The very high road to Del Norte

We left Platoro just after 6. It was chilly, just 9 degrees, but the sky was clear and there was no wind at all.

 Right away, we started to climb, zig-zagging along switchbacks up the mountainside.

Little Red Mountain  11,601 ft, Big Red Mountain 11,636 ft

Lookout Mountain 12,448 ft

 After nearly a thousand feet of climbing, we dropped down the other side, and paused halfway down to admire the sight of a huge red-coloured mountain on the other side of the valley.

When we reached the bottom, I saw a group of deer, and a beaver dam.

There were also lots of squirrels, and I heard a woodpecker.

It was cool, only 15 degrees at 9 o'clock. We immediately began to climb up the other side of the valley, up and up around the base of the reddish mountain.

Further on, we passed a privately-leased lake, only the sign said that the lease will expire in 1998!

We reached 11,000 feet by 9 AM, and soon after arrived at a huge alpine meadow. We could see snowdrifts and the top of the treeline not much higher than we were.

 It was there that we met the second-place rider, Calvin Decker. He looked pretty strong, and was determined to beat the pair on the tandem coming up behind.

45 minutes later, we met the pair on the tandem. The guy looked pretty exhausted, but the woman who was riding in front looked strong. Katie and Sam from Durango, Colorado

We continued climbing, passing snowdrifts wherever there was shade, and finally the road flattened off. 

 The surface was generally pretty good, though in places it got quite rocky.

We rolled on into Summitville around 11 AM, where I saw another beaver dam.

By this time the wind had picked up, and it was quite cold, so we found a shed to shelter behind.

Summitville is an old gold mining area. The buildings are all falling down, but the tailings are toxic and there is a big operation underway to clean them up.

As we sat behind the shed, a worker drove up and said he needed to get something from the shed, so we had to move. Funny...we thought the place was deserted.

 After Summitville, it was another 10 km of climbing to the top. We had done 4,000 feet of climbing to get to the top in four hours of riding. 

 As we approached the top it began to rain slightly. The wind was also a challenge, though fortunately just before the top the road switchbacked and the strong wind helped to push us up the last part.

We reached the top, Indiana Pass, at 11,910 feet. (3,650m).  That's the highest point on the entire Tour Divide route. I noticed what looked like wild strawberry plants growing beside the road.

It was quite cold at the top. The light rain had turned to sleet, and the wind was still cold and strong. We met two motorcyclists who took photos for us, and then we began to descend down the other side.

The temperature never got above about 17 degrees, though the wind-chill made it seem much colder. Fortunately it was more sheltered as we began to descend, and I quickly warmed up again.

It was a huge descent: 19 km on the gravel, down and down and down.

 Then we finally reached the tarseal, and had another 16 km of rolling farmland to ride through before we reached Del Norte.

 We were all feeling quite tired, so we stopped at an organic cafe immediately across the road. I had a raspberry smoothie, a bowl of chicken tortilla soup (!), and a cup of hot chocolate.

 

As we rode through town, we saw another rider's bike parked outside the convenience store. (4th racer from the North, Lorenzo Serra, New York)

We found a cheap motel in town. It was a bit of a rough place: apparently there had been a big party in one of the rooms two nights earlier, and the police had been called. After the party was shut down, a woman had fallen asleep in the room with a cigarette in her mouth, and set the unit on fire. A dog had been killed by the fire, and the unit was badly damaged. Oh well...we had been warned by the people in the cafe that the motel was pretty dodgy.

We went off to buy food at the local grocery store, where we also bought chicken and salad for dinner, which we ate in our rooms. I finally got to upload all my photos, and phone home for the first time in a week. It was wonderful hearing the voices from my family.

At about 8:30, another racer, Walter Brumniach from Queensland, came up. He's staying in the unit next to our's.

Tomorrow we start riding towards Sargents. It will take us 2-3 days to reach it, depending on how rough the roads are. So far, the dirt roads in Colorado have been a lot more rideable than the dirt roads in New Mexico, so hopefully we can make it in two days. From there, it'll be another day to Salida, which is the first real city we'll have seen since leaving Silver City 16 days ago.