06/27 Day 18, Colorado Steamboat – Kremmling (95 miles)
We started
our way out of Steamboat at 10:30 .
Because of heavy snows and early melts, the Yampa River had been flooding. Our route was to follow a bike path along the
river and through some train tunnels.
Most of this was closed off so we found our way, trying to stay as close
to the route as possible. On a trail
still close to town, there were 2 men on 4-wheelers herding some horses. They were absolute jerks to us (Kevin from Virginia was with us too by this point); in
no way open to allowing some way for us to pass. I write that in all honesty, we did nothing
to bring this on and were completely polite.
We stayed behind them for quite some time and the guy flipped us off as
he drove off up a hill. Nice.
Sandbags along the Yampa in Steamboat |
We both had
a rather sluggish start to the day.
There was (surprise) quite a bit of climbing around 8000 to 9000
ft.
Early in
the afternoon we came across 4 guys from Dallas that were touring parts of the
GDMBR. They were hilarious and wanted
pictures of their robot mojo with Sharetha.
Well what happens on the trail stays on the trail but I think my mojo
doll was rather violated.
Sharetha and RockemSockem Robot - mistakes were made |
Dallas guy - I have no idea |
At about 60
miles we came to a creek that ran across the road. I waded in and could not find a shallow
spot. The current was swift enough I
wondered about being taken off balance carrying the bike. STB is not a swimmer. Kevin arrived while we pondered. He listened to our discussion and when we
opted to take a detour, he went too. I
am unclear about the rules for this but it sure seemed to me that we should
have worked together to get the bikes across.
But he did not offer and we did not ask.
The rules
allow for going around something like this but you have to return exactly to
the other side. Which we did. It cost us 10 miles of additional riding and
a cross country bush whack. Kevin kept
going on route. In hind site it was
silly, I should have tried harder to get across. I’m a paddler for heavens sake! We also found out later that there was a good
shallow spot that we did not see that was only knee deep. I made one of our rare mtbcast call-ins that
night and only said “Yes, we did that” and left it at that. Anyone one watching would get it. Another round of character building on the
Tour Divide.
At any
rate, we returned to the exact opposite side of the river and continued on
route. We rode along the Gore Range , crossing Lynx Pass (8937ft) then began a magnificent,
circular decent towards Radium and Colorado River .
Note, the mosquitoes were extremely heavy in this whole area. I could not imagine trying to bivy. Making a pee stop was torture. The buggers could fly at our climbing speed
and bite us while we rode. The whole
affair was just wrong.
Raduim is out of site past and below the 2nd ridge |
Raduim
seemed to be a railroad switching area.
Crews were getting off trains and I presume staying in the cabins near
the tracks as new crews boarded. There
was a park used for staging river trips yay concrete bathrooms for hiding from mosquitoes.
The road
climbed away from the Colorado River for at least 10 miles until it crossed a watershed
divide. The last 10 miles were easier
going but it was late when we rolled into Kremmling. We wanted to get food before finding a hotel and of course, the only thing in town open was the Kum N Go convenience
store. You just can’t make this stuff up
in the middle of the night. There was a
long hot dog rotating on an electric grill that reminded us both too much of
the movie Slackers. We opted for
microwave food and hard boiled eggs.
We stopped at the Eastin Hotel but there was no one there.
No one. So weird. Thought about sleeping on the lobby floor. Instead we moved on to the Allington where we fortunately got a room. The night clerk was also the local bike shop
owner. We heated up our mac n cheese and
soups in the hotel dining room and were out.
It was 1am by the time we got to bed.
No comments:
Post a Comment