The road was very freshly grated and deep sand for nearly the entire 60kms, on top of that it was “rolling” which felt like nearly constantly up punctuated by brief hair raising decents full of wheel eating sand pits. Like the rest of Colorado it was beautiful in a big and epic kind of way. The wide open vista made possible by what I imagine are nearly constant forest fires.
By lunch time the heat and humidity was turing itself into monsterous roiling thunderstorms, in every direction you could see big angry clouds and hear their complaints. Thunderstorms have a nolstagic place in my heart being from Ontario, but that was not the dominat feeling as I watched a energetic storm bear down on us as peddled hard to get off the high ridge. With a constant eye to the storm we peddled harder than we wanted to and made the saddle where we screamed down the other side into the valley and conviently placed primitive campground. We had very little time to spare before the storm was overhead, the lighting striking the hills around us and the thunder shaking the ground and air. We made hot chocolate and waited it out, hoping we would not be the most conducive thing around and thankful to be off the ridge.
An hour later the skies had cleared and we ride up and out of the valley to find that the lightning had been very close indeed ! The remnents of two smoking trees border our hiding spot neither more than a half kilometre from where we had been !!
The reminder of the day is slow hard going but offered beautiful views, we past numerous dry campsites but are pulled forever forward by the promise of a shower and a beer, neither materialize and we once again are making a dry camp in the failing darkness.
Holy shit, beautiful but what an adventure
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