Bands playing on Luke's front porch. A beautiful spot.
After sitting in the sun all day, we managed to go bouldering, but not before meeting some guy with a hot tub and getting invited to his house for dinner.
Bouldering near Santa Fe.
The next day we went on an Epic Mountainbeering Adventure (FEMA) to Aspen Vista trail, where we biked 5 miles up to 12,000 feet, then hit snow, left our bikes, and continued up and along a ridgeline towards Lake Peak.
Leaving our bikes at the snowline.
Hiking across the ridgeline.
Unfortunately a storm looked like it was blowing our direction, so we didn't go all the way to Lake Peak to enjoy our beers, but it was still pretty awesome up there.
After 5 days of enjoying ourselves, we realized that we had to leave or we never would, so we asked Luke for a ride back to the route. We even convinced him that for his week off coming up, he should spend a couple days bike touring with us! We agreed to meet in a campground in two nights, near the border with Colorado. Before he dropped us off, we stopped at REI so Luke could buy a rack and some panniers. Little did we know these would be completely unnecessary.
We spent the next two days biking uphill, from Abiquiu at 6,000 feet to 10,000 feet the next day. Our first night, we camped in a narrow, green valley by the side of the road. Normally, this would be unpleasant; however, exactly one car passed us before we left the next morning, so it was pretty quiet. Oddly, as we were making breakfast, Cate heard a "Neyyyeigh!!" and looked up to find a horse had wandered over to us. He was eyeing us and running in circles, neighing! He seemed to be showing off. Finally he galloped off up the hillside. It was a magical experience.
The next day we continued onwards and upwards. We unwisely left ourselves almost 50 miles of mostly uphill to get to the campground where we said we would meet Luke, and eventually we realized this would be very hard. First of all, the morning was all uphill, on extremely isolated back roads.
Cate heading uphill through the aspen and pine forests.
Second of all, on one stretch of downhill, I managed to catapult myself off of my bike, cracking my helmet in several places and getting the usual road rash. Scraping myself up off the road took some time, and Cate and I finally made it 15 of our 50 miles by 1:30 in the afternoon. Not good!
This all would have been fine if we had a way of getting in touch with Luke to say we had to camp earlier, but we had no cell service and we didn't know what road he would be taking. We finally got as far as we could, the hardest 38 miles in our lives, and found a reasonable campsite by the side of the road. Just as we took our pants off to change, he drove by!! Thankfully we managed to wave him down and didn't have to bike after him. He brought us some well deserved Happy Camper IPA.
Luke brought beer!
The next day, we were going to get up to about 11,500 feet! We set out on a 12 mile uphill, after which the road steadily got worse and worse. First it had a stream flowing down it, an inauspicious sign that we ignored.
Biking next to a stream.
Soon after that we hit some snow, but it was easily avoided.
Soon the snow was not avoidable, but at least we could walk our bikes through it.
But soon after that, we hit snow. Not just drifts of snow, solid snow fields of snow. So, we had to turn around. We camped only a mile from where we had the night before. It was a sad day of bike touring when you end up back at your truck. It was sad for our trip since this snow was not about to melt if we waited for a day. We would have to go off-route, and miss the highest passes of the whole Continental Divide.
To cheer ourselves up, we decided to go to Aspen!
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