about 3 hours, not pushing myself too hard yet: every climb was a struggle at about 7000′. The trails were stunningly beautiful and a really fun ride, mostly buff singletrack swooping through scrubby desert and pine up onto ledges cut into steep rocky slopes. The signage was superb; every trail intersection had a little weatherproof map plaque with arrows oriented to one’s actual location, showing which exit from the intersection corresponded to which trail. I’ve never seen anything so helpful on a trail system before. You’d have to be really, really stupid to get lost there (and it’s not a small place).

Returning to the trailhead, I nodded and said hello to a couple of Indians sitting and drinking by a creek near the entrance. I assume they were Utes, since Durango is right next to the Southern Ute Tribal Reservation. As I packed my bike up, they walked down to the parking lot. One of them was curious about the bike and asked what it was like to ride with a full suspension. His far less functional buddy staggered around, glassy-eyed and barely able to walk. The two of them then had a long dialogue in their own language, the only word of which I could understand was “Kansas”.

I went back to Durango and hung out a bit. Durango styles itself as a sort of “mountain bike capital” (there were little cloth banners of fat-tire bikes flying from the lampposts), which brings to mind some comparisons with another obvious contender: Moab, Utah. Here are some contrasts:

• Durango is a more substantial community, and has been a regional hub for over a century. It has a downtown, albeit a small one, with attractive architecture. On the other hand, Moab seems like a tiny backwater that has recently had an overlay of tourism applied. Moab doesn’t feel like it has a distinct center, and the buildings are more makeshift.
• One can get between points in Durango by bicycle without having to get on a highway; in Moab, that’s nearly impossible.
• Durango has mostly singletrack. Moab bike trails are mostly jeep roads.
• Amazing Durango trails are directly accessible from town. In Moab, you have to drive to get to the good stuff.
• Durango trails directly hook into a vast trail system in the surrounding San Juan National Forest containing untold hundreds of miles extending right up to the Colorado Trail hugging the San Juan Mountains ridgeline. Moab trails are more disconnected, separated by tens of miles of paved road.
• Durango has better mountains and forests; Moab has better rock formations and bizarre sandstone scenery.
• You don’t have to watch out for fragile cryptobiotic soil in Durango.

There is a sort of funky bike-cult feel to Durango that is nice. You see lots and lots of people riding funky fat-tire bikes of yesteryear. Ryan told me: “Most people in Durango have three bikes: a mountain bike, a road bike and a town bike. The town bike is what Durango people measure your status by. The coolest town bike is something old, stylish and vintage. It should show that you have great taste, not that you had a lot of money to spend.” Indeed, I did see a lot of amazing old 50s and 60s Schwinns, Raleighs and Gitanes, often done up in off-beat paint jobs.

Read the next entry