I woke up, had some oatmeal, then got going. The riding was pretty straightforward all the way to Silver Cliff, CO. I stopped there for lunch at the Campfire Café and had a great chicken fried steak. The next segment took me to Salida which was fairly well groomed dirt roads, but still pretty steep in spots. I’m rounding a corner when up ahead of me in the distance I see…something. It’s alive and moving, but too far away to tell. As I get closer, I realize it’s a mountain biker. Closer still, I realize it’s a woman mountain biker, going about 0.0001 mph up a hill. I pass her then think to myself, this gal is crazy, I’ve got to talk to her. So I wait at the top of the hill and eventually she comes and we have a chat. Anna is from London and doing the Great Divide Trail north to south across the US. I just thought what I was doing was tough, but she clearly is winning. She’s doing a blog as well, check it out here: http://confessionsofasmallgirl.com/. After we visit for a while, we part ways and I continue on the trail. Things are going well, so after I get to Salida, I press on to Sargents. Probably a bad idea. The road between Salida and Sargents took me over two mountain passes and was the hardest riding I’ve ever done in my life. The road was full of basketball sized rocks, and to make it worse it started raining so it was slick and muddy. I dropped my bike too many times to count, and it felt like I was lifting a car trying to pick it up. My arms were completely shot from riding through the rocks, add being over 12,000ft was taxing my lungs. It took me forever to get through, but I finally made it to Sargents. Turns out Sargents isn’t so much of a town as just a store and an RV park. I got a spot at the RV park for $12.50 which didn’t seem too bad, and it had the nicest showers I’ve seen at any facility. The cell service was basically non-existent, but they had wifi in the store. I did a load of laundry then hit the sack. It never stopped raining.
Nice panoramic shots. Pretty great view. Those trails do look scary as crap.
They were a handful for sure, but you feel like you’ve done something when you tackle one of those