Finally, a weekend with no races and nothing else going on. It might have been a holiday weekend, but Nick and I made our plans to avoid most of the holiday traffic. We loaded up the Turtle and hit the road with one agenda - find a cool place to camp and some trails to ride. Well, we made good on one half (the trails were really fun, but the camping was so-so.) We decided to camp at the Kenosha campground since there was good trail access and some new trails. Nick really wanted to ride the chunk of CT that headed south towards the Lost Creek Wilderness. It was also a good place to set up a base camp for a few days of fun.
Nick likes to explore new ways to get from point a to point b. This time, we decided on a little used dirt road - County 15 - as the cut between 24 and 285. It was not the nicest road we've driven on - really rough and washboarded and hard. Imagine our surprise when we see a cyclist on a mountain bike all loaded down. And by loaded down, I mean bar bag, seat bag, frame bag and huge backpack. Okay, odd. Not something you normally see. But then we saw two more riders. And then another two - same thing. Finally two more riders. Then it clicked - the Tour Divide started on June 10th and there was a pretty good chance that we were driving on the route for the race. No other explanation for the number of loaded down cyclists on some back road in the middle of Colorado!
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| View from the CT - heading south from Kenosha Pass |
Then it was our turn to ride. After setting up camp in one of the few remaining spaces at Kenosha Pass Campground, we headed south. There were 7 miles of single track between us and the wilderness boundary and we wanted to ride it all. It might have only been a short chunk of the CT, but it made for some fun riding. We were treated to expansive vistas overlooking the Continental Divide, fields full of blue columbines, lupine, wild irises and indian paint brush (and a few that I didn't know) and great single track. The trail was loose and a little dusty from the lack of rain, but quiet. We meandered along ridge lines, through aspen groves and up and down gulches filled with cows. And some of them weren't happy cows - as we were a little close for comfort (but they were right on the trail.) It was mostly down hill as we rode out to the wilderness, so we knew we were in for a good climb to get home. We met a few hikers - most of them thru hikers loaded down. Then at the wilderness boundary we turned around to start the climb up for Kenosha pass. And that meant it was interval time! Nothing like longer intervals on the bike at high altitude to get the heart rate going!
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| Colorado Blue Columbine |
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