Up and Over

Today we awoke to another glorious summer morning in Salida after a pretty good nights sleep. My body clearly has me dialled in to awake at 05:30 no matter what situation or where I am. Today we a bit of a ‘gulp’ day. We knew we had one of the toughest starts on the Divide….a climb out of Salida on track from 7000ft to around 11,000 in 14 miles. We had heard the trail was dry so that was a bonus. After a good breakfast Jake and I headed off at 8:30. Michael was in Salida but wasn’t going up the climb until this arvo. We presumed he’d catch us up. The destination was Hartsel which was 48 miles of trail away and over 5000ft elevation gain ….with most of that in the first 14 miles, but with two big climbs after the big climb 🤣.

The climb out of Salida lived up to Chris’s verdict having traversed it yesterday – brutal. It averaged 5% with steps of up to 14%. Right from the start Jake was in difficulty, so I knew it’ll be a long ascent. He was walking within the first 3k. I had been helped by Jake last week when I met my match on the climbs so I rode 1 mile, stopped, waited, checked in and rode another mile. It was slow’! I actually enjoyed the climb, managing to tap out a rhythm all the way to the top. The scenery was achingly beautiful-mountains and forestry, snow capped peaks and great sunshine! I got to the top at 11:40, with Jake cresting it at 12. There was an old cabin marked on the map about a mile up the road so we headed there for lunch. The cabin was an amazing old hunters wood cabin, as you can see in the video. We munched down our food then realised a massive black cloud had gathered over the mountain. We had a tough decision to make -stay in a sheltered hut or risk riding on and getting soaked. There would be no turning back if we went on. Hartsel was 33 miles away with two more climbs ahead, albeit not as tough or long as the one we had just completed. We made the decision to keep going and if the rains came we’d camp up. There was bugger all of a downhill as a reward and we were quickly back crawling up another bitch of a climb as the rains came. Our fear was that the trail would turn to mud. And to really annoy us the worse of the weather came when we were rightly exposed with not a tree to be seen!! Rain coats on we pushed on, one climb at a time, and as we progressed the rain subsided, and we were treated to glorious views of the snow capped Rockies in the distance. I struggled for a while in the afternoon as I had not eaten enough. I got my second wind around 15 miles to go as the road descended. But as always with the trail when you think you’ll be able to push on the trail says ‘buddy, nah’ and the most hideous of washboarding started. I made a decision to gun it over the ridges -going slow seemed to be worse for me and Bob. So I chucked it in the big gear and threw caution to the wind, hitting 64kph over the washboard as I stuck my middle finger to it 🤣. It was pretty sketchy in places but eventually I got to the concrete road to Hartsel. Jack followed about 10 minutes later having had the same ‘sod it’ approach to the washboard! We had made it to Hartsel. The only place to camp was behind the ‘saloon’ bar in town which was basically a dumping ground for the bars waste! But it was free and they had wifi and a servo next door with groceries! We threw up the tents then grabbed snacks at the servo. We had clocked 49 miles with 22 miles of climbing. I was stuffed. After cooking up some rice I hit the sack with loud thunder claps and lightening for company, tho the wet stuff mostly stayed away. It’s a pretty run down small town, with the pub being the centre of it, so it was quite noisy with rowdy drinkers – not ideal but hey, we got here!! And with all that is happening in the US with deployment of Marines….Marines….to respond to issues in LA, there seemed to be much for the locals to be shouting about…which they did for hours! The US is a scary place to be right now.

The stunning scenery up the climb